SLA Chapter 4

Social Aspects of Interlanguage

The prevailing perspective on interlanguage is psycholinguistic. SLA has also acknowledge the importance of social factors.

3 different approaches to incorporating a social angle of the study of SLA:

1. Different ‘styles’ which learners call upon under different conditions of language use.
2. How social factors determine the input that learners use to construct their interlanguage.
3. How the social identities that learners negotiate in their interactions with native speakers shape their opportunities to speak and learn an L2.

Interlanguage as A Stylistic Continuum

Elaine Tarone è Interlanguage involves:

1. Stylistic continuum

Learners develop a capability for using the L2. This is compromised of a number of different ‘styles’ which learners access in with a variety of factors. It explains why learner language is variable and suggests that an interlanguage grammar, although different form a native speaker’s grammar, is constructed according to the same principles. It also has problems:

ü  Learners are not always most accurate in their careful style and least accurate in their vernacular style.

ü  The role of social factors remains unclear. Native speakers use a careful style with non-familiar addresses, especially if they are socially subordinate to them.

2. Careful style

Learners are consciously attending to their choice of linguistic forms. They feel the need to be ‘correct.

3. Vernacular style

Learners are making spontaneous choices of linguistic form (free conversation)

Example: Japanese learners improved their ability to use /z/ accurately in their careful style (when reading lists of words) than in their vernacular style (in free speech).

In short, Tarone’s theory relates more to psycholinguistic rather than social factors.

Another theory which is more obviously social is Howard Gile’s:

Accommodation theory

This explains how a learner’s social group influences the course of SLA. When people interact with each other they either try to make their speech similar to that of their addressee to emphasize social cohesiveness (convergence) or to make it different in order to emphasize their social distinctiveness (divergence). It’s been suggested that SLA involves ‘long-term convergence’. When social conditions are that learners are motivated to converge on native-speaker norms (speak like native speakers). Social factors, mediated through the interactions that learners take part in, influence both how quickly they learn and the actual route that they follow.

Social factors influence interlanguage development via the impact they have on the attitudes learners engage in.

The Acculturation Model of SLA

John Schumann’s acculturation model, built around the metaphor of ‘distance’. Learners fail to acculturate to the target-language (TL) group when they are unable / unwilling to adapt to a new culture. The main reason is social distance, which individual learners become members of a TL group and therefore achieve contact with them. There are 2 problems:

1. It fails to acknowledge that factors like ‘integration pattern’ and ‘attitude’ are not fixed and static but, potentially, variable and dynamic, fluctuating in with learner’s changing social experiences.
2. It fails to acknowledge that learners are not just subject to social conditions but can also the subject of them.

Social Identity and Investment in L2 Learning

Bonny Pierce è Language learners have complex social identities that can be understood in terms of power relations that shape structures. ‘Multiple and contradictory’ requires investment something learners will only make if they believe their efforts will increase the value of their ‘cultural capital’ (give them access to the knowledge that will enable them to function successfully in a variety of social contexts). SLA involves a ‘struggle’ ad ‘investment’.

Learners are not computers who battle on their efforts. Successful learners are those who reflect critically on how they engage with native speakers and who are prepared to challenge the accepted social order.

In such situations social conditions determine the extent of learners’ contact with the L2 and their commitment to learning it.

SLA Chapter 3

Interlanguage

Some researchers consider that the systematic development of learner language reflects a mental system of L2 knowledge, referred as interlanguage. The concept of interlaguage is by answering questions such as:

• What is the nature of the linguistic representations of the L2 that learners form?
• How do these representations changer over time?

We need to consider:

• behaviorist learning theory
• mentalist views of language learning.

Behaviorist Learning Theory

The dominant phsychological theory of the 1950s and 1960s. Language learning is that it involves habit formation. Habits are formed when learners respond to stimuli in the environment and have their responses reinforced so that they are remembered. Learners imitated models of correct language (i.e. stimuli) and received positive reinforcement if they were correct, and negative reinforcement if they were incorrect.

