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Part of
Critical Reflections on Data in Second Language Acquisition
Edited by Aarnes Gudmestad and Amanda Edmonds
[Language Learning & Language Teaching 51] 2018
► pp. 171–196

Chapter 7
Concept-oriented analysis

A reflection on one approach to studying interlanguage development

| Indiana University

This chapter reviews the basic tenets and goals of concept-oriented analysis, one type of functional analysis that documents meaning-to-form mapping in interlanguage development. It considers the benefits and challenges of an approach that has meaning, or concept, as its central construct, and explores the relation of such an approach to other approaches to research in second language acquisition (SLA) today. The chapter discusses how concepts are selected for investigation, how realizations of those concepts are identified in interlanguage, and how means of expression of those concepts are categorized and coded. The chapter also reflects on the use of the target language in this analysis, which views interlanguage as an independent system, and shows how recent studies have used a variety of resources to compare the balance of linguistic devices used in learner and native-speaker systems. The concept-oriented analysis has recently been used in combination with a variationist approach to SLA, and this is discussed in the final section, along with possible directions for future investigations.

Keywords: concept-oriented approach, meaning-based, tense-aspect, functional approaches, interlanguage analysis
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The concept-oriented approach
  • Identifying concepts
    • Design
    • Data
  • Identifying linguistic devices
  • The role of the target language
    • The target language in criterion approaches
    • The target language in concept-oriented analysis
  • Concept-oriented and other approaches to SLA
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.51.08bar
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