Second Language Acquisition 631

Second Language Acquisition

Prof. Dr. María I. Ortiz Rosado EdD


• • 9:00- 10:30 Welcome, Emotional

preparation readiness• Introduction, Syllabus presentation• Objectives• Requirements and due dates


• What is Second Language Acquisition?

Refers both to the study of individuals and groups who are learning a language subsequent to learning their first one as young children, and to the process of learning that language. The additional language is called a second language (L2), even though it may actually be the third, fourth, or tenth to be acquired.


1. What exactly does the L2 learner come to

know?

3. Why are some learners more

successful than others?

2. How does the learner acquire this

knowledge?

To understand the process of second language acquisition, are seeking to answer three basic questions:


• What is a second language?

Is typically an official or societal dominant language needed for education, employment, and other basic purposes. It is often acquired by minority group members or immigrants who speak another language natively. In this more restricted sense, the term is contrasted with other terms.

Second Laguage Acquisition

A foreign languag

e

A library languag

e

An auxiliary languag

e

Other terms

Second Language Acquisiton

• What is a first language?

native language primary language

mother tongue


• Diversity in learning and learners.

What is learned in acquiring a second language, as well as how it is learned, is often influenced by whether the situations involves informal exposure to speakers of other languages, immersion in a setting where one needs a new language to meet basic needs, or formal instruction in school.


• ActivityDo you think that you are (or would be) a “good”

or a “poor” L2 learner? Why do you think so? Consider whether you believe that your own relative level of success as a language learner is due primarily to linguistic, psychological, or social factors (social may include type of instruction, contexts of learning, or attitudes the L1 and L2).


• Activity

List all of the languages that you can use. First classify them as L1(s) and L2(s), and then further classify the L2(s) as “second”, “foreign”, “library,” “auxiliary,” or “for special purposes.” Finally, distinguish between the ways you learned each of the languages: through informal exposure, formal instruction, or some combination of these.

Foundations of Second Language AcquisitionThe world of Second Language Acquisition

Multilingualism •Refers to the ability to use two or more language.

Bilingualism•Ability to use two languages

Monolingualism•Ability to use only one.

Foundations of Second Language AcquisitionThe world of Second Language Acquisition

• L2 users differ form monolinguals in L1 knowledge; advanced L2 users differ from monolinguals in L2 knowledge; L2 users have a different metalinguistic awareness from monolinguals; L2 users have different cognitive processes. These subtle differences consistently suggest that people with multicompetence are not simply equivalent to two monolinguals but are a unique combination.

Foundations of Second Language Acquisition

2. Children master the basic phonological and grammatical

operations in their L1 by the age of about five or six.

3. Children can understand and create novel utterances; they are not limited

to repeating what they have heard.

5. Acquisition of L1 is not simply a facet of general intelligence.

4. The is a cut-off age for L1 acquisition,

beyond which it can never be complete.

1. Children begin to learn their L1 at the same age.

The role of natural ability


• The role of social experience

Children will never acquire such language-specific knowledge unless that language is used with them and around them, and they will learn to use only the language(s) used around them, no matter what their linguistic heritage.


• American-born children of Korean or Greek ancestry will never learn the language of their grandparents if only English surrounds them, for instance, and they will find their ancestral language just as hard to learn as any other English speakers do if they attempt to learn it as an adult. Appropriate social experience, including L1 input and interaction, is thus a necessary condition for acquisition.


• L1 versus L2 learningA brief comparison of L1 and L2 learning is

divided into three phases. 1. Initial state2. Intermediate states3. Final state


• First vs. Second language development


• Frameworks for study by Second Language Acquisition


• Activity

Group 1 Linguistic

Group 2 Phonological

Group 3 Social

Second Language Acquisition The linguistics of Second Langue Acquisition

Languages are systematic

Languages are symbolic

Languages are social

The Nature of Language

The linguistics of Second Langue Acquisition

The Develo

ping System

Developing

refers…

System is a…


Developing

• Refers to something that is in progress, evolving, changing, and perhaps no standing still.

