Abstract
Language attrition has become a vibrant theme as it has implications for theoretical linguistics, including, for example, the organization of linguistic information in the brain and language processing. Insights from this area also have impact on the study of second language (L2) development and can feed the area of language teaching. Once language attrition may be of value for the study of language retention and maintenance, it can contribute to language teaching with long lasting results, more effective planning and syllabus design. In this perspective, as studies exploring L2 attrition are still limited, this article provides a synthesis of research on the area. By drawing from the Dynamic Model of Multilingualism and from the Threshold Hypothesis, it also explores the implications L2 attrition research has for language teaching with a view to establishing more informed language practices and policies.
Highlights
Languages are intuitively associated with acquisition, learning or production
To Kupske (2016, 2017a), language development has been a subject of scientiic inquiry for a long time, the decline of a language in healthy speakers, phenomenon here taken as language attrition, has been studied systematically only for about three decades or so. hus, compared to research on language development, research on retention, maintenance and attrition of language skills is a relatively recent development
Even though there is sociolinguistic tradition of study on language shit, work on language attrition really started in the 1980s
Summary
Languages are intuitively associated with acquisition, learning or production. In other words, they are usually ailiated to gain, as one might be able to perceive in this issue of Ilha do Desterro edited by professors Mailce Borges Mota and Augusto Buchweitz. Removing or adding elements might compromise the behavior of the system in an unpredictable way, and changes in those systems should not be equated with the direct causes as small variations or small inputs may bring about considerable changes (Kupske et al, 2019) Based on these tenets and considering language as a dynamic system, Herdina and Jessner (2002) developed the Dynamic Model of Multilingualism (DMM), which holds great potential to accommodate language development and attrition. 8), “rather than focusing on the process of attrition itself, DMM considers the language maintenance efort that bilinguals and multilinguals have to exercise in order to keep their languages ‘alive’” To these authors, using a language for communication and verifying hypotheses about the multilingual system will lead to stimulation of parts of the speaker’s linguistic subsystems. Language teaching would be balancing losses and gains, and by being aware of L2 attrition, teachers may be able to create retention and maintenance strategies, the focus of the section
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