Unit 2

TEORÍAS GENERALES SOBRE EL APRENDIZAJE Y LA ADQUISICIÓN

DE UNA LENGUA. INTERLENGUA. EL TRATAMIENTO DEL ERROR.

1. INTRODUCTION
2. GENERAL THEORIES ABOUT LANGUAGE LEARNING AND
ADQUISITION
Behaviourism
Cognitivism
Krahen’s theoretical model
Constructivism
3. INTERLANGUAGE
4. ERROR TREATMENT
Error vs. Mistake
Contrastive analysis
Error analysis
5. PEDAGOGICAL CONCLUSION
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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GENERAL THEORIES ON LANGUAGE LEARNING AND ACQUISITION.

INTERLANGUAGE. ERROR TREATMENT.
Good morning!! My name ... and I´m going to develop topic 2, which deals
with the general theories of language learning and acquisition of a Foreign
Language. Let me start this topic, quoting Doris Lessing´s view of learning, “That is
what learning is. You suddenly understand something you´ve understood all your life, but
in a new way”. As you all know, learning a Foreign Language is not only the the
learning of grammar and vocabulary but it also implies the knowledge of another
culture and its values that may diiffer from ours but still it broadens our minds.
This is a very important topic because it is closely related to topics 1, 3, 4, 12
and 40. All these topics have a valuable application for us, teachers of a foreign
language, within the Spanish curriculum.
I will start this topic by providing you with a brief account of the main
theories of language learning and acquisition of a Foreign Language. These main
theories are basically, Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Krashen´s Monitor Model and
Constructivism. Then, I will revise the concept of Interlanguage and the questions it
arises. Finally, you´ll see the two opposite trends on error treatment and how we,
teachers, should take it into account whithin the classroom and how to treat it in an
effective way to be overcome by our students. Finally, I will provide you with a
pedagogical conclusion and the bibliography I´ve used to develop this topic.

1. INTRODUCTION.
In spite of the numerous studies that have been made on the learning and
acquisition of a foreign language, little is known about the processes by which a
languages is acquired.
Up to the 20th century, there was not a great interest in learning languages.
But after the IIWW and due to economic and political changes the learning of
languages has become an important subject in all school curricula and in
informal education as well.
Finally, a distinction has to be made between foreign and second language.
A FOREIGN LANGUAGE refers to learning a language without purposes of

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daily communication, that is to say, the learning of a foreign language would

have a classroom status; this is the case of Spain with the English.
With SECOND LANGUAGE we refer to the use of language with purposes
of communication; for instance, the way English is used in many of the former
British colonies, like Nigeria. Although the official language of these countries
is not English, this is the language often used in politics or economy.
Let me start with the language learning theories!!!!!!!

2. GENERAL THEORIES ABOUT LANGUAGE LEARNING AND

ACQUISITION.
According to Krashen, “ACQUISITION” refers to the natural assimilation of
language through communication like we learned our L1 when we were
children, whereas “LEARNING” is the formal study of language. It is a
conscious process.
First we are going to evaluate the two main theories of language description
and afterwards we are going to explain how those theories were applied by
language learning theories.

Language Description Theories

BEHAVIOURISM and COGNITIVISM have been the 2 principal theories on
which language learning approaches have based.

Behaviourism.
It derives directly from Pavlov and Skinner’s psychological experiments with
animals and it is based on the stimulus-response sequence. This theory was
adapted by language teachers and was very popular in the 1950s, especially
through the audio-lingual method.
The main features of this theory were that the 2 nd language has to be
taught from formal instruction, and in the same way that L1 (mother tongue) is
acquired. L1 is learnt through imitation and reinforcement, so what pupils have
to do to learn a foreign language is to imitate the sounds and utterances directly
from the mother tongue using memorising drills. The habits of L2 (foreign or

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target language) are established through transfer structures and finally we

would have the L2 output.
The problems with this language description were that the interference
between the 2 languages could be either positive or negative, there was no
identifying task for the learners and no explanation of the way learners
behaved. Errors are undesirable.
We can conclude by saying that a contrastive analysis of L1 and L2 only
explains part of the target language.

Cognitivism.
The cognitive approach was first explained by Noam Chomsky, who
began to criticize the behaviourist view by saying that the results in the
experiments with animals could not be extrapolated to human beings.
The main purpose when learning a language is to acquire
communicative competence in order to be able to communicate in real
situations.
Error analysis in this case plays a central role in language teaching. We
have to accept errors as an integral part of the learning process and, in fact, it is
a very complex matter to discuss because we have to decide where the errors
come from and how important they are and because errors mean that the
learner is creating hypotheses.
Nowadays, cognitivism is the most followed language description. Now
we are going to discuss some of the language learning theories that have used
cognitivism as their starting point.

