Unit 12

The Acquisition of English

Review

What do we mean by a lingua franca?

What are bilingualism and diglossia respectively?

Major contents

13.1 Learning and acquisition 13.2 Factors in English learning 13.3 Aspects of learners’ English 13.4 Learners’ English errors

As never before, people have had to learn a second language, not just as a pleasing pastime, but often as a means of obtaining an education or securing employment.

-- Rod Ellis

I3.1 Learning and acquisition

What is, by nature, the study of English for Chinese learners?

It is the learning of a second language in a non-native or non-natural environment.

Acquisition vs. Learning

implicit, subconscious explicit, consciousinformal situations formal situationsuses grammatical 'feel' uses grammatical rulesdepends on attitude depends on aptitudestable order of acquisition simple to complex

PP. 235-236 No. 1, 2, 3

13.2 Factors in English learning

a. The input issueSecond language acquisition (SLA for short) seems impo

ssible without access to L2 input, whether in the form of exposure in natural settings or in the form of formal instruction.

Do learners benefit more from simplified input or from genuine, natural input? An influential claim regarding the input issue is the hypothesis that there must be sufficient, comprehensible input available to L2 learners, as captured by the “i+1” formula.

foreigner talk and teacher talk

P. 237 No. 5

Krashen's Five Hypotheses

- The natural order hypothesis; 'we acquire the rules of language in a predictable order'

- The Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis: 'adults have two distinctive ways of developing competences in second languages .. acquisition, that is by using language for real communication ... learning .. "knowing about" language' (Krashen & Terrell 1983)

- The Monitor Hypothesis: 'conscious learning ... can only be used as a Monitor or an editor' (Krashen & Terrell 1983)

- The Input Hypothesis: 'humans acquire language in only one way - by understanding messages or by receiving "comprehensible input"'

- The Affective Filter Hypothesis: 'a mental block, caused by affective factors ... that prevents input from reaching the language acquisition device' (Krashen, 1985, p.100)

Evidence for the Input Hypothesis (chiefly Krashen 1985)i) people speak to children acquiring their

first language in special waysii) people speak to L2 learners in special

waysiii) L2 learners often go through an initial

Silent Periodiv) the comparative success of younger

and older learners reflects provision of comprehensible input

v) the more comprehensible input the greater the L2 proficiency

vi) lack of comprehensible input delays language acquisition

vii) teaching methods work according to the extent that they usecomprehensible input

viii) immersion teaching is successful because it provides comprehensible input

ix) bilingual programs succeed to the extent they provide comprehensible input

Noticing Hypothesis Schmidt (1990) identifies three

aspects of consciousness involved in language learning: awareness, intention and knowledge. The first sense, consciousness as awareness, embraces noticing.

According to Schmidt (1995, p. 20), "the noticing hypothesis states that what learners notice in input is what becomes intake for learning."

Schmidt also states that a) whether a learner deliberately attend

s to a linguistic form in the input or it is noticed purely unintentionally, if it is noticed it becomes intake;

b) that noticing is a necessary condition for L2 acquisition. To help clarify Schmidt's hypothesis and the place of noticing in L2 acquisition the following model, proposed by Ellis, is useful.

Figure 1: The process of learning implicit knowledge Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press from SLA Research and Language

Teaching by Rod Ellis 1997

Factors that influence noticing in the input

Instruction Frequency Perceptual salience Skill level Task demands

b. The output issue Output helps language learners notic

e the gaps in their linguistic knowledge as a result of external feedback (clarification requests, modeling, overt correction, etc.) or internal feedback (monitoring) of language they have produced.

Frequency effect

Output hypothesis The originator of the comprehensible ou

tput hypothesis, Merrill Swain (Swain, 1985), does not claim that CO is responsible for all or even most of our language competence. Rather, the claim is that "sometimes, under some conditions, output facilitates second language learning in ways that are different from, or enhance, those of input" (Swain and Lapkin, 1995, p. 371).

Swain (1985, 1993) and Swain and Lapkin (1995) argued that L2 output may trigger certain cognitive processes necessary for second language learning. Swain’s proposal of the Output Hypothesis places an emphasis on language learners “noticing” the gaps in their linguistic knowledge as a result of external feedback (clarification requests, modeling, overt correction, etc.) or internal feedback (monitoring) of language they have produced. By becoming consciously aware of ones own language production, output can serve the metalinguistic function of helping to internalize linguistic forms, test hypotheses about the language, and increase control over previously internalized forms.

Interaction Hypothesis That L2 students' can develop their Sec

ond Language Acquisition (SLA) through interaction in EFL classrooms began with research in the early 1980s by Long which eventually culminated in his Interaction Hypothesis (1983; 1996). Long found that interaction in L2 learning gave rise to SLA opportunities through what he termed interactional modification (1983).

