WEEK 10

Why do we need to study the language of 2nd language learners?

helps teachers to assess procedures in the light of what they can reasonably expect to accomplish in the classroom

I buyed a bus ticket I bought a bus ticket

Which one includes more progress?

Teachers and researchers cannot read learners’ minds, so they must infer what learners know by observing what they do.

However, this observation may not be reliable. The knowledge underlying learners’ observable use of language.

sth systematic in a learner’s current lg knowledge or simply an isolated item, learned as chunk?

CAH? Are all the errors the result of transfer from

learners’ first language?

As researchers found that many aspects of learner’s lg couldn’t be explained by the CAH, they took a different approach, “error analysis”. It includes a detailed analysis of the kinds of errors 2nd lg learners make.

Error analysis differed from contrastive analysis in that :- it did not set out to predict errors. - it sought to discover and describe different kinds of errors in an effort to understand how learners process 2nd lg data.- it is based on the hypothesis that, like child lg, 2nd lg learner lg is a system in its own -right –one that is rule-governed and predictable.

What is “interlanguage”? It refers to learners’ developing 2nd lg

knowledge. It is affected by the following factors:

- previously learned languages- some characteristics of the 2nd lg- some characteristics such as the omission of function words and grammatical morphemes that seem to occur in all or most interlanguage systems

The path through lg acq is not necessarily smooth and even. Learners have bursts of progress, then seem to reach a plateau for a while before sth stimulates further progress. Selinker coined the term “fossilization” to refer to the fact that some features in a learner’s lg may stop changing.

Krashen (1977) summarized the 2nd lg grammatical morpheme sequence as:

1. –ing (progressive )2. Plural3. Copula (to be)4. Auxiliary 5. Progressive as in “he is going”6. Article7. Irregular past8. Regular past –ed9. 3rd person singular –s10.Possessive ‘s

As with 1st lg acq, researchers have not found a single simple explanation for the order.

Goldschneider & DeKeyser (2001) reviewed this research and identified a number of varibles that contribute to the order:

- salience (how easy it is to notice the morpheme)

- linguistic complexity (e.g. How many elements you have to keep track of)

- semantic transparency (how clear the meaning is)

- similarity to a 1st lg form- frequency in the input

Stage 1: “no” or “not” is placed before the verb or element being negated (No bicycle, I no like it, Not my friend)

Stage 2: “no” and “not” may alternate with “don’t”, however, “don’t” is not marked for person, number or tense. It may even be used with modals. (He don’t like it, I don’t can sing)

Stage 3: negative elements are placed after auxiliary verbs but the “don’t” form is still not fully analyzed. (You cannot go there, he was not happy, she don’t like rice)

Stage 4: “do” is marked for tense, person, and number and most interlanguage sentences appear to be just like those of the TL. (It doesn’t work, we didn’t have supper)

However, some learners continue to mark tense, person and number on both auxiliary and the verb (I didn’t went there)

Stage 1: Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments. (Dog?, Four children?)

Stage 2: Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting. (The boys throw the shoes?)

Stage 3: Fronting: do- fronting; wh- fronting, no inversion; other fronting. - Do you have a shoes on your picture?- Where the children are playing?- Does in this picture there is four astronauts?- Is the picture has two planets on top?

Stage 4: Inversion in wh- + copula; yes/no questions with other auxiliaries.◦ Where is the sun?◦ Is there a fish in the water?Stage 5: Inversion in wh- questions with both an

auxiliary and a main verb.- How do you say proche?- What’s the baby doing?Stage 6: Complex questions- Question tag: It’s better, isn’t it?- Negative question: Why can’t he go?- Embedded question: Can you tell me what the date is

today?

Stage 1: Pre-emergence: No use of “his” and “her”. Definite article or “your” used for all persons, genders and numbers. ◦ The little boy play with the bicycle.◦ He have band-aid on the arm, the leg and the

stomach.◦ This boy cry in the arm of your mother.◦ There is one girl talk with your dad.

Stage 2: Emergence: Emergence of “his” and/or “her”, with a strong performance to use only one of the forms. - The mother is dressing her little boy, and she put her clothes, her pant, her coat, and then she finish.- The girl making hisself beautiful. She put the make-up on his hand, on his head, and his father is surprise.

Stage 3: Post-emergence: Differentiated use of “his” and “her” in all contexts including natural gender and body parts. ◦ The girl fell on her bicycle. She look her father

and cry.◦ The dad put her little girl on his shoulder, and

after, on his back.

Stage 4: Error-free use of “his” and “her” in all contexts including natural gender and body parts.

The little girl with her dad play together. And the dad take hiis girl on his shoulder and he hurt his back

Accessibility hierarchy

Part of speech Relative clause

Subject The girl who was sick went home.

