| Fluent use of a first or second language, in all its modalities (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), consists of the online integration of many types of knowledge, ranging from the level of sound or letter representation to the levels of semantics, pragmatics and world knowledge. The nature of this complex integration process differs depending on the characteristics of the language, the individual's stage of language development, and the communicative situation (task factors). Furthermore, the ease or difficulty with which language users manage to perform a verbal task may depend on individual characteristics, such as working-memory capacity, grammatical sensitivity, and personality. |