In the interactionist literature, research has found that learners test hypotheses about the target language and modify their output in response to clarification or confirmation requests by their interlocutors (Pica, Holliday, Lewis & Morgenthaler, 1989).

In his Interaction Hypothesis, Long (1996) proposed that conversational interaction promotes L2 development because interaction “connects input, internal learner capacities, particularly selective attention, and output in productive ways” (pp. 451–452). Much of the current line of interactionist research in SLA addresses the question of how interaction works to bring about L2 development, focusing on issues such as the relative developmental contributions of positive and negative evidence and enhanced salience (Leeman, 2000), together with explorations of the specific nature and contribution of different interactional features to L2 learning.

c. The motivation issue L2 learners are said to possess a sort of “so

cioaffective filter” governing how much of the input made available to them gets through to their language processing mechanisms.

Some learners, owing to their lack of (strong) motivation, are “closed” to the L2 input. Once they have obtained sufficient L2 knowledge to meet their communicative and emotional needs, they may stop learning, resulting in so-called fossilization or backsliding.

FossilizationFor most of us the acquisition of second language is less spectacular than that of L1. If we are past the age of around 7-10 years the acquisition of an L2, in marked contrast to the way we acquired our first language (L1), can turn out to be rather slow, laborious and, even in talented L2 learners, tends to stop short of native-like proficiency. This "stopping short" has been referred to as fossilization (Selinker, 1972) or incompleteness (Schachter, 1990).

Selinker(1996) [F]ossilization is the process whereby

the learner creates a cessation of interlanguage learning, thus stopping the interlanguage from developing, it is hypothesized, in a permanent way ….

The argument is that no adult can hope to ever speak a second language in such a way that s/he is indistinguishable from native speakers of that language.

d. The strategy issue The serious study of learner strategie

s dates back to the 1980s. Three types of strategies have been di

stinguished: learning strategies, production strategies, and communication strategies.

e. Other learner-related issues Age, gender, aptitude, cognitive style,

and personality

13.3 Aspects of learners’ English

receptive vocabulary (which they can only use in reading and listening)

productive vocabulary (which they can also use in writing and speaking)

declarative knowledge refers to their static knowledge of words, grammar rules, pragmatic conventions

procedural knowledge refers to their ability and facility regarding how to put such knowledge into actual use

Accuracy Complexity Fluency Idiomaticity

13.4 Learners’ English errors 1) structuralist views (prior to 1960)

Errors are evidence of bad learning and should be avoided/corrected/not allowed to occur.

2) Post-structuralist view Influenced by the idea that learning a language i

nvolves making constant hypotheses about the structure of the target language, scholars believed that errors are evidence of learners' incorrect hypotheses. Selinker (1972) put forward "interlanguage", a separate linguistic system based on the observable output which results from a learner's attempted production of a target language form". It has features of both the first and second languages but is neither. Thus errors are evidence of the learning process.

Presentation session

Chinglish

Error analysis

a. Mother tongue interference (phonological, lexical, grammatical, textual, pragmatic)

contrastive analysis: positive/negative transfer

study/learn knowledge see/open TVIf you are convenient .…He is easy/possible to make mistakes.Have you eaten? / Eat slowly.

b. Cross-association (lexical, structural)

develop /envelop I hope you to win. I hope that you would win. He assisted me to do the homework.

c. Overgeneralization and over-extension V-ed open/give d. Strategies of communicatione. Performance errors/lapse

a,b,c and d related to competence; d related to performance

Pragmatic failures

Pragmatic failure is different from performance errors. It has to do with inappropriateness in terms of social conventions, cultural differences, manner of talking, etc. It is often treated as “behaving badly” rather than “speaking badly”, hence its significance.

Pragma-linguistic failure

a. mother tongue interferencee.g. Salesgirl: What do you want? (Can I help you?)b. poor command of the target language A: Thanks a lot. B: Never mind. A: John, have you finished your homework? B: Yes, I have finished my homework.

Socio-pragmatic failurea. compliment/responseb. addressingA: (to a foreigner teacher) Teacher Mary,

where are you from?

c. taboo topicsA: (to a foreigner) How much do you earn a

month?

d. degree of formalityA: (to a close friend) Could you possibly help

me with the luggage?

Communicative competence Noam Chomsy's notion of linguistic competence:

the ability of an ideal native speaker to construct and recognize grammatical and only grammatical sentences in his language; not enough to enable him to use the language appropriately;

Dell Hymes's notion of communicative competence (1970): both the user's knowledge about his language and his knowledge about language use. e.g. what is grammatically possible, what is pragmatically appropriate, what is meaningful, what is practically feasible.

Assignments:

PP. 238-239 No. 8

PP. 245-246 No. 6

PP. 247-248 No. 7