SLA Whole Summary-Viva

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Summary - lectures 1-12
Second Language Acquisition (Griffith University)
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Second Language Acquisition Notes

Week 1 – Introduction and Key Terms
 Some teaching/learning assumptions:

o Students learn best through spoken, not written, language
o The target language should be used in the classroom not the L1
o Grammar should not be explicitly taught
o Language should be taught as a whole rather than fragments
o Language should be presented in dialogues and texts
o Language consists of the four skills: reading, writing, listening, speaking
 Native language – the first language a child learns (mother tongue, native tongue, L1)
 Learning includes:
o Formal, planned and systematic learning (e.g. classroom-based learning)
o Informal and unstructured learning (e.g. learned in the community)
 Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is the process of learning another language (second
language; L2) after the native language has been learned
 Target language – the language being learned
 Reasons to understand SLA:
o It can help us understand the nature of language, human learning and the human
mind
o It can also be useful for language teachers and languages learners
 There is no unified or comprehensive view of how second languages are learned because it
is so complex
 Universal Grammar (UG) by Chomsky is one important theory in the field of SLA
 Important to understanding SLA is an understanding of the nature of language (phonology,
syntax, morphology, semantics, lexicon, pragmatics, discourse)
 Competence is what the speaker knows; what is knowledge of the language is hidden inside
their heads
 Performance is what the speaker does; how they use or don’t use the knowledge they have
in making utterances
 In the Nature VS Nurture debate (between Chomsky and Skinner) an important question is
asked: How much of human learning derives from innate predispositions (nature) and how
much derives from social and cultural experiences (nurture)?
 In the Modularity VS Unitary debate (between Chomsky and Piaget) there are several
possibilities that could result from a specialist language module if it exists:
o Full Access Theory - innate mechanisms continue to operate for adults
o No Access Theory – innate mechanisms cease to operate after childhood
o Partial Access Theory – innate mechanisms remain available in part
 Systematicity – Although L2 learners’ utterances may deviate from the target-norm, they still
have a system. There are developmental stages and often sets of underlying rules
 Interlanguage – This can be thought of as the language ‘in-between’ your L1 and L2, where
you use knowledge of your L1 to approximate meaning and systems in your L2

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 Creativity exists, as learners can generate original sentences that they’ve never heard before
 Formulas and rules are common in L2 learning, where the learner systematically uses pre-
fabricated chunks of language which they memorise without analysing and use to fulfil
communication purposes in early stages of learning
 Not all L2 learners will achieve the same degree of proficiency in their L2
 Fossilisation is when a learner’s L2 seems to ‘freeze’ and they do not progress any further in
their learning or improve any more in their language use. Two explanations for this include:
psycholinguistic factors and sociolinguistic factors
 Language transfer – when a learner’s performance in their L2 is influenced by their previous
languages (e.g. pronunciation, verb inflection)
 There are three main perspectives on language transfer: Behaviourist, Interlanguage
theorists, and UG
 ‘Performing’ may involve both speaking and processing incoming language data
 Input is essential for normal language learning
 Krashen believes input is ALL that is necessary for language learning
 Most theorists see language production as important for language learning too; speaking a
language can be helpful for learning it
 Behaviourism also emphasises the importance of practice
 The comprehensible output hypothesis (by Swaine) also emphasises the importance of
output
 There are three views of the language learner:
o Linguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives – concerned with modelling language
structures and processes within the mind
o Social psychological perspectives – concerned with modelling individual differences
among learners and their implications for learning success
o Sociocultural perspectives – concerned with learners as social beings and members
of social groups and networks
 Seeing the learner as a language processor (linguistic perspective):
o Aims to document universal mental processes available to all human beings for
learning and storing new information and language knowledge
o Looks at developmental stages and ultimate success
o Key controversy is the Critical Age Period
 Differences between individual learners (social psychological perspective):
o Cognitive factors – intelligence, aptitude, language learning strategies
o Affective factors – attitude, motivation, anxiety and self-confidence
 Social factors about the learner (Sociocultural perspective):
o Class
o Ethnicity
o Gender
 Is SLA theory useful? Theorists are divided about this:
o Berretta believes in ‘pure’ theory building in second language learning
o Van Lier and Rampton believe in a socially-engaged perspective
o Krashen believes in L2 teaching being guided systematically by research findings

