Chapter 11 Second Language Acquisition

Second Language Acquisition ---- formally established itself as a discipline around the 1970s, refers to the systematic study of how one person acquires a second language subsequent to his native language.

Distinguish second language & foreign language

second language: the language plays an institutional and social role in the community . that is, it functions as a recognized means of communication among members who speak some other languages as their mother tongues. Eg English as a second language is learnt in the United States, the United Kingdom and countries in Africa such as Nigeria and Zambia

foreign language: takes place in setting where the language plays no major role in the community and is primarily learnt only in the classroom. E.g. English is learnt in china or Japan.

Target language(TL), native language (NL), L1, L2, FL

Connections between first language acquisition and second language

acquisition The first language study has served as a backcloth for

perceiving and understanding new facts about second language learning (Littlewood, 1986).

SLA is different from first language acquisition. Interlanguage

Connections between first language acquisition and second language

acquisition The first language study has served as a backcloth for

perceiving and understanding new facts about second language learning (Littlewood, 1986).

SLA is different from first language acquisition. Interlanguage

Interlanguage

definition: learners’ independent system of the second language which is of neither the native language nor the second language, but a continuum or approximation from his native language to the target language

characteristics: systematicity, permeability, fossilization

fossilization

definition: a process occurring from time to time in which incorrect linguistic features become a permanent part of the way a person speaks or writes a language

causes of fossilization:fossilization has become one of the main features of interlanguage. According to Selinker, it may be caused by the following:

1) native language interferences: the interferences can appear in all levels, in pronunciation, words, grammar etc.

e.g. He is doctor ( lack of article) He on the third floor. (lack of copula “be”) The price of the coat is very expensive. (word collocation) Mispronounce /l/for /n/, or /e/ for /ae/ etc.

2) transfer of training: learners may have wrong understanding of the language due to the teachers’ unidiomatic use of the language. The wrongly use of the teaching material may also cause mistakes.

e.g in talking to foreigners, ask about the privacy such as salary, age, marriage status , religious beliefs etc because these forms appear in the teaching materials.

How are you and the reply can be found in most of the textbooks. But “ how are you doing” or “what’s up”seldom appear in the teaching materials, and teachers seldom use them in class. So learners don’t know how to reply when they hear these in real communication.

3) learning strategies: learners tend to simplize the target language, especially simplizing the syntactic structures.

e.g the subjunctive mood is difficult to learn and understand. So learners tend to rely on other simpler structures to avoid using it. So in real communication, once the native speaker use the subjunctive mood, it will cause misunderstanding.

4) use of communicative strategies: at a certain level, learners will leran to use certain strategies like avoidance, simplification etc to achieve successful communication. The learners will be satisfied with their present level and learning motivation is weakened, except for leaning some new words, the learners have no intention to learn and use the complex sentence structures. In the long run, learners caa’t use the complex language forms and fossilization may occur.

5) overgeneralization of target language: learners tend to overgeneralize the grammatical rules and cause mistakes.

e.g. His parents suggested him to go abroad after graduation. ( influenced by the structure” ask…to do, “ “ tell …to do”, “advise …to do”)

Contrastive analysis (CA) (1960s) definition: is an approach that compares the forms and meanings across the

mother tongue and target language to find the differences so that people could predict learners’ difficulty.

the native language was regarded as the major cause for learning problems that the learners face.

Positive transfer----If the learners can transfer the rules of native language to the second language in a positive way , the native language can facilitate target language learning

Negative transfer----If the transfer is a negative one, the native language would interfere or hinder target language learning

It is believed that The similiarity between languages will facilitate learning whereas differences between the native language and the target language would pose difficulties in second/foreign language learning and teaching, e.g.

*To touch the society . *There are more people come to study in the states. *I wait you at the gate of the school.

Shortcomings of CA

The CA was soon found problematic, for many of the predictions of the target language learning difficulty formulated on the basis of contrastive analysis turned out to be either uninformative or inaccurate. Predicted errors did not materialize in learner language while errors did show up that the contrastive analysis had not predicted. “differences” and “difficulties” are not identical concepts.

