The Odyssey of Learning a Foreign Language

Posted by Andreas Winkler on June 1st, 2021

With Malta's entry into the European Union in 2004, Maltese became one of its official languages. Furthermore, many foreign workers residing in Malta, continue to find employment in the iGaming industry, financial services, health care, pharmaceuticals, construction sector and culinary industry and are interested to learn Maltese for various reasons. The book "A Verbal Odyssey. Learning Maltese as a foreign adult" by Dr. Jacqueline Zammit explores the acquisition of Maltese verbs by adult non-native learners, which could easily be applied to any other foreign language acquisition. The book was published in May 2021 at GRIN. Learning a foreign language implicates several cognitive and sociocultural challenges that affect the competence and performance of the learner. The new learned language often differs from the learner's first. So, it is relevant to understand the impact of the first language on the foreign language learning process. The book "A Verbal Odyssey. Learning Maltese as a foreign adult" by Dr. Jacqueline Zammit aims to analyze the use of verbs by different non-native learners to understand what is going on in the learner's mind while learning Maltese as a foreign language, the challenges of learning Maltese and to improve the current teaching and learning system in Maltese as a foreign language. These issues and learning techniques could easily be applied to any foreign language acquisition. Is a learning process linear or non-linear? Foreign language acquisition is complex, unpredictable, and non-linear and it is primarily concerned with the learner's internal mental state and processes, considering the learning curve analysis. In fact, socio-cognitive theories consider both the cognitive and social perspectives to foreign language acquisition, which are regarded as a combination of several processes that show what is happening in our mind while learning a new language. "A Verbal Odyssey. Learning Maltese as a foreign adult" concludes that Chaos/Complexity Theory's Butterfly Effect could occur to adult learners to resolve their identified challenges including problems related to memory, personality (being introvert or extrovert), culture shock and boring and "outdated" teaching methods. Each chapter in this book starts with a funny comic strip and a quotation. This book addresses any foreign language learner as well as teachers and lecturers. For methodical reasons, the book is also interesting for linguistic researchers. About the author Dr. Jacqueline Zammit is a lecturer in the Pedagogy of Maltese, with a specialization in the teaching of Maltese as a Foreign Language within the Department of Languages & Humanities, Faculty of Education at the University of Malta. She holds a First-Class B.Ed. (Hons) degree in Maltese and Early & Middle Years, a Master of Arts degree with Distinction in Maltese Linguistics, and a PhD from the University of Malta. She is also a representative of the Department of Languages and Humanities Education at the Faculty of Education, University of Malta. Dr. Zammit has more than twenty years of pedagogy insights experience working with Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. She is currently publishing papers on refereed journals, presenting papers at Conferences and is writing books about Maltese as a Foreign Language. She introduced Maltese and presented Foreign Language Acquisition pedagogies at several universities such as the Universities of Edinburgh, Cork and Antwerp. Happy Reading! The book was published in May 2021 at GRIN (ISBN: 978-3-346-40349-0). Direct link for publication: https://www.grin.com/document/1020349 The book on Amazon (https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Jacqueline-Zammit/dp/3346403491/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=A+Verbal+Odyssey.+Learning+Maltese+as+a+foreign+adult&qid=1621941923&sr=8-1) Free review copies can be obtained directly from the publisher at presse@grin.com.

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