System

• Complex, and thus not easy to describe

unitydiversity

common purpose

communication

Social interaction

The Developing System

The linguistics of Second Langue AcquisitionThe Developing System

• The language learner’s developing system consists of a variety of linguistic components that interact in complex way.

Lexicon(words)

Phonology(the sound

systemMorphology(how words are formed)

Syntax(rules that govern sentence structure


• The Network of Forms and Lexical Items

interest

interesting

uninteresting

disinterest

Figure 3.1 Connections for the word interest, based on root form and meaning

The Network of Forms and Lexical Items

interestdisinterest

interesting

uninteresting

boring

bored

Connections for the word interest, based on semantic relationship.

Figure 3.3 Connections between grammatical forms among semantically related words

interestdisinterest

interesting

uninteresting

boring

bored

Figure 3.4 Connections between grammatical forms among semantically related and unrelated

words

interestdisinterest

interesting

uninteresting

boring

bored

unendingundivided

Activity

• Choose a word and make connections based on semantic relationship. You can work in pairs.

• Write a reflection essay about the class.

• Assignment Article

Day 2

• 9:00-10:30 Welcome• Emotional preparation readiness• ** Input• **What is input?• `Reading and Discussion

Input

• Is the language that a learner hears (or reads) that has some kind of communicative intent. Communicative intent mean that there is a message in the language that the learner is supposed to attend to; his or her job is to understand that message, to comprehend the meaning of the utterance or sentence.

Why input is important?

• Case of GenieAn adolescent who was rescued form an abusive family environment. For

all of her developing years, Genie was locked away in a room by herself and isolated from nearly all contact with family and other humans. She

thus receive none of the warmth, love, or environmental stimuli that any child reared in a normal home would receive, nor did she ever hear

language spoken.

Aside from the emotional and intellectual effects this isolation had on Genie, it was clear that it had a profound impact on her linguistic skills.

When found, Genie basically had no first language. Reared almost as if she were a cage animal, Genie was deprived of the input needed for linguistic

development.

Why input is important?

Raised in a situation in which there was no language directed to her, her brain had no

opportunity to work on language as is normally the case.

How do learners get linguistic data from the input

Making Form-Meaning Connections

Below are three sentences in four different languages. If you know any of the languages, do not look at those sentences; cover them up with a pencil. See if you can understand

the sentences in a language you don’t know.


German: Sylvia ist nicht nur intelligent, sondern auch fleissig.

French: Sylvia in n’est pas seulement intelligente mais aussi travailleure.

Japanese: Silvia wa ataka ga il dake zya naku, yoku bendyoo simasu.

p.30


• What were you able to comprehend?

A little?

A lot?

Nothing?


Now, without looking back, what do you remember about the following in the language that you do not know?

• Verb form(s) used• Basic word order• How negation is formed• Whether or not there is agreement between

nouns and adjectives.


• Principles for input processing:

P1. Learners process input for meaning before anything else.

P1a. Learners process content words before anything else.


• If you watch Nick at Nite” in which Lucy and Ethel get jobs working in a chocolate factory. Their job is to wrap chocolates coming down a conveyor belt. At the beginning, when the conveyor belt is going slowly, the job is easy. But when their supervisor sees that they can handle more, she yells “Speed it up.” The belt begins to move faster and faster.


• Soon ,the belt is delivering chocolates at a pace beyond Lucy’s and Ethel’s capacity to wrap them. To keep from getting fired, they end up stuffing chocolates in their dresses, hats, and pockets to hide them from their supervisor.

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm589666560/tt0043208


• Working memory resembles Lucy’s and Ethel’s efforts. If capacity is not exceeded, you are fine. But if task demands exceed what you can do, deteriorates. Your working memory simply does not have enough capacity to do much more that search for content words and even then you might not get them all at the beginning stages of learning.