A Mentalist Theory of Language Learning

From a preoccupation with the role of:

• ‘nurture’ (how environmental factors shape learning).
• ‘nature’ ( how to innate properties of the human mind shape learning).

The theory of a mentalist of L1 acquisition in the 1960s and 1970s

1. Only human beings are capable of learning language.
2. the human mind is equipped with a faculty for learning language, referred to as a Language Acquisition Device. This is separate from the faculties responsible for other kinds of cognitive activity (logical learning).
3. This faculty is the primary determinant of language acquisition.
4. Input is needed, but only to ‘trigger’ the operation of the language acquisition device.

What is ‘interlanguage’?

The term was coined by the American linguist, Larry Selinker. The concept of interlanguage involves the following premises about L2 acquisition:

1. The learner constructs a system of abstract rules which underlies comprehension and production of the L2; viewed as ‘mental grammar’ and is referred to as an ‘interlanguage’.
2. The learner’s grammar is permeable.
3. The learner’s grammar is transational. Learners change their grammar from one time to another by adding rules, deleting rules, and restricting the whole system. This result is an interlanguage continuum.
4. Some researchers have claimed that the systems learners construct contain variable rules. They are likely to have competing rules at any one stage of development.
5. Learners employ various learning strategies to develop their interlanguages. The different kinds of errors learners produce reflect different learning strategies.
6. The learner’s grammar is likely to fossilize.

This concept offers a general account of how L2 acquisition takes place. It incorporates

• elements from linguistics theories (the notion of a ’language acquisition device’)
• elements from cognitive psychology (‘learning strategies’)

In fact, more useful for the questions is raises than the answers it provides.

• When does input work for acquisition and when does it not?
• Why do learners sometimes employ an L1 transfer strategy and sometimes an overgeneralization strategy?
• What makes learner language so variable?
• What causes learners to restructure their interlanguage?
• Why does this reconstructing result in clearly identifiable sequences of acquisition?
• Why do most learners fossilize?

A Computational Model of L2 Acquisition

It implies that the human mind functions like a computer. The learners is exposed to input, which is processed in two stages.

1. Parts of it are attended to and taken into short-term memory. These are referred to as intake.
2. Some of the intake is stored in long-term memory as L2 knowledge.

input è intake è L2 knowledge è output

We will explore this computational model by examining a number of perspectives derived from different components of the model.

SLA Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The nature of Learner Language

The main way of investigating L2 acquisition is:

1. By collecting and describing samples of learner language.
2. Focus on the kinds of errors learners make and how these errors change over time.
3. By describing the stages in the acquisition of particular grammatical features.
4. Examine the variability found in learner language.

Error and Error Analysis

There are good reasons for focusing on errors:

1. There are a conspicuous feature of learners make,  and so there will be the important question of why do learners make error.
2. To get to know what errors learners make.
3. Making error may actually help learners to learn when hey self-correct the errors they make.

1. Identifying Errors

We have to compare the sentences learners produce with what seem to be normal or ‘correct’ sentences in the target language. Identifying the exact errors that learners make is often difficult because native speakers often make slips when they are tired or under some kin of pressure to communicate. We need to distinguish mistake and error:

·         Errors reflect gaps in a learner’s knowledge, because the learner does npt know what is correct.

·         Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance; the learner is unableto perform what he or she knows.

How can we distinguish errors and mistakes?

1.  by checking the consistency of learners’ performance,
2. by asking learners to try to correct their own deviant utterances.

Ultimately, a clear distinction between an error and a mistake may not be possible.

2. Describing Errors

There are several ways of dong this:

·         to classify errors into grammatical categories

·         to try to identify general ways in whih leaners’ utterances differ from the reconstructed targer-language utterances, including:

o   Omission, i.e. leaving out an item that is required for an utterance to be considered grammatical.

o   Misinformation, i.e. using one grammatical form.

o   Misordering, i.e. putting the words in an utterance in the wrong order.

These ways can help us to diagnose learners’ learning problem of their development. The most common error type is misinformation.

3. Explaining Errors

Errors are not sustematicl many of them are also universal, but of course, not all errors are universal. Some errors are common only to learners who share the same mother tongue.

