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Private speech: evidence for second language learning strategies during the ‘silent’ period*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Muriel Saville-Troike
Muriel Saville-Troike*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
*
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL 61820, USA.
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Abstract

This study focuses on children who go through a ‘silent’ period early in the course of second language development, during which they largely cease verbal communication with speakers of the second language (English). Video recordings with radio microphones under natural conditions revealed that most of these children engaged in extensive private speech, which they were found to use for a variety of intrapersonal learning strategies, including (1) repetition of others' utterances, (2) recall and practice, (3) creation of new linguistic forms, (4) paradigmatic substitution and syntagmatic expansion, and (5) rehearsal for overt social performance. Quantity and quality of private speech was related not only to the children's level of cognitive development and the difficulty of the learning task (confirming previous research), but also to the children's social orientation and learning style, and to the domain of knowledge (language) that was being acquired.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , October 1988 , pp. 567 - 590
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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Footnotes

*

This study was supported in part by the Bureau of Educational Research and the Research Board of the University of Illinois. I am particularly grateful to Rey-Mei Chen, Soonai Ham, JoAnne Kleifgen, Keiko Koda and Ook Whan O, who collaborated in data collection, analysis, and interpretation, and to the teachers, children and parents who cooperated in the collection of the data. An earlier version was presented in April, 1987, at the Stanford Child Language Research Forum.

References

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