Error analysis (EA)

definition: an approach that involves objectively describing the learners interlanguage, then a comparison between the interlanguage and the target language is followed to find out the differences. Different from contrastive analysis, error analysis gave less consideration to learners’ native language.

mistakes and errors: mistakes: students’ performance errors , e.g slip to tongue or spelling

mistakes etc. caused by distraction, carelessness, interference etc. after making the mistakes, if their attention is drawn to the mistakes, the students can realize them and self-correct them.

Errors: those mistakes that students make due to their imperfect knowledge of target language. It’s also called competence errors. Often the students cannot realize them and self-correct them.

Two main sorts of errors: Interlingual errors & intralingual errors

Interlingual errors

----Interlingual errors mainly result from cross-linguistic interference at different levels such as phonological, lexical, grammatical or discoursal etc. For examples,

a. Substitution of [t] for [W] and [d] for [T]: threetree, thisdis.

b. Shortening of long vowels: sheepship, meetmit

Intralingual errors

----The intralingual errors mainly from faulty or partial learning of the target language, independent of the native language.

Two types of errors have been well exploited:

overgeneralization & cross-association

Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization ---- the use of previously available strategies in new situations.

Walked, watched, washed…

*rided, *goed, *doed, *eated… Jane advise me to give up smoking.

Jane told me to give up smoking.

*Jane hoped me to give up smoking.

*Jane suggested me to give up smoking.

Cross-association

Cross-association refers to the phenomenon that the close association of the two similar words often leads to confusion, e.g.

Other/another, much/many, stalagmite/stalactite… It may also occurs at all levels of language from

phonological to syntactic, e.g.

The coffee is too hot to drink.

*The apricot is too sour to eat it.

The role of native language in 2nd language learning

Language transfer: positive & negative (behaviorism) Mentalists argued that few errors were caused by

language transfer; transfer is not transfer, but a kind of mental process.

Three interacting factors in determining language transfer:

A learner’s psychology

Perception of native-target language distance

Actual knowledge of the target language

2nd language learning models and input hypothesis

Behaviorism model emphasizes the role of imitation and positive reinforcement, a “nurture” position;

The mentalists or the innativists shift to a “nature” position by stressing that human beings equipped innately with language acquisition device, are capable of language learning provided with adequate language input.

The social interactionists argue that language and social interaction cannot be separated.

Krashen’s Input Hypothesis

Krashen make a distinction between acquisition & learning.

He put forward that learners advance their language learning gradually by receiving comprehensible input.

He defined comprehensible input as “i + 1” : “i” represents learners’ current state of knowledge, “

1”stands for the bit of knowledge that is a little higher than the learners current level. Only by providing the comprehensible input can acquisition take place.

Krashen mistook input and intake, thus receive criticism.

Individual differences

Language aptitude Motivation Learning strategies Age of acquisition Personality

Language aptitude

Language aptitude refers to a natural ability for learning a second language. It is believed to be related to a learner’s general intelligence. John Carroll identified some components of language aptitude:

Phonemic coding ability Grammatical sensitivity Inductive language learning ability Rote learning ability

Motivation

Motivation can be defined as the learner’s attitudes and affective state or learning drive. It has a strong impact on his efforts in learning a second language. Generally four types of motivations have been identified:

Instrumental motivation Integrative motivation Resultative motivation Intrinsic motivation

Learning strategies

Learning strategies are learners’ conscious, goal-oriented and problem-solving based efforts to achieve learning efficiency. According to Chamot (1986) & Oxford (1990), three types of strategies have been identified:

Cognitive strategies ---- analyzing,synthesis and internalizing what has been learned.

Metacognitive strategies ---- planning, monitoring and evaluating one’s learning.

Affect/social strategies ---- the ways learners interact with other speakers.

Cohen (1998) further distinguishes language learning strategies and language using strategies.

Age of acquisition

The Critical Period Hypothesis

Recent studies support the hypothesis that in terms of learning achievement and grammaticality the younger learners outperform the adults.

Personality

In terms of communicative ability rather than grammatical accuracy or knowledge of grammatical rules, the personality traits such as extroversion, talkative, self-esteem, self-confidence can be found in successful second language learners ( as in the case of Liyang: Crazy English).

The EndThank you!