Second Language Learning in a Foreign Language Environment: A Pragma-Discoursal Account

Contents: Introduction. 1. Indefinite reference framing. 2. The acquisition and use of the past tense understanding selective marking. 3. The felicitous use of then / after that . 4. On the structure of enumeration. 5. The encapsulating sentence and text-building. 6. Variable temporal passage in storytelling. 7. Narrative in support of an opening end-state statement. 8. Information design and language learning. 9. Message under coding and language learning. The aspects of written discourse addressed in this collection of nine papers are represented in terms of the defining informational constraints on their standard use, and the associated pragma-discoursal impact on the message. Each of the first seven papers individually addresses a core feature of written discourse of challenge to the high-intermediate English as a Foreign Language learner, by examining how s/he tackles the very particular information-packaging directives that govern it. These seven papers cover a range of such features, from the micro- to the macro-level, including, reference framing, the marking of time and temporal passage, key intersentential relations and discoursal developments, and the signaling of genre. The eighth paper attempts a more general assessment of the information-design challenge that these facets of composing collectively constitute, and the last paper identifies, and accounts for, a common learning strategy that the typical foreign language context gives rise to. As a whole, the collection is a comprehensive but also deeply probing, first-of-its-kind pragma-discoursal study of how second-language writing is learned in a foreign language environment.…