Language Learning Theories.

Although it is not clear how languages are acquired, some theories have tried to
give acceptable explanations. Here we are to pinpoint two of these theories.

Krashen’s Theoretical Model (1982)

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This theory developed by Krashen is one of the most influential in second

language teaching at present. It consists of 5 hypotheses and is based on the
natural approach.

 Acquisition-learning Hypothesis.
As I stated above, Krashen’s distinction between acquisition vs learning.
Acquisition means the subconscious use of a language for real
communication. We have an implicit knowledge of the language that is not
had by formal or traditional teaching.
Learning is the formal conscious knowledge of a language; it refers to an
explicit knowledge of rules, of being aware of those rules.
Up to now, language teaching was directed to learning and not to
acquisition. However, this has changed in the last years.

 Natural Order Hypothesis.

Grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order. This means that
some structures are acquired earlier and others later.

 Monitor Hypothesis.
Conscious learning has a very limited function in the second language
performance. This conscious learning is only used as a monitor. If we focus
our students on communication, they will not make extensive use of their
conscious knowledge of grammar, they just try to communicate and their
errors are an integral part of that communication.

 Input Hypothesis. [I + 1]
We acquire language by understanding input that is a little beyond our
level of knowledge. The question now is how students will understand
input that they have not acquired yet. The answer is context and verbal and
non-verbal strategies. Then students will understand what it is being said
although they have not acquired it yet.

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 Affective filter Hypothesis.

There are some attitudinal variables that affect the acquisition of a
language. Some of the aspects that we have to take into account when
talking about affective filter are prejudices against the target language
culture or people or the motivation that our students may have or lack.

Constructivism.
We talk about a constructivist or meaningful learning when we establish
a relation between our previous knowledge and what we are acquiring.
The meaningful learning means a constructivist action on the part of the
student. There are some conditions that must be fulfilled to achieve this
meaningful learning.
 The contents must be meaningful from 2 points of view (from
the formal and logic structure of the language and from the
students’ psychological development).
 Students must have a positive attitude.

Meaningful learning consists of 2 main features:

 It implies a comprehensive memorisation.
 It must be functional, what the student learns must be
useful to go on with new concepts and to deal with new
situations.

Traditional methods put the emphasis on the influence of teachers on

students to achieve the mastering of a language. With the meaningful learning
students themselves become the essential part of the process.
These are the facts to be taken into account:
 The student’s previous knowledge.
 Psychological processes of our students.
 Students’ attitudes and beliefs.
 Affective aspects.

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As a summary, we could say that meaningful learning allows students to

learn how to learn.
Once revised the general theories on language learning and acquisition, let´s have a look at
the concept of INTERLANGUAGE.

3. INTERLANGUAGE.
Several different names have been used to refer to this term, namely
interlingua, approximative system or transitional competence 1. We could define
it as the structured system that learners build at any point in their learning
development.
Each learner has got his/her own interlanguage. Each learner tries to
transform the knowledge of his/her own language into the structure of the
target language by means of creating new hypotheses. In general, the learners’
interlanguage roughly coincide at the same stage.
In general, the resemblance between L1 and L2 is syntactical. As far as
phonetics and phonology are concerned, most of the learners tend to be closer
to their mother tongue than to L2. At this point, we can say that the phonetic
system of L1 produces an interference with the phonetic system of L2.
Finally, and following Selinker, we must say that sometimes a foreign language
learner does not reach L2 competence. This is called fossilisation, and it is the
result of the lack of hypothesis testing beyond a certain level.

Another aspect in teaching a foreign language is how to treat errors or these transfers
between first and second language within the classroom setting!!!!!

4. ERROR TREATMENT.
The first thing we must do under this epigraph is to distinguish between
error and mistake.

1
Approximate Dialect (Nemser); Idiosyncratic Dialect (Corder); Gradual Development (Chomsky).

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 Error can be defined as the faulty internalisation of a rule. E.g.:

“goed” as the simple past form of the verb “go”. This is due to
competence. The student does not know the rule yet.
 Mistake is a slip in the performance and it is the upshot of
tiredness, stress or complexity of the task.

