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Module 2
Module 2
What is Second
Language Acquisition?
why most second language learners do not achieve the same degree of
proficiency in a second language as they do in their native language;
and
Fixed factors such as age and language learning aptitude are beyond
external control. Variable factors such as motivation are influenced
by external factors such as social setting and by the actual course of
L2 development.
It has language typology which delves into patterns which exist among languages and
how they vary in human languages.
Implicational universals which refer to the properties of language such as “all languages
have vowels” without looking at any other properties.
Language is acquired through innateness. Certain principles of the human mind are
biologically determined.
There are sets of principles and conditions where knowledge of language develops.
The learning process has been described by S-R-R theorists as a process forming
stimulus-response-reward chains. These chains come about because of the nature of
the environment and the nature of the learner.
The environment provides the stimuli and the learner provides the responses.
Comprehension or production of certain aspects of language and the environment
provide the reward.
The environment plays a major role in the exercise of the learners’ abilities since
it provides the stimuli that can shape responses selectively rewarding some
responses and not others.
Behaviorist Theory Theory
(Continued)
When the learner learns a language, this learning includes a set of stimulus-
response-reward (S-R-R) chains.
The characteristics of human and non-human learners include the ability to:
Nativists are on the opposite end of the theoretical continuum and use more of
a rationalist approach in explaining the mystery of language acquisition.
(Continued)
McNeill (1966) described the LAD as consisting of four innate linguistic
properties:
1. the ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in the environment;
1. the ability to organize linguistic events into various classes that can be refined later;
1. knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system is possible and that other kinds
are not; and
1. the ability to engage in constant evaluation of the developing linguistic system in order
to construct the simplest possible system out of the linguistic data that are encountered.
The process of association has been used to describe the means by which the
child learns to relate what is said to particular objects or events in the
environment. The bridge by which certain associations are made is meaning.
The extent and accuracy of the associations made are said to change in time as
the child matures.
Cognitivists say that the conditions for learning language are the same
conditions that are necessary for any kind of learning. The environment
provides the material that the child can work on.
Cognitivists view the role of feedback in the learning process as important for
affective reasons, but non-influential in terms of modifying or altering the
sequence of development.
Cognitivist Theory Theory
(Continued)
1. Learning a language involves internal representations that regulate and guide performance.
2. Automatic processing activates certain nodes in memory when appropriate input is present.
Activation is a learned response.
5. Skills are learned and routinized only after the earlier use of controlled processes have been
used.
6. Learner strategies contain both declarative knowledge i.e. knowing the ‘what’ of the language-
internalized rules and memorized chunks of language, and procedural knowledge i.e. know the
‘how’ of the language system to employ strategies.
Theories of Second Language
Theory
Acquisition (Continued)
(Continued)
Comprehensible output provides opportunities for
contextualized, meaningful use of language.
5
The Affective Filter Hypothesis claims that affective variables do not impact
language acquisition directly, but can prevent input from reaching what
Chomsky called the Language Acquisition Device. The LAD is the part of the
brain that is responsible for language acquisition.
Cummin’s Second Language
Framework
Some second language learners who develop fluent spoken English have difficulties in
reading and writing because they may be at different levels of proficiency while they are
moving from social language (BICS) to academic language (CALP). It takes between five
to seven years for second language learners to acquire academic language.
Context-Embedded Cognitively
Undemanding Sample Tasks
Grammatical competence means understanding the skills and knowledge necessary to speak and
write accurately. Grammatical competence includes:
1) vocabulary
2) word formation
3) meaning
4) sentence formation
5) pronunciation
6) spelling
Sociolinguistic competence involves knowing how to produce and understand the language in
different sociolinguistic contexts, taking into consideration such factors as:
1) the status of the participants
2) the purpose of the interaction; and
3) the norms or conventions of the interaction.
Components of Communicative
Competence (Continued)
This internal grammar is implicit rather than explicit. It is evident in the intuitions,
which the speaker-hearer has about the grammaticality of sentences.
Dakin (1973) identifies three general principles of language learning derived from
these theories.
1. According to the law of exercise, language learning is promoted when the learner makes
active and repeated responses to stimuli.
2. The law of effect emphasizes the importance of reinforcing the learners’ responses and
correcting non-target-like ones.
3. The principle of shaping claims that learning will proceed most smoothly and rapidly if
complex behaviors are broken down into their component parts and learned bit-by-bit.
Language Learning
(Continued)
Underlying these principles was the assumption that language learning, like any other kind of learning,
took the form of habit formation, “a habit consisting of an automatic response elicited by a given stimulus.
Learning was seen to take place inductively through analogy rather than analysis.
According to behaviorist theories, the main impediment to learning was interference from prior
knowledge.
Proactive inhibition occurred when old habits got in the way of attempts to learn new ones. In such cases,
the old habits had to be unlearned so that they could be replaced by the new ones.
The notion of unlearning made little sense as learners did not need to forget their L1 in order to acquire an
L2.
For this reason, behaviorist theories of L2 learning emphasized the idea of “difficulty.” This is defined as
the amount of effort required to learn an L2 pattern.
The degree of difficulty was believed to depend primarily in the extent to which the target language pattern
was similar to or different from a native language pattern.
Input and Interaction
L2 acquisition can only take place when the learner has access to input in the second language. This
input may come in written or spoken form.
Spoken input occurs in face-to-face interactions. Non-reciprocal discourse includes listening to the
radio or watching a film.
Behaviorists claim that presenting learners with input in the right doses and then reinforcing their
attempts to practice them can control the process of acquisition.
Chomsky pointed out that in many cases there was a very poor match between the kind of language
found in the input that learners received and the kind of language they themselves produced.
Comprehensible input (Krashen’s, 1985 Input Hypothesis) proposed that learners acquire
morphological features in a natural order as a result of comprehending input addressed to them. Long
(1981a) argued that input which is made comprehensible by means of the conversational adjustments
that occur when there is a comprehension problem is especially important for acquisition.
Swain (1985) proposed the comprehensible output hypothesis which states that learners need
opportunities for “pushed output” in speech or writing that makes demands on them for correct and
appropriate use of the L2.
The Role of the Native Language in Second
Language Acquisition Language
Transfer
The role of native language in second language acquisition has come to be known as
“language transfer.”
It has been assumed that in a second language learning situation learners rely extensively on
their native language.
According to Lado (1957) individuals tend to transfer forms and meanings, the distribution
of the forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language and
culture.
This transfer is productive when the learner attempts to speak the language.
This transfer is receptive when the learner attempts to grasp and understand the language and
culture as practiced by native speakers.
Lado’s work and much of the work of that time (1950’s) was based on the need to produce
pedagogically relevant materials. A contrastive analysis of the native language and the target
language was conducted in order to determine similarities and differences in the languages.
Framework for Language
Explaining L1 Transfer Transfer
Where the two languages were identical, learning could take place through
positive transfer to the native-language pattern.
Where the two languages were different, learning difficulty arose and errors
occurred resulting from negative transfer.
According to Selinker, second language learners are producing their own self-contained linguistic system. The system is not a native language or target language system, rather it falls between the two.
4) backsliding-appears to have grasped but later regressed and unable to correct errors;
5) systematic stage-ability to correct errors on their own; rules may not be well-formed but display more internal self-consistency;
6) stabilization-few errors are made, have mastered the system to the point of fluency; and
7) intralingual-inconsistencies within the target language; Global errors-affect meaning;local errors-close similarities in word form (i.e. spelling).
Interlanguage Continuum
Interlanguage Stages
L1 L2
______/____/______/____/_______/_____/___/_____/_____/______
Basilang Mesolang Acrolang
Identification of Error
Learner Errors Identification
An error can be defined as a deviation from the norms of the target language although questions are raised as to
which variety of the target language should serve as the norm.
The general practice where classroom learners are concerned is to select the standard written dialect as a norm.
The distinction between errors and mistakes is a concern in this type of research. Errors take place when the
deviation arises as a result of lack of knowledge. Mistakes occur when learners fail to perform their competence.
Overt errors are deviations in form i.e. I runned all the way. Covert errors occur in utterances that are
superficially well-formed but which do not mean what the learner intended them to mean i.e. It was stopped.
What does it refer to?
Should the analysis of errors examine only deviations in correctness or also deviations in appropriateness?
Correctness errors involve rules of language use i.e. learner invites a stranger by saying I want you to come to
the cinema with me. The code was used correctly it was not used appropriately.
There are three types of interpretation of errors: 1) normal- can assign a meaning to an utterance based on the
rules of the target language; 2) authoritative-involves asking the learner to say what the utterance means in order
to make an authoritative reconstruction; and 3) plausible-can be obtained by referring to the context in which the
utterance was produced or by translating the sentence literally into the learner’s L 1.
Learner Errors
Error Analysis is used for examining errors as a way of investigating learning processes.
Much of the early work on learner errors focused on the extent to which L 2 acquisition was the result of L1 transfer or
creative construction (construction of unique rules similar to those which children form in the course of acquiring the
native language).
The presence of errors that mirrored L1 structures was taken as evidence of transfer (interlingual), while those errors
similar to those observed in L1 acquisition were indicative of creative construction (intralingual).
The study of learner errors showed that although many errors were caused by transferring L 1 habits, many more were
not.
It was found that learners went through stages of acquisition and the nature of errors varied according to their level of
development.
Error analysis could not show when learners resorted to avoidance and it ignored what learners could do correctly.
Error Analysis Error
Analysis
(Continued) Analysis
Errors are only errors with reference to some external norm such as the target
language. For example, if a learner produces “No speak.” or “No understand.” and
if we assume that these are consistent deviations and form a part of a learner’s
system, then it is only possible to think of them as errors with regard to English,
but not with regard to the learner’s system.
Error analysis is a type of linguistic analysis that focuses on the errors learners
make. The comparison made in EA is between the errors a learner makes
producing the target language and the target language form itself.
Research in EA was carried out within the context of the classroom. The goal was
pedagogical remediation.
Contrastive Analysis
Hypothesis
Contrastive analysis is a way of comparing languages in order to determine potential errors for the
ultimate purpose of isolating what needs to be learned and what does not need to be learned in a
second language learning situation.
Lado detailed that one does a structure-by-structure comparison of the sound system,
morphological system, syntactic system and even the cultural system of two languages for the
purpose of discovering similarities and differences.
The ultimate goal of contrastive analysis is to predict areas that will be either easy or difficult for
learners.
There are two positions that developed with regard to CA: (1) strong (2) weak.
The strong version (predictive) maintained that one could make predictions about learning and
hence about the success of language teaching materials based on a comparison between two
languages.
The weak version (explanatory) starts with an analysis of learners’ recurring errors (error analysis).
It begins with what learners do and then attempts to account for those errors on the basis of native
language-target language differences.
Language Acquisition for School: The Prism
Model
Thomas & Collier, 1997
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La
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D ua
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L1 Processes t
L1 + L2 Cognitive Development
Cognitive Development
Extensive research has demonstrated that children who reach the threshold
in L1 by around age 11 to 12 enjoy cognitive advantages over monolinguals.
Academic Development
Academic development includes all school work in language arts, math, the sciences, and
social studies for each grade level, K-12.
With each succeeding grade, academic work dramatically expands the vocabulary,
sociolinguistic, and discourse dimensions of language to higher cognitive levels.
Academic knowledge and conceptual development transfer from first language to second
language.
It is most efficient to develop academic work through the student’s first language, while
teaching second language during other periods of the school day through meaningful
academic content.
In earlier decades, schools in the United States emphasized teaching second language as
the first step and postponing the teaching of academics.
This includes the acquisition of the oral and written systems of the
student’s first and second languages across all language domains, such
as phonology, vocabulary, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics
and discourse.
At the heart of the figure is the individual student going through the process of acquiring
a second language at school.
Central to that student’s acquisition of language are all of the surrounding social and
cultural processes occurring through everyday life within the student’s past, present, and
future, in all contexts-home, school, community, and the broader society.
These factors can strongly influence the student’s response to a new language, affecting
the process positively only when the student is in a socioculturally supportive
environment.
In Conclusion
The Learner/The Teacher
• Ellis, R. (2003). The study of second language acquisition (10th ed.). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
• Gass, S.,& Selinker, L. (2001). Second language acquisition (2nd ed.). Mahwah,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Thomas, W., & Collier, V. (1997). School effectiveness for language minority
students. National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education Resource Collection
Series, No. 9.
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