Sánchez Gutiérrez, C. H.
Universidad de Salamanca
It is generally accepted that learning a language in context is the most similar process to the acquisition of the mother tongue. From a memory viewpoint, the embodiment theory is getting more and more accepted, suggesting that the meaning we give to the objects and realities that surround us is not based on arbitrary linguistic conventions but on our body experience with those. Assembling both assumptions, the question is to know what part of the immersion experience is the one that favors L2 students in order to develop native-like strategies in a second language. In a lexical decision task we presented a series of Spanish low-frequency words to Spanish subjects who were living in New York by the time of the experiment. We also designed a questionnaire on the linguistic habits of the participants in both Spanish (L1) and English (L2 in context). The results of a correlation analysis showed that the best predictor of response latencies was the number of daily hours he or she had spent actively speaking English, as opposed to the number of hours he or she had been passively exposed to the language (radio, television, etc.) or the number of years the subject had spent in the US. This result points to an understanding of foreign language acquisition that is not based on formal learning but on the physical and emotional interaction we have with the surrounding context the language refers to.