TOT phenomenon in speech production

The article deals with the so-called TOT phenomenon (tip-of-the-tongue) – the conscious feeling that accompanies temporary inaccessibility («blocking») of an otherwise accessible item that a person is trying to retrieve in the course of speech production. Due to TOT’s universality (it occurs at any age, in any language, is experienced by monoliguals, bilinguals and multilinguals) it can be viewed as a window from which to observe how lexical retrieval occurs during speech production. Studying TOT in classroom bilingualism may help determine strategies expediting and facilitating access to a temporary blocked word.