4. Error evaluation

Some errors can be considered more serious than others because they are more likely to interfere with the intelligibility of what someone says.

Some errors known as:

·         Global error        : Violate the overall structure of a sentence and for this reason may make it difficult to process.

·         Local error           : Affect only a songle constituent in the sentence (i.e. the verb) and are less likely to create any processing problems.

Developmental Patterns

1. The Early Stages of L2 Acquisition

Particularly, children undergo a silent period. They make no attempt to sy anything to begin with. They only learn language through listening or reading. They are likely to manifest two particular characteristics:

1.       Formulaic chunks which we saw in the case studies

2.       Propositional simplification

Learners d begin to learn the grammar of the L2, and so raises questions concern on:

·         Acquisition order

·         Sequence of acquisition

2. The Order of Acquisition

Researchers rank the features according to how accurately each feature is used by the learners. The problem is that the research treats acquisition as if it is  a process of accumulating linguistic structures. Acquisition is seen as analogous to building a wall, with one brick set in place before another is place on top.

3. Sequence of Acquisition

Such sequence are instructed because the reveal that the use o a correct structural form does not necessarily mean that this form has been ‘acquired’.

4. Some implications

This has implications for both SLA theory and for language teaching. A key question for both SLA and language teaching is whether the orders and sequences of acquisition can be altered though formal instruction.

Variability in Learner Language

                Variability plays an integrative part in the overall pattern of development, with learners moving though a series of stages that reflect kinds of variability.

By           : Swastika Mahatmarani                                2201410045

SLA Chapter 1

Swastika Mahatmarani

2201410045

Chapter 1

Introduction: Describing and Explaining L2 Acquisition

This has been a time of the global village and the World Wide Web when communications berween people has explanded way beyod their local speech communities, where people have had to learn a second language as a means of obtaining an education or securing employment. The meaning of ‘second language acquisition’ requires careful explanation; second can refer to:

a.       any language that is learned sinsequent to the mother tongue; thus, it can refer to the learning of a third or forth language.

b.      second is not intender to contrast with ‘foreign’, whether you are learning a language naturally as result of living in a country ehre it is spoken or learning in a classroom.

Second language acquisition is the way in which people learn a language other than their mother tongue, inside or outside of a classroom.

Goals of SLA

In what way does an SLA researcher find out the way of how learners acquire an L2? In can be by asking learners who have been successful in learning a second language of how they did it. However, learners are sometimes no aware  or cannot remember the actual learning process they engaged in. Furthermore, howdo we find out what learners actually do? The answer might be by collecting samples of leaners language (of what learners produce in speech and writing) and analyzie them carefully. These method provide evidence of:

1. What the learners know about the language they are trying to learn.
2. How learners’ knowledge develops.
3. How learner language changes over time.

We should be focus on how learners’ overall ability to communicate develops, including:

1. The pronounciation of an L2
2. How learners’ accent change over time
3. The words learners use.
4. How learners build up their vocabulary
5. The grammar of the L2 (most often).

Goals of SLA:

1. Description of L2 acquisition
2. Explanation

Factors of SLA:

1. External Factors
1. Social milieu in which learning takes place, it is the matter of to learn a language when you respect and are respected by native speakers of that language.
2. The input that learners receive. One method is a question of considerable interest.
2. Internal Factors
1. Learners possess communication strategies that can hlp them make effective use of their L2 kowledge, for instance, ‘art gallery’ is invented by ‘picture place’.
2. Why learners vary in the rate they learn an L2 and how successful they ultimately are.

Finally, the goals of SLA are:

1. To describe how L2 acquisition proceeds.
2. To explain L2 acquisition process.
3. Why some learners seem to be better at it than others.

Two Case Studies

1. A case study of an adult learner

Naturalistic learner – someone who learns the language at the dsmr time as learning to communicate in it.

2. A case study of two child learners

These case studies show us:

1. The raising of a number of important methodological Issues relatimg tp how L2 acquisition should be studied.
2. The raising issues relating to the descrition of learner language.
3. Point of some problems researchers experience in trying to explain L2 acquisition.