There is a big difference in the way behaviourism and cognitivism have

treated errors.
 For the behaviourist school, errors are made because of
interference between L1 and L2 habits. They propose a contrastive
analysis between both languages, so that we will have a list of
possible problems that can be overcome more easily. But this
contrastive analysis only explains a small part of the problems
with the target language.
 Chomsky criticised this point of view. In his opinion, errors are an
essential part of the acquisition process. Making errors can only
mean that learners try to communicate. The identification of errors
is therefore as important as their prevention. Cognitivism
developed the theory of error analysis, which has 2 functions: a
theoretical one (it has to find out the learning processes and why
the errors have been made) and a practical one (it has to provide
for remedial teaching).

It is not easy to identify the students’ errors. We have to look back at the
context to know exactly what the student wanted to say.
Once the error has been identified, the next step is to know why it has
been produced. We can have several answers, although the most typical reason
is interference between L1 and L2.
But not only interference provokes errors. Overgeneralization is another
frequent factor for errors.
Once we have identified the theoretical part of the errors, we have to
move onto the practical function. To begin with, we have to ask ourselves

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where the error comes from and how important it is in relation to the
communicative purposes.

Steps for Error Analysis

 Identification
 Description: why it has been produce. Most cases: interference or
overgeneralization.
 Explanation
 Assessment: how important is in relation to the purposes.
 Prevention or correction

But how do we teachers should actually treat errors??????

In fact, there is a considerable variation from one teacher to another, and also
the treatment of error by any one teacher may vary from one moment to the next.
Sometimes, error treatmen semms to have little immediate effect upon
student production. The teacher may correct an error made by student A to have
student B make exactly the same error five minutes later.
Some experts, Krashen among them, have deduced that this suggests that
correction is a pointless excercise. However, we should be aware that there are no
studies as yet of the long term effects of error correction.

And what about the students´attitudes to error correction?????

In the main they say they want to be corrected ( not in ESO stages¿?¿?). however,
when taken at their word, they feel uncomfortable with the resulting style of
discourse.
Teachers should respect studetns´errors, because they are part of the learning
process. But respecting does not mean taking no notice of them. Teachers should
treat only those errors that studetns are cpable of correcting, according to the state of
their interlanguage at the time of the error.
Self- repair is preferable to other repair. Teachers need to develop strategies
for overcoming avoidenace. The students need to be put in a situation where they

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are forced to use the unassimilated structure and think about the problems they may
have.
Moreover, we, teachers, should remember that students´errors are a precious
resource for the teacher, which inform her about the state of their interlanguage
stage.
In short, the teacher should relate decisions about correction to the
objectives of the lesson, and should control activities so that these activities will
help learners to avoid making further errors. This is why the identification and
evaluation phases are so important.

5. PEDAGOGICAL CONCLUSION.
In this topic I have revised the main general theories on language learning
and acquisition, the concept of interlanguage according to Selinker and the
treatment of error.
As a conclusion, let me point out that we, teachers of English as a FL,
should take into account the cognitive and constructivism theories of language
teaching. We should act as mediators between the Foreign language and the
learners, who are working on their INTERLANGUAGES. Our teaching meted
and materials must adapt to the target learners we are working with, and not
the other way round.
We should also analyse the kind of errors made by our students in order to
help them to think about them, and finally overcome them. But, how can we
make our students learn how to learn, and self- correct???? Traditionally, the
teacher has been the authority, the resourcer of all the process. Teachers should
correct everything, but it did not produce a positive outcome because the
corrections were useless for the vast majority of the students. Recent
experiments on language teaching have shown that is better if the teacher
points out the errors without correcting and asking the students to guess where
the error is and why it is an error. By giving stuents the opportunity to think
and self- correct themselves we are fostering autonomy and making them
responsible of their own learning.

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We, teachers, should also teach strategies that our students can use to
encourage them to solve tasks and make hipótesis.
Regarding errors correction, as I have said above, they are indicators of the
level or stage of their interlanguage. When our students make errors, the
teacher clarifies the error and then hands out some remedial worksheets to put
students into situations where they are forced to use the unassimilated
structure and think about the problems they may have.

As a conclusion, let me point out that we, teachers of English as a FL, should
take into account the cognitive and constructivism theories of language teaching. We
should act as mediators between the Foreign language and the learners, who are
working on their INTERLANGUAGES. Our teaching meted and materials must
adapt to the target learners we are working with, and not the other way round. We
should also analyse the kind of errors made by our students in order to help them to
think about them, and finally overcome them

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Krashen, S.D. (1982): Principles and Practices in Second Language Acquisition.
Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Corder, S.P. (1981): Error Analysis and Interlanguage. Oxford: OUP.

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