LITERACY AND SECOND LANGUAGE ORACY

Learners who cannot decode alphabetic script have been left out of the SLA research enterprise, at considerable cost to our understanding of the human capacity for language learning. This book offers researchevidence documenting the significant impact of low literacy skill onadolescents' processing of oral L2 input and acquisition. Togetherwith a large body of closely related research in cognitive psychology, the findings lead to a startling conclusion: language processingskills that have been assumed to be universal human traits appearinstead to be a product of learners' experience with alphabetic printliteracy.