I advance the hypothesis that the earliest phases of language acquisition -- the developmental transition from an initial universal state of language processing to one that is language-specific -- requires social interaction. Relating human language learning to a broader set of neurobiological cases of communicative development, I argue that the social brain 'gates' the computational mechanisms...

This paper summarizes computer supported language learning environments using collaborative writing tools. Moreover, this paper proposes a markup-based composition learning support system called CoCoA (Communicative Collection Assisting System). It allows students and teachers to exchange marked-up documents via Internet, and its environment is very similar to a real one in which people use pap...

Audiolingualism and Communicative Language Teaching are two pedagogies both of foreign origin, however, they have made drastically different impact on English Language Teaching in China. The paper explains from a cultural perspective why audiolingualism is painlessly integrated into traditional Chinese approach of English learning while Communicative Language Teaching seems to have encountered ...

This paper describes a course-support hypermedia languagelearning environment, called “AcademicEnglish” based on communicative language teaching approach, for EFL/ESL academicians to improve their communicative competence in academic contexts, and shows the design and implementation of the courseware in this environment. To support our hypotheses in building such an environment, we conducted a ...

Intake  is  a  concept  that  has  long  fascinated  second  language  researchers  as  it  provides  a window  onto  the  crucial  intermediary  stage  between  input  and  acquisition.  A  better understanding of this intermediary  stage can  help us to distinguish between input that  is used for immediate (e.g. communicative) purposes only and input that is drawn on for learning. This articl...

This paper focuses on the problem of language transfer in foreign language learning. The transfer often leads to a communicative gap, which is caused by the difference between a learner's mother language (ML) and the target language (TL). This paper first analyzes the semantic relations between the ML and the TL. Then it proposes a CGM (Communicative Gap Model) because of the meaning difference...