John H. Schumann

John H. Schumann is an American applied linguist and professor of applied linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, known for developing the Acculturation Model of second language acquisition. His model proposes that the degree to which a learner acculturates to the target language community, socially and psychologically, governs how far that learner's interlanguage develops toward the target language, and that under conditions of low acculturation a learner's speech can fossilize into a simplified pidginized form. Schumann based the model on his own longitudinal case study of an adult Spanish-speaking immigrant learning English with minimal contact with English speakers. The Acculturation Model became a foundational framework in second language acquisition research for explaining why some learners plateau well short of native-like proficiency despite years of exposure, and it shaped later research linking social distance, motivation and identity to language learning outcomes. Schumann has taught and published on second language acquisition theory across a career at UCLA's applied linguistics program.