• Parsing

• Refers to filling in gaps.

John flew to Miami and Mary to Chicago. Your know that Mary flew as well. She didn’t drive, ride a bike, or hop a train. What is missing after Mary is…


• In how many distinct ways can you complete it to make a sentence of four to five words?

• I have …


• One of the fundamental aspects of parsing is figuring out who did what to whom. In English we rely on word order. The man killed the lion is a different sentence form The lion killed the man. As an English speaker, when you begin to parse the first sentence, you assign a noun phrase structure that is, a noun and all the stuff that goes with it such as articles, adjectives, demonstratives and so on.

Does Anything facilitate How Learners Process Input?

• Interaction Negotiation of meaning• Confirmation checks Recast what the

learner says.The following interchange took place in a tennis

locker room. Bob is a native speaker of English and Tom is a lower level non-native speaker with Chinese as a first language.


• Bob: So where’s Dave?• Tom: He vacation• Bob: He’s on vacation?• Tom: Yeah. On vacation• Bob: Lucky guy.


• Modification This process works primarily when listening and reading materials are directly targeted toward learners.

• Simplification The comprehension burden can be eased.


• Create a dialogue

• Write an essay about Input and the class. (One page in computer and send it by email)

• Assignment (3 hours)

Day 3

• Output• What is Output?• How do learners make output?• How does skill in speaking develop?

Output

• Refers to the language that a learner produces. Is anything that emerges from something else, normally something that is purposefully produce.

• Has communicative purpose.

How do learners make output?

Output processing

• Access – refers to activating the lexical items and grammatical forms necessary to express particular meanings.

• Production strategies – mechanisms or procedures


What come before what?

• Running• Standing• Walking


• It is easy to see that a child must be able to stand before being able to walk and to walk before being able to run. The ability to perform one procedure implies the ability to perform a previous one.


In Processability Theory, six procedures exist in an implicational hierarchy.

• Lemma access: is a technical term for words.• Category procedure: The learner can not onlyl

access words but also put inflections on them (add ed to walk)


• Phrasal procedure: The learner can put inflections on words within a phrase, such as in noun-adjective agreement:

• Simplified S-procedure: exchange of information from inside the sentence to the beginning or end of the sentence. Example: I talked to my mother yesterday on the phone. Yesterday, I talked to my mother on the phone.


• S-procedure: exchange of information between internal constituents, for example, between noun phrases and verb phrases. (see page 65)

• Subordinate clause procedure: exchange information across clauses, carrying grammatical or semantic information from a main clause to an embedded or subordinate clause. (see book page 65)


Content of message is generated

Access words and forms

Use processing Procedures to

Create utterance

L1procedures

L2procedures

Developingsystem Output

Basic processes in making output

HOW DOES SKILL IN SPEAKING DEVELOP?

Skill development in speaking is similar. When we talk aboutthe speaking skill in L2 contexts, we talk about how accurate a person is and how much effort is exerted while speaking .This is called the person’s fluency. Skilled or fluent L2 speakers are faster than unskilled speakers and may also not make the same errors.

HOW DOES SKILL IN SPEAKING DEVELOP?

• Automatization has ocurred when learners have reached such levels in making output, which translates into “speaking without much conscious effort.”

See book page 70

Principles and Practice in Second Language AcquisitionFive key hypothesis about Second Language Acquisition

• See copies / group work

• Providing Input… (see article) Group work

The psychology of Second Language

Languages and the brain(see copies)

Day 4


• Learning processesPsychology provides us with two major

frameworks for the focus on learning processes:

• Information Processing (IP)• Connectionism(see copies)


• Theories regarding order of acquisition.

Processability Theory

Page 76-77 book


Differences in learning • Age• Sex• Aptitude• Motivation• (page 83-86 book)

• Lesson Plan Using Children’s Literature

• Course Evaluation

• Reflection Essay

You are #1

Thanks

Education

Second Language Acquisition 631