SECOND LANGUAGE

ACQUISITION
DR. MONA SABIR
 TODAY’S CLASS

• Historical Background:
• Grammar (ancient Greeks)
• Philology

o dern • Structuralism
M
• Typology (Greenberg and the present)
Era
 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Study of ‘Grammar’
• from the Ancient Greeks, Latin
(influence even to present)

• Identification of correct/incorrect forms

• Logical, ‘beautiful’ language

i.e., prescriptive grammar

 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Study of ‘Philology’
• From late 1700s
• Interpretation of and commentary on
texts
• Mainly ancient Greek and Latin
• Over spoken/living language
 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Philology to Comparative Philology

• Franz Bopp (1791 – 1867), Jacob Grimm, August
Pott, Franz Kuhn, Max Müller, Ernst Curtius

• Origins of language as a science

• Compared Sanskrit with Greek, Latin, but also

German, French etc.
• Sanskrit as parent language for Indo-
European languages
 COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY

Example

• Sanskrit: ģanas, ģanasas, ģanasi, ģanasu, ģanasām, etc.

• Greek: génos, géneos, génei, génea, genéōn, etc.

s à ∅ between two vowels

• Latin: genus, generis, genere, genera, generum, etc.

sàr
 COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY

• Early work: purely comparative

• No claims about meaning, significance of findings

• Later work: Search for a Proto-language

• Early ideas about language change/development
 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• Philology to Structuralism
 STRUCTURALISM

• Ferdinand de Saussure
(1857-1913), Swiss
• ‘father’ of structuralism
• Course in General Linguistics (1915)
 EARLY THEORIES IN SLA

Before 1990s, explanation of SLA fell into 2 basic

periods:

1. Behaviorism (psychology) and structuralist

approaches (heavily criticized)

1. Multiple theories emerged (Ex. The Monitor Theory

of Stephen Krashen)

• Some theories remained influential while others

have faded
 BEHAVIORISM AND STRUCTURAL
LINGUISTICS

• The linguistic field was influenced by behavioral

psychology

• This influence led to the outgrowth of the ‘Army

Method’ and the ‘Audio-Lingual Method’ in the
1950s
 BEHAVIORISM

• A theory of animal and human behavior

• Only external factors are considered to explain
behavior
• Pavlov’s experiments with dogs (association)
• There is a significant role for frequency
• Classical conditioning Behavioral
conditioning
• A result of association of events, a response to
environmental stimuli and subsequent
reinforcement and punishment
• Mental process are not involved
 BEHAVIORISM AND LANGUAGE

• Language learning is seen as the acquisition of a

new behavior
• Learning consists of developing responses to
environmental stimuli
• Reinforcement and punishment (positive feedback
vs. error correction)
• Language learning is seen as similar to other kinds of
learning
• Learning of novel forms can occur through analogy
• Output has an important role
 STRUCTURALISM

• Behaviorism was closely linked to structural linguistics

• Structural linguistics presented language as based on a

discrete finite set of predictable patterns (only
descriptive)

• Language is a series of building blocks

• Blended with behaviorism= the acquisition of a discrete

set of behaviors

• A L2 learner’s task is the imitation and internalization of

these patterns
 TRANSFER
• Transfer is a construct in SLA that has direct behaviorist roots

• L2 learners make transfer errors

• Transfer happens when learners rely on L1 when producing the L2

• Contrastive Analysis determines positive and negative transfer

(interference)

• The extent of the difference between L1 and L2 is the primary source of

error

• Difference is related to difficulty

• Correct models, massive repetition, avoidance of error and consistent

feedback contribute to language learning
 ABOUT THE STRUCTURALIST-
BEHAVIORIST APPROACH
• Little empirical evidence is found for this approach

• The role of behaviorist was to describe what was directly

observable and not to explain the processes behind
them

• Their primary proof (influence of the L1)was indirect

• L1 influence does not offer an argument for this

approach

• L1 influence is far more complex

 HOW THE THEORY ADDRESSES THE
OBSERVABLE PHENOMENA OF SLA
Observation 1: Exposure to input is necessary for SLA

²Environment is the controlling factor

²Target language input is considered a stimulus for

learning

²Teachers model the correct behavior which students

imitate

²In current research, the language modeled by teachers

does not qualify as input
 HOW THE THEORY ADDRESSES THE
OBSERVABLE PHENOMENA OF SLA
Observation 2: A good deal of SLA happens
incidentally

²Language learning occurs outside of consciousness

²Mental process were not involved

²A response to external stimuli

²Deliberate efforts might facilitate the process

 HOW THE THEORY ADDRESSES THE
OBSERVABLE PHENOMENA OF SLA
Observation 5: SLL is variable in its outcome

²Learners with different L1s may experience different

outcomes

²Learners who experience different environmental

stimuli will experience different level of attainment
EVIDENCE AGAINST BEHAVIORISM
• It can explain some of the observed phenomena in a limited way

