Merrill Swain

language scholar

Merrill Swain is a professor emerita of second-language education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.[1] She developed the output hypothesis. This idea about second-language acquisition says that learners cannot become very good at the grammar of a language only by taking in language and trying to understand it. They must also speak to learn.[2] Swain also worked with Michael Canale on communicative competence.[3] Swain was the president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in 1998.[4] She received her PhD at the University of California.[1]

Related pages change

References change

  1. 1.0 1.1 "Merrill Swain". Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
  2. Ellis, Rod (2008). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 260–261. ISBN 978-0-19-442257-4.
  3. Brown, H. Douglas (2007). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (5th ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson Education. pp. 219–220. ISBN 0-13-199128-0.
  4. "Past Presidents". American Association of Applied Linguistics. Archived from the original on 26 October 2010. Retrieved 11 November 2012.

Other websites change