Second Language Acquisition(Rod Ellis,2003)

chapter 1introduction: Describing and Explaining

L2 AcquisitionBy: Rudi Setiawan (2201407090)Second Language Acquisition (103-104)

ENGLISH DEPARTMENTSTATE UNIVERSITY of SEMARANG

What is “Second Language Acquisition?”

The systematic study of how people acquire a second language (often referred to as an L2) is a fairly recent phenomenon, belonging

to the second half of the twentieth century

“L2 Acquisition” can be defined as the way in which people learn a language other than their mother

tongue, inside or outside of classroom, and “Second Language Acquisition” (SLA) as the study of this.

(Rod Ellis,2003:3)

What are the goals of SLA?

One of the the goals of SLA is the description

of L2 Acquisition. Another is

explanation; identifying the external and

internal factors that account for

why learners acquire an L2 in the way they do

- One of the external factors

is the social milieu in which learning take

place.- Another

external factor is the input that

learners receive, that is, the samples of

language to which a learner

is exposed.

Learners possess

cognitive mechanism

which enable them to extract

information about L2 from the input-to notice, for

example, that the plularity in English. Final set of internal factors explain why learners

vary in the rate they learn an L2

and how successful they

ultimate are.

The goals of SLA, then, are

to describe how L2 Acquisition

proceeds and to explain this process and why some

learners seem to better at it than others.

(Rod Ellis,2003:4-6)

Issues in the description of learners language

Learners make errors of different kinds

(Rod Ellis,2003:12)

Methodological issues

(Rod Ellis,2003:12)

•One issue to do with it is that needs to be described

•Another issue concerns what it means to say that a learner has ‘acquired’ a feature of the target language

•There is another problem in determining whether learners have ‘acquired’ a particular issues

•A thied problem in trying to measure whether ‘acquisition’ has taken place concern learners’ overuse of linguistic forms

Issues in the Explanation of L2 Acquisition

A hypothesis that L2 acquisition involves different kinds of learning.

Learners must engage both item learning and system learning.

An explanation of L2 Acquisition must account for both item and system

learning and how the two interrelate.

(Rod Ellis,2003:13-14)