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• “Language is at the centre of human life. We use it to express our love or hatred, to achieve our goals and further our careers, to gain artistic satisfaction or simple pleasure. Through language we plan our lives and remember our past; we exchange ideas and experiences; we form our social and individual identities.”

(Cook 2001: 1)

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• “Some people are able to do some or all of this in more than one language. Knowing another language may mean getting a job; a chance to get educated; the ability to take a fuller part in the life of one’s own country or the opportunity to emigrate to another; an expansion of one’s literary and cultural horizons; the expression of one’s political opinions or religious beliefs. A second language affects people’s careers and possible futures, their lives and their very identities. In a world where probably more people speak two languages than one, the acquisition and use of second languages are vital to the everyday lives of millions.”

(Cook 2001: 1)

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• To provide understanding of how languages are acquired and how they are used, by focusing on the linguistic, psychological and social aspects of language acquisition.

• To aid the students in their acquisition of English and subsequent languages, by helping them to understand better the language learning process.

• To provide sound theoretical foundations for those who wish to follow the teaching career.

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• SLA is the study of the acquisition of a non-primary language, i.e. a language beyond the native language.

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• L1 - first language, native language (NL), mother tongue – the first language a child learns– all languages acquired in early childhood, i.e.

before the age of three• Can you have two L1s?

• L2 - second language– any language learned after the L1

• “L2 can refer to any language learned after learning the L1, regardless of whether it is the second, third, fourth, or fifth language” (Gass - Selinker 2001: 5),

– i.e. L3, L4, L5

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• second language acquisition - sometimes the term is used with reference to the process of acquiring an L2 in an environment in which that language is spoken, i.e. in a naturalistic setting

• foreign language learning - learning an L2 in the NL environment, in a classroom context

• target language (TL) - the (second) language that is being learned

• formal learning - classroom learning • informal learning - learning in naturalistic contexts

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• bilingualism, multilingualism - the knowledge of two or more languages

• monolingualism - the knowledge of one language only

SLA is “the process of becoming bilingual” (Sharwood Smith 1994: 3).

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• SLA is the study of the acquisition of a non-primary language, i.e. a language beyond the native language.

Some questions asked by SLA researchers:• How do learners create a new language system with only limited exposure to

a second language?• What is learned of a second language and what is not learned?• Why do most second language learners not achieve the same degree of

knowledge and proficiency in a second language as they do in their native language?

• Why do only some learners appear to achieve native-like proficiency in more than one language?

• What is the nature of the hypotheses (whether conscious or unconscious) that learners come up with regarding the rules of a second language?

1. A young child (age 2) learning German as a first language in Germany?2. A young Turkish child (age 5) learning German as a second language in

Germany.3. A Finnish boy (age 13) learning German as a foreign language in Finnish

secondary education.4. An educated Danish elderly person (age 72) learning German as a

foreign language through a self-study computer program.5. An uneducated Polish woman (age 36) learning English without formal

instruction through working as a cleaning lady in a hotel.

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• US entry into WW2 and the Cold War period created a need for effective foreign language instruction for military personnel.

• The first secret US Army foreign language school opened in 1941. The consolidation of numerous military foreign language programmes gave rise to the Defense Language Institute in 1963.

• Military funding allowed to engage leading linguists of the time (e.g. Fries, Bloomfield, Hockett) in the preparation of teaching materials. The military foreign language programmes set up new standards for foreign language teaching.

• Military funding led to the creation of a new method of foreign language teaching, the audiolingual method, sometimes called the army method or the scientific method, since it was deeply rooted in the prevalent psychological (behaviourist) and linguistic (structuralist) theories of the time. This practical focus facilitated research interest in the how and why of second language acquisition, eventually giving rise to SLA.

• SLA in its early stages was part of applied linguistics, because it applied the findings of linguistics to language teaching.

“a practice-driven discipline that addresses language-based problems in real-world contexts” (Grabe 2002: 10)

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Some time ago...Linguistics

studied the properties of language as abstract code

Applied linguisticsapplied the findings of

linguistics to practical ends (e.g. making dictionaries, preparing teaching materials)

SLAstudied the acquisition of

languages other than the first

Now...

Linguisticsstudies the properties of language as abstract code

Applied linguisticsstudies how people use language in real life

SLAstudies the acquisition of languages other than the first as well as the L1 of L2 users; studies the development of language in people who know more than one language

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Some time ago...Linguistics

studied the properties of language as abstract code

Applied linguisticsapplied the findings of linguistics

to practical ends

SLAstudied the acquisition of

languages other than the first

Now...Linguistics

studies the properties of language as abstract code

Applied linguistics*studies how people use language in real world

SLAstudies the acquisition of languages other than the first as well as the L1 of L2 users

User-friendly linguistics (Wei 2007) places the language user at the centre of its interest.

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• Linguistics informs us about the nature of language, characteristics of the languages being learned, etc.

• Psychology, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics inform us about the cognitive processes involved in language acquisition, the representation and processing of language in the brain.

• Social psychology focuses on group-related phenomena, such as identity, social motivation, social and interactional contexts of learning. Sociolinguistics emphasizes variability in learner linguistic performance.

(Saville-Troike 2006)

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(Valdes 2005: 421)

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“the field of SLA, a relatively young discipline, has been influenced in its formation by other disciplines. In turn, SLA has also exerted influence on these source disciplines. At present, some would conceptualize SLA as an independent field with its own research agenda and with a multidisciplinary focus, whereas others would conceptualize it as a subdiscipline of one source discipline or another. It is our view that because SLA has a substantial body of research and a strong research tradition, it is best thought of as an independent discipline with strong ties to other disciplines”

(Gass & Selinker 2008: 159)

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Obligatory:Gass, Susan M. - Larry Selinker. 2008. Second language acquisition. An

introductory course (2nd edition). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 1-15.Li Wei 2007. “A user-friendly linguistics”. International Journal of Applied

Linguistics 17 (1): 117-119.