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Week 2 – Historical Perspectives Part 1
 In the 1950’s and 1960’s there was a lot of theorising about SLL (second language learning)
to access the practical needs of teaching and find the best method for teaching. Language
teaching methods had to be justified through a theory of SLL
 Structuralism was one major theory that the pedagogy drew from. It involves:
o The idea that language systems consist of a finite number of patterns and structures
that act as models for the production of an infinite number of similarly constructed
sentences
o The belief that repetition and practice result in the formation of accurate and fluent
language habits
o Teaching the basics before encouraging learners to communicate their own
thoughts and ideas
 Another major theory was Behaviourism. This is associated with Watson, Bloomfield, Skinner
and Pavlov, and involves the following beliefs:
o Language is speech rather than writing
o Speaking consists of mimicking and analysing
o Speak is a practical reaction or response to some stimulus
o LL is like any other form of learning
o Learning is a formation of habits
o Prior learning is carried over into a new learning situation
o Behaviour is based on the notions of stimulus and response
o Learning involves making a series of connections between stimulus and response
o Through reinforcement stimulus-response will become habit
o When more complex learning is involved, teaching should be done in smaller steps
 Language Transfer – when a learner’s performance in their L2 is influenced by their previous
languages (e.g. pronunciation, verb inflection)
 The idea of language transfer relates to Behaviourism and has two main implications for
teaching: the idea of “practice makes perfect” and learning by imitating, and a focus on
structures which are believed to be difficult for learners
 Contrastive Analysis (CA) is a project which involved doing a structure-by-structure
comparison of systems of language including phonology, morphology, syntax and even
culture, in order to discover similarities and differences. The basic ideas were that:
o If LL is a habit formation, it is likely an L2 learner will revert back to habits in their L1
o Interference or facilitation
o Positive or negative transfer
o The aim to determine which ‘old habits’ from an L1 may interfere with an L2
 There are two versions of the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH):
o Strong view – most errors made by L2 learners could be accurately predicted by
comparing the native and target languages
o Weak view – begins with an analysis of learners’ recurring errors and then attempts
to account for these errors based on L1 and L2 differences (the weak version is much
more popular)

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 Problems that arose with the strong version of CAH:

o As CAH is connected to Behaviourism, when the idea of ‘structured rules’ became
more popular than ‘habits’ and the behaviourist theory fell through, so did CAH
o Errors occurred that were not predicted
o ‘Difficulty’ was said to be related to errors, however this was not always the case
o The ‘differences’ described between languages were based on formal descriptions of
linguistic units
 The role of the L1 in SLA is far more complex that the one-to-one comparison that the strong
version of CAH suggests
 Languages may differ in many ways including:
o Differentiation – where the L1 has one form but the L2 has two forms
o New category – where a category present in language X is absent in language Y
o Absent category – where a category absent in language X is present in language Y
o Coalescing – the opposite of differentiation, where the L1 has two forms but the L2
only has one form
o Correspondence – Two forms are used in roughly the same way
 Error Analysis essentially stemmed from the weak version of CAH. It is a type of linguistic
analysis that focuses on the errors that learners make. It differs from CA in that it compares
errors in both the L1 and the target language (TL). It looks at errors and retraces the source
 Steps involved in Error Analysis:
o Collect data
o Identify errors
o Classify errors
o Quantify errors
o Analyse errors
o Remediate
 Error Analysis only presents a partial explanation for errors in learner production, as a major
portion of errors could not be traced back to the L1
 Interlanguage – This can be thought of as the language ‘in-between’ your L1 and L2, where
you use knowledge of your L1 to approximate meaning and systems in your L2. It often
obeys its own rules but is systematic and dynamic, changing over time

