Studiare i contesti di apprendimento linguistico: modelli teorici e principi metodologici

This chapter aims to describe and analyze the many levels at which context can be invoked in the study of second language acquisition. “Context” is an extremely wide construct, which can be applied both to very wide levels, such as the culture or society in which learning takes place, and to very narrow levels, such as the conversational setting or the sequence of turns surrounding a single verbal production. The main theoretical models accounting for the relationships between context and language learning will be examined, together with a small number of exemplary em- pirical studies. The objective is to provide a critical overview of research methods available for the study of language acquisition in context