Direct object The story that I read was long.

Indirect object The man who(m) Susan gave the present to was happy.

Object of preposition I found the book that John was talking about.

Possessive I know the woman whose father is visiting.

Object of comparison The person that Susan is taller than is Mary.

Even though this hierarchy was not inspired by research on child language, several types of 1st lg influence have been observed in the acquisition of relative clauses:

1. For learners whose 1st lg does not have a particular cause type, it is more difficult to learn to use that type in English.

2. Where learners have a 1st lg with a substantially different way of forming relative clauses (such as Chinese & Japanese), they may avoid using relative clauses even when their interlanguage is fairly advanced.

3. 1st lg influence is seen in the errors learners make.

The research has shown that learners from different 1st lg backgrounds and acquiring a variety of 2nd lgs, acquire the lg for referring to past events in a similar pattern.

1. Learners with limited lg refer to events in order or mention a time or place to show that event occurred in the past.- My son come. He work hard in restaurant.- Vietnam. We work too hard.

2. Later, they start to attach a grammatical morpheme marking the verb for past, although it may not be the one that the TL uses for that meaning. - Me working long time. Now stop.

3. Past tense forms of irregular verbs may be used before the regular past is used reliably. - We went to school every day. We spoke Spanish.

4. After they begin marking past tense on regular verbs, learners may overgeneralize the regular –ed ending or the use of the wrong past tense form, for example, the present perfect rather than the simple past.- My sister catched a big fish.- She has lived here since fifteen years.

The 1st lg may influence learners’ interlanguage in other ways as well. The phenomenon of “avoidance” that Schachter (1974) described appeared to be caused at least in part by learners’ perception that a feature in the TL was so distant and different from their 1st lg that they prefer not to try it.

An educated adult speaker of English is believed to know at least 20000 words. Most everyday conversation requires a far smaller number, sth more like 2000 words.

Children learn thousands of words in their 1st lg with little observable effort. It is different for 2nd lg learners because:◦ They are exposed to far smaller samples of lg◦ The contexts 2nd lg learners encounter new

vocabulary may not be as helpful as those in which children learn the first 1000 or 2000 words of their 1st lg.

A factor making new vocabulary more easily learnable by 2nd lg learners is the frequency with which it is seen, heard and understood.

Nation (2001) states that a learner needs to have many meaningful encounters with a new word before it becomes firmly established in memory.

(Look at the table on page 98)

According to this table, frequency is not the only factor contributing to the vocabulary development. The presence of cognates and borrowed words can also be exploited for vocab. development.

How about false cognates?

The best source of vocabulary growth is reading for pleasure (Krashen, 1985, 1989)

Vocabulary development is more successful when learners are fully engaged in activities requiring them to attend carefully to the new words and even to use them in productive tasks. (Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001)

Effort and use of good learning strategies, such as keeping a notebook, looking words up in a dictionary, and reviewing what has been learnt were associated with better vocabulary development (Sabo & Lightbown, 1999)

refers to the study of how lg is used in context to express such things as directness, politeness, and deference.

Good knowledge of vocabulary, syntax and morphology is not enough to use lg. Learners also need skills for interpreting requests, responding politely to compliments or apologies, recognising humour, and managing conversations.

Many meanings that the same sentence can have in different situations

The same basic meaning is altered when it is expressed in different ways:◦ Give me the book◦ I wonder if you’s mind letting me have that book

when you’ve finished with it.

The study of how 2nd lg learners develop the ability to express their intentions and meaning through different speech acts (requesting, refusing, apologizing).

Stage 1: Pre-basic: Minimal lg that is incomplete and highly context-dependent.◦ Me no blue◦ SirStage 2: Formulaic: primarily memorized

routines, frequent use of imperatives * Let’s play the game * Don’t look.Stage 3: Unpacking: less use of formulas, more

productive speech and mitigation of requests. * Can you pass the pencil please? * Can you do another one for me?

Stage 4: Pragmatic expansion: more complex lg, increased use of mitigation.◦ Could I have another chocolate because my

children - I have five children.◦ Can I see it do I can copy it?

Stage 5: Fine Tuning: more refinement of the force of requests to participants, goals and contexts.

• You could put some blue tack down there.• Is there any more white?

Pronunciation was a central component in lg teaching during the audiolingual era. The basic technique is “minimal pairs”.

After the fall of audiolingualism and behaviourism, the teaching of pronunciation was minimized.

With Communicative Language Teaching, the emphasis moved from segmental to supra-segmental phonemes.

Important factors contributing to the development of pronunciation are;◦ Learner’s 1st lg◦ Amount of exposure◦ Type of exposure◦ The degree of use of the 1st lg

Decontextualized pronunciation is not enough and a combination of instruction, exposure, experience, and motivation is required.