Abstract

Interest in learning Chinese as an additional language has soared worldwide over the last ten years. Yet little is known about the learning process, and much less about what pedagogical strategies might facilitate or, otherwise, hinder it. This book thus aims to further understanding of the acquisition of Chinese as a foreign or second language. It brings together six independent studies which explore aspects of learning Chinese as an additional language across the domains of morphosyntax, pragmatics, cognitive capacity, interactional learning, and instructed learning via a variety of conceptual frameworks and methodological strategies. These studies, as well as the suggestions for future research, will be of great interest to second language acquisition researchers, graduate students and second language teachers of Chinese, as well as to curriculum developers and materials writers.

This book is undoubtedly a great contribution to the research domain on second language acquisition of Chinese and will definitely provoke thoughts as to what further questions to ask and investigate.

ZhaoHong Han is Professor of Language and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA, where she researches in second language acquisition, second language teaching, and their interface. She is the author/editor/co-editor of a number of volumes, including Fossilization in Adult Second Language Acquisition (2004) and Linguistic Relativity in SLA: Thinking for Speaking (co-edited with Teresa Cadierno, 2010).

Studies in Second Language Acquisition of Chinese is a much needed book in the field of Chinese as a foreign language/second language (CFL/CSL). It provides important empirical findings on CFL development in areas of morphosyntax, pragmatics, interaction analysis, cognitive processing, and explicit learning. This book serves as a wonderful resource book for CFL empirical studies across different domains.

The chapters in this volume constitute serious attempts to address important issues in second language acquisition of Chinese, and they will help both researchers and language teaching practitioners to have a better understanding of the mechanisms in Chinese as a second language.