• Empirical work conducted in the 70s did not support their claims

• Error correction did not improve learners’ performance

• Teaching did not always result in learning

• Many errors predicted by CA did not occur and many that did occur
could not by explained by L1 influence

• L1 is now considered one of many factors that interacts in the learning

process; it is not simple or direct

• Errors came to be viewed as evidence of learning in progress

• Not all of the theory factors have been discarded

 THE EXPLICIT/IMPLICIT DEBATE

• The explicit/implicit debate did not exist under

behaviorism since it disregarded mental processes

• The main concern was whether behavior could be

affected by outside stimuli

• It could be argued that under behaviorism, all

learning was implicit
 THE CHALLENGE OF FIRST AND SECOND
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION RESEARCH
• 1960s & 70s witnessed rejection of structuralist- behaviorist approaches

• 1st language research discovered evidences of processes beyond

imitation and analogy

• Innateness

• Children follow an innate general timetable (fixed order)

• Children make certain kinds of errors and not the full range of
theoretically possible errors

• Language learning came to be viewed as unique, different from other

kinds of learning and is unaffected by the L1

• It was claimed that SLA is much like 1st language acquisition (Creative
Construction Hypothesis by Dulay and Burt, 1975)
 MONITOR THEORY

• One of the most influential theories in SLA

• Developed by Stephen Krashen 1970s and early

1980s

• Assumptions of this theory was built on the Creative

Construction Hypothesis

• Language learning is creative, and learners make

unconscious hypotheses based on input
 MONITOR THEORY

• Unlike behaviorism, it proposes a language-specific

model of language learning

• Connected to Chomsky's theory of language; humans

are endowed with a specific faculty for language
acquisition

• Child and SLA processes are similar

• Comprehension of meaningful messages and the

interaction of the linguistic information in those
messages with the innate language acquisition faculty
 MONITOR THEORY

• Monitor Theory consists of 5 interrelated hypotheses:

1. The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis (the central
hypothesis):

² Acquisition and learning are two separate ways of

gaining knowledge

²Knowledge that is learned may not be converted into

acquired knowledge via practice and become
available for spontaneous use (non-interface theory)

²The effect of formal instruction and feedback is

peripheral
 KNOWLEDGE INTERFACE

Epistemological Interfaces

• Non Interface Position: learned knowledge cannot

become acquired knowledge (Krashen, 1980;
Schwartz, 1993)
• Strong Interface Position: explicit knowledge can
eventually evolve into implicit knowledge and vice
versa (DeKeyser, 2003)
• Weak Interface Position: interface will occur when a
leaner is developmentally ready and only for rules
that are developmentally constrained (R. Ellis, 1997)

26
 MONITOR THEORY

2. The Monitor Hypothesis:

² Learned knowledge is not completely useful. It only
edits acquired knowledge during production (accuracy
vs. meaning)
²Not worth spending instructional time on developing it

3. The Natural Order Hypothesis:

²1st & 2nd language learners follow sequences in their
acquisition of specific forms and pass through
predictable stages in their acquisition of grammatical
structures
²These stages are independent of instructional sequences
 MONITOR THEORY

4. The Input Hypothesis:

²Humans acquire language by receiving

comprehensible input
²Comprehensible input contains a language that is
slightly beyond the current level of the learners’
internalized knowledge (i+1)
²Focuses on meaning rather than form
²Rich input + the language acquisition
faculty=successful language acquisition
 MONITOR THEORY

5. The Affective Filter Hypothesis

²Learners who are comfortable have their filters low

allowing access to comprehensible input
²Learners who are stressed out have their filters high
blocking the learners’ processing of input
²Explains variable outcome of SLA across L2 learners

Ex. Larsen-Freeman (1974) study

 HOW THE THEORY ADDRESSES THE
OBSERVABLE PHENOMENA OF SLA
• Monitor Theory can explain the following:
²Observation 1: exposure to input in necessary for SLA
²Observation 2: a good deal of SLA happens incidentally
²Observation 4: learner’s output often follows predictable
paths and stages
²Observation 5: SLL is variable in its outcome
²Observation 8: there are limits on the effect of a
learner’s first language on SLA
²Observation 9: there are limits on the effects of
instruction on SLA
²Observation 10: there are limits on the effects of output
on SLA
 THE EXPLICIT/IMPLICIT DEBATE

• Learning vs. acquisition

• The result of learning is explicit knowledge

• The result of acquisition is implicit knowledge

• Learned/explicit knowledge is of limited use

• Acquired/implicit knowledge is the source of

spontaneous communication

• Explicit knowledge cannot turn into implicit knowledge

 CRITICISM AND APPEAL OF THE
THEORY
• Few empirical studies
• Problems with the operationalization of the
constructs
• How to know the type of knowledge used
• Does not provide explanation for specific findings
(e.g., why –ing before –s)
• Difficult to determine if the filter is high or low
• Difficult to define (i) and establish (i+1)
• For many practitioners, evidence for Monitor Theory
is their own experience
Thank you and see you next class J