AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON THE AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON THE

ACQUISITION OF ACQUISITION OF

VIETNAMESE AS A SECOND LANGUAGE VIETNAMESE AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

BY ETHNIC MINORITY CHILDREN IN BY ETHNIC MINORITY CHILDREN IN

VIETNAMVIETNAM

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Quynh - Nguyen Thi Thanh Van

English Department - HULIS

Outline

Rationale for the Study Review of literature Research design

Rationale for the Study

Different approaches in teaching Vietnamese as a second language to ethnic minority children to cope with language barriers More empirical research for choice of suitable approaches

Insufficient knowledge of the Input-Output relationship in Second Language Acquisition The Study provides longitudinal exploration of laboratory-like settings and of complete beginners of a second language

Review of Literature

Two relevant pools of literature: Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) Second Language Acquisition (SLA)

Research on Input and Output

SLA Research on Input/Output Psycholinguistic views on ‘stages’ of

L2 input becoming output: L2 input is uptaken when the learner

attends to it (Schmidt, 2001) L2 mental representations will be

developed in learners’ mind (Bialystok, 2001)

L2 output is generated by the activation of a language processor (Kempen and Hoenkamp, 1987; Levelt, 1989)

Attention to language input

Learners learn about the things they attend to and do not learn much about the things they do not attend (Logan et al, 1996).

Gradual sequential development of L2 interlanguage: Learners cannot pay attention to all features in input at once, i.e. If they have not learned what is simple, they cannot learn what is complex

‘Teachability Hypothesis’ (Pienemann, 1989,1998, 2001): language input (through formal instruction) is only beneficial if it comes at a point when the learner is ready to benefit.

Attention to language input (Cont.)

While what learners notice may be exemplars of higher level categories and principles of the linguistic system, but not the principles or the system itself

Going beyond purely formulaic use so that one is able to use such constructions productively requires that utterances be syntactically analyzed or parsed and that the learner eventually comes to ‘know’ (implicitly) that individual words are exemplars of lexical categories.

Question at this stage: how do learners internalize the intake (uptaken input), store the information of input, and develop mental representations?

Second language mental representations in the mind

Two common questions: (1) how is L2 language represented in the mind of bilinguals? and (2) are L1 and L2 mental representations separated or integrated in a system?

Despite different and sometimes conflicting evidence in literature for the two questions, it is commonly agreed that even if the languages are forced to share space in a complex mind, they are functionally independent

Question at this stage: providing this independence between two language representations, then how can language performance proceed fluently in only one of them? - A solution = language processing model by Levelt (1989)

Levelt’s (1989) language processing model

Pienemann’s summary

In the incremental process of language generation, the following processing prerequisites are activated in the following sequence:

The lemma, The category procedure (lexical category of the

lemma), The phrasal procedure (instigated by the

category of the head), The S-procedure and the target language word

order rules, The subordinate clause procedure – if applicable.

Pienemann’s Processability Theory

language-specific processing resources have to be acquired to make the processing of the target language possible

these processing resources are interrelated in two ways: (1) They feed into each other in the temporal event of language generation, i.e. one is utilized before the other. (2) The information processed and generated in one is required in the other. In this way, these resources form a hierarchy.

Pienemann’s hypothesized hierarchical processing procedures of target language production

Research Questions

What L2 structures are provided in the L2 input for the participating children?

What of these structures emerge in the participating children’s output?

Do the target structures emerge in the children’s output in the order they are taught in the L2 input?

Do the data provide any evidence for the hierarchical development of second language?

Research Design – Participants

Two groups of eight preschool Hmong ethnic minority children selected in two neighboring satellite schools who meet the following selection criteria:

From the same class (i.e. taught by the same teacher)

Same age (5 years old) From the same community, i.e. village (or those that

have similar social, cultural and economic status) Little contact with Vietnamese speaking communities Little Vietnamese communication in the community

and family (i.e. villagers including their parents do not speak Vietnamese to them or to each other)

Data Collection

Data on L2 input- audio-recording of daily Vietnamese lessons during the academic year- teachers’ daily diaries- detailed syllabus

Data on L2 production: Fortnightly individual sessions with participants

Data organization and analysis Focus of analysis Emergence Criterion Data organisation Data interpretation

Focus of analysis

When and where the target structures are taught

When and where the target structures are first acquired or emerge in the interlanguage

Emergence Criterion (Pallotti, 2007) Emergence = acquisition ‘Emergence refers to a point in time

corresponding to the first systematic and productive use of a structure’ (Pallotti, 2007: 366)

Data organisation

All the recordings will be transcribed verbatim

Distributional tables will be constructed Exclusion criteria include

Echos of words uttered by the researcher in the proceeding 20 words, and

Immediate verbatim self-repetitions of the same word or phrase.

Data Interpretation The minimum number of four tokens for claim of

emergence Three complementary sources of evidence of

productivity: Contrastive pairs of structures, e.g. ‘cái’ versus ‘con’; Creative constructions or overgeneralisations of the

structures; Application of the structure in different types of words

or phrases (Pienemann, 2005) Chi-square will be used to test the form-function

associations in the production data A Data Research Assistant will be hired to assure

inter-rater reliability

THANK YOU!