L'acquisizione dell'inglese in età prescolare: la produzione

This article reports the findings of a three year study of pre-school children acquiring English through exposure to the language during normal classroom activities. It examines the learning strategies used by children, and records recurrent linguistic features such as code-swtiching, foreignization, and reduplication. Although non-intensive exposure led to comparatively little in terms of productive lexis, nonetheless the process of acquisition (as revealed in grammatical and phonological structures, and a wide range of strategies) was seen to have much in common with natural L1 acquisition. The article concludes by pointing to possible wider educational benefits of early years exposure to L2.