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Week 3 – Historical Perspectives Part 2
 Some notes about the nature of interlanguage:

o System of rules and assumptions about how the TL works
o Changes over time
o L1 may influence the assumptions about the TL
o Becomes progressively more complex with more exposure to TL
o Few learners gain native-like proficiency
 Types of errors differ as a learner’s level of proficiency increases:
Level of proficiency Transfer errors Developmental errors
Beginner High Low
Intermediate Medium High
Advanced Low Low
 There were major shifts in linguistic and psychology around the 1960’s and 1970’s. For
linguistics this meant shifting from structural to generative (Chomsky) and for psychology
this meant shifting from environmental to developmental (Piaget)
 In the 1970’s people were also analysing First Language Acquisition (FLA). They found the
following characteristics:
o Children all go through similar stages when developing – Brown refers to it as
‘Consistent acquisition order’
o Children create their own system
o Correction has little value or effect
 Krashen’s Natural Order Hypothesis states that morphemes will be acquired in a similar
predictable order and correction is useless
 Another influential model from the 1970’s was by Schumann – the Pidginisation/Acquisition
Model. Schumann noticed that early interlanguages resemble pidgin languages with their
fixed word order and lack of inflection. He theorised that the closer a learner feels to the
target language speech community, the more successful their L2 learning will be
 From 1980 and onwards, SLA and SLL were becoming more autonomous fields of study, with
new links to cognitive science, neuropsychology and Sociocultural frameworks. However
some fundamental issues still prevailed:
o The role of internal mechanisms
o The role of the L1
o The role of psychological variables
o The role of social environment
o The role of input

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Week 4 – Universal Grammar and the Monitor Theory
 Linguistic research has three main questions it aims to answer:

o What constitutes knowledge of language? (describing mental representations of
language, defining what all human languages have in common, describing distinctive
characteristics of languages)
o How is knowledge of language acquired? (L1 learners VS L2 learners)
o How is knowledge of language put to use? (Performance)
 A theory of language acquisition (L1 or L2) must be constrained by the knowledge of what a
grammar consists of and a grammar of a language must be something that humans are
capable of constructing
 Nativist Theories (NT) – aim to explain acquisition by suggesting an innate biological feature
that makes learning possible
 Chomsky is a Nativist and suggests that the innate biological endowment is language-specific
(meaning there is something innate in our biology that exists solely for the purpose of
acquiring language)
 Other Nativists (such as O’Grady and Wolfe-Quintero) suggest that what is held to be innate
consists instead of general cognitive notions (i.e. the innate feature is not language-specific)
 Universal Grammar (UG) by Chomsky, is that idea that all human beings share part of the
knowledge of language. It is also referred to as the ‘common inheritance’ or the ‘black-box’
responsible for language learning or a ‘blueprint’ in the mind for language
 UG does not just relate to SLA but has had the strongest influence on SLA research
 Some evidence for an in-built language facility:
o Children go through stages
o These stages are very similar across children for a given language although rate
differs
o These stages are also very similar across languages
o Child-language is rule governed and systematic
o Children are resistant to correction
o Children’s processing capacity limits the amount of rules they can use at one time,
so they revert back to earlier hypothesis when two or more rules compete
o Child language is not linked to intelligence
o Language itself is abstract
o Children with cognitive deficits (e.g. Williams Syndrome) still acquire language
o Language seems to be separate from other areas of cognition (evidence includes SLI
(specific language impairment)
o Within language itself, different modules seem relatively independent (evidence
includes Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas)
o A specific kind of injury to the left hemisphere of the brain is linked to a specific kind
of language deficit (i.e. specific areas of the brain deal with specific aspects of
language)
 Characteristics of biologically triggered behaviour (such as language?) include:
o Behaviour occurs before it is necessary
o Appearance is not a conscious decision

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o Emergence is not triggered by external events

o Direct teaching and correction have no effect
o There is a regular sequence of milestones
o There may be a ‘critical period’
 Part of the basic claim of UG is that all human beings are endowed with a universal set of
principles and parameters which control the shape human languages can take
 Chomsky’s Government Binding Theory argues that the core of a human language must have
principles and parameters
 Principles – invariant and apply to ALL languages. They refer to the highly abstract properties
of grammar. One example of a principle is structure-dependency
 Structure-dependency – Language is organised in such as way that it crucially depends on
the structural relationships between elements in a sentence. Whenever elements in a
sentence are moved, such movement take account of the structural relationship of the
sentence (e.g. when forming questions from statements, etc)
 Parameters – limited number of options or ‘settings’ which characterise differences between
languages. Not all languages work the same way, and parameters can be thought of as
‘switