Re-acquisition of L2-English/L1-German
1977-(ongoing)
Two years after their return to Germany the three younger children of
the 1975 project on L2 English/L1 German had forgotten their English
almost completely.
In 1977 the family returned to the same town in California for six weeks
to collect data on how the children would re-acquire or revive their
English.
By the end of the 6-week stay the children were back where they had left
off in 1975, and they may even have gone further.
The analyses were focussed on the same structural areas as with the 1975
corpus when English was acquired as the L2 for the first time.
Therefore, it was claimed that re-acquisition is not re-learning the
language, but reviving it.
Principal collaborators: S. Allendorf, B. Pries, A. Rohde, A. Peters, T. Schnell, J.-L. Schrader