Interlingua e profilo d’apprendente. Uno sguardo diacronico tra linguistica acquisizionale e glottodidattica

The book sets out to retrace the steps that have led to the definition of interlanguage and its characteristics. Moreover, we aim to identify the traits that can play a major role both in language acquisition and didactics. Our main goal is to link the studies on language acquisition to language teaching issues. In fact, studies on language acquisition stemmed from language teaching matters, but were later unnaturally separated from their matrix. The intersection between the two disciplines should be identified in their mutual object of study: learner’s language. Attention should be paid to the processes that determine the development of the language and to the result of such processes, namely linguistic-communicative competence. Since the two perspectives are related, like the two sides of the same coin, we should focus on the metal that constitutes them – plainly speaking, the learner, with his/her personal characteristics, cognitive style, previous (linguistic) knowledge. In this sense, the analysis of interlanguages is functional to describing the profiles of the learners who speak that interlanguages, and thus helpful to the teacher, who needs to plan his/her teaching on the needs and characteristics of the learners. The first chapter of the book introduces methodological and terminological concepts. The second chapter traces the origins of the studies on language acquisition from the forerunners, in the Forties and the Fifties, to contrastive analysis and error analysis (third chapter); from the works of Corder, Nemser and Selinker in the Sixties and the Seventies (fourth chapter), to the research projects of the Eighties (fifth chapter). The results of the latter projects are discussed, highlighting their importance for reconciling the perspectives of language acquisition and language teaching through the notion of the learner’s profile (sixth chapter).