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28 Marzo 2014
TEMA 3: APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND FOREING/SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION/
LEARNING
INTRODUCTION
APPLIED LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND FOREING/SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION/
LEARNING.
SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: A GENERAL OVERVIEW.
1950s-1960s:
• Behaviourist view → contrastive analysis
• In the SLL process the complication is that the old 1L habits interfere with the new
set of 2L habits.
• If structures in the 2L are similar to the 1L ones the learning will take place easily.
Otherwise, the learning will be difficult.
• 2 teaching implication:
• Practice makes perfect: learning by imitation and repetition.
• Focus on areas of difference (e.g. On those that were different in the first and
second language. Researches embarked on Contrastive Analysis → comparing pairs of language in order to pinpoint areas of difference, therefore of difficulty.
• Chomky's view:
• 2LA also interested in how competence is develop, that is, in how 2L learners
acquire and construct a grammar of the 2L.
• Learners utterances treated as evidence for what is going on inside the learner's
mind.
1970s:
• Krashen's Input hypothesis (refined and expanded in the early 1980s).
• Comprehensible input = the only causative variable in 2LA.
• Success in a foreing language can be attributed to input alone (Brown, 2000).
• Selinker: the concept of the Interlanguage.
• Disillusionment with Contrastive Analysis. Focus on “Error Analysis”.
1980s: different theories emphasized the role of communication in learning.
• Swain: the Output hypothesis.
• Long: Long's Interaction hypothesis.
• Vygotsky (1896-1934). The Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding.
(1970s-1980s publication of his works)
4 Abril 2014
3.1 LINGUISTIC THEORIES OF FOREING/SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
3.1.1 INNATIST MODELS: KRASHEN'S MODEL OF 2LA (MITCHEL AND MYLES, 2004)
- Acquisition-learning hypothesis
• Acquisition and learning are seen as mutually exclusive.
• Acquisition
• subconcious process:
→ The process of L2 acquisition uses the language faculty in essentially the same unconcious way as 1L acquisition (LAD processes language input).
→ The result of natural interaction with the language via meaningful communication.
• Learning
• concious process that results in “knowing about language”:
→ Knowledge gained through concious understanding of the rules of language. → The result of concious attention to form.
- The monitor hypothesis
• Learning has only one fuction, and that is as a Monitor or editor (Mitchell and Myles,
• The monitor can be seen as “a device for watchdogging” one's output.
• Editing and making alterations or corrections when they are conciously perceived
(Brown, 2004:278)
• Use of the Monitor in order to conciously modify the output.
• The monitor does not operate all the time. When? Mainly...
• When a focus on a form is important for learners,
• and when learners know the grammatical rule needed.
• → An optional amount of monitoring should be used only once fluency is
established.
• Concept of the Monitor used to explain individual differences in learners:
“overusers”---------optional Monitor users---------under-users
- The natural order hypothesis
• Rules are acquired in a predictable order, some earlier than other.
• This order is independent of the order in which rules are taught in language classes.
(Krashen, 1985:1) → connection with section 3.2 (see diagram in the handout for stages of L2A)
• Hypothesis based almost exclusively on the morpheme studies. Krashen (1977)
Natural order for ESL.
• -ING, plural, copula
• auxiliary, article
• irregular past
• regular past, 3rd singular, possesive
- The input hypothesis
• Comprehensible input is defined as second language input just beyond the learner's
curred second language competence, in terms of its syntactic complexity.
• If learner's current competence is i then comprehensible inp i+1 ¡, the next is the
developmental sequence.
• Gap between i and i+1 bridged by information drawn form context or previous
experience.
• Krashen views the input hypothesis is a central to his model of second language
acquisition:
• a) speaking is the result of acquisition and not its cause. Speech cannot be taught
directly but emerges on its own.
• b) if input is understood, and there is enough of it, the necessary grammar is
automatically provided
• In Krashen's model LISTENING IS THE CRUCIAL ACTIVITY
- The affective filter hypothesis
• Learners also need to “let that input in”
Importance of modified interaction: the various modifications that native speaker and other interlocutors create in order to make their input comprehensible to learners.
• How does interactional modification promote acquisition?
• Adjustments (modification) → Comprehension → Acquisition (comprehensible input
promotes acquisition)
• Negociated interaction → metalinguistic awareness
(language = object of inquiry)
• Negocation makes learners aware that there is incongruity between their forms and
those by native speakers.
• Negocation facilitates acquisition because it connects:
• input
• particular selective attention
• internal learner capacities
• output
• The new version (Long 1996) highlights...
• the possible contribution to SLL of negative evidence
• the notion of selective attention, which facilitates the process whereby input
become intake Practice: exercise in handout
2. VYGOSTKY'S THEORY:
• Learning is a mediated process.
• It occurs through social interaction.
Constructing knowledge in collaboration with interlocutor(s)
• Key concepts:
• Scaffolding: process of supportive dialogue.
Directs the attention of the learner to key features of the environment. Guides him/her through successive steos of a problem.
• The Zone of Proximal Development
A metaphorical location or “site” where learners co-construct knowledge in collaboration with an interlocutor. Here the learner is not yet capable of independent functioning, but can achieve the desired outcome given the relevant scaffolded help.
3.1.4 THE INTERLANGUAGE THEORY
• Interlanguage: coined by American linguist Larry Selinker (1972).
• What is interlanguage (IL)? 2 definitions:
• Ellis (1997:33): The learner constructs a system of abstract linguistic rules which
draws, in part, on the learner's L1 but is also different from it and also from the target langage. This system of rules is viewed as a “mental grammar” and is referred to as an “interlanguage” L1 → Interlanguage grammar ← L
• See also Davies's (1999: 148) definition is glossary (see PDF file on VLE platform):
The various stages of the learner's second-language development.
• Characteristics of the learner's interlanguage:
1. It is permeable: rules are not fixed but open to alterations.
System open to change and open to the influence of other linguistics systems knows to the learner.
2. It is dynamic → constantly changing.
This result in an interlanguage continuum. Learners constructs a serie of mental grammars or interlanguage as they gradually increase the complexity of their L2 knowledge. Process of constant revision and extension.
The interlanguage evolves in the direction of the L2 as long as the process of acquisition takes place.
3. It is systematic: at any given time of the acquisition process the learner's
transitional system as a grammar. This grammar is describable in terms of rules.
4. It can be fossilized: some errors may become permanent features of the
learner's speech (fossilized errors). Become permanently established in a form that is deviant from the target-language. Fossilization is unique to L2 grammars.
• Interlanguage theory both gave rise to and benefited from research into 2LA.
Errors Analysis reveals 2 main tyoes of errors that learners make them actively constructing a system for the L2:
• Interlingual errors:
Errors due to transferring rules from the mother tongue. The influence of L1 as a source of error is know as “negative transfer” (interference). Versus positive transfer.: compare (L1 = Spanish= eats well the baby? → negative transfer (interlingual error) mangia bene il bambino? → positice transfer (the result is correct)
• Intralingual errors: they show that the learner is processing the L2 in its own
terms (e.g. Errors of overgeneralisation: goed, breaked). There are also ambiguous cases (i.e. As that can be interpreted as both interlingual or intralingual).
