ERIC Number: EJ1176954
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013
Pages: 3
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1936-7384
EISSN: N/A
The Case against "Monolingual Bias" in Multilingualism
Akbar, Farah S.
Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics, v13 n2 p42-44 2013
Driven primarily by globalization, multilingualism has become a topic "du jour "in the field of applied linguistics in general and in critical applied linguistics in particular (May, 2013). Especially in the last decade, the field has witnessed an intensive period of research into multilingualism and multiple language acquisition. A fundamental premise for research in the field is that a multilingual is not the sum of many monolinguals in the same person. Hence an individual with more than one language needs to be studied as a multilingual, with researchers avoiding a so-called "monolingual bias" (Grosjean, 2008). This commentary presents a short description of the so-called monolingual bias, followed by a brief discussion of the critique mounted over this notion from within SLA, and concludes with a brief analysis of the proposed solution for a way out and forward by Ortega (2010).
Descriptors: Monolingualism, Bias, Multilingualism, Second Language Learning, Psycholinguistics, Applied Linguistics, Language Usage, Holistic Approach
Teachers College, Columbia University. 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027. e-mail: tcwebjournal@tc.columbia.edu; Web site: https://tesolal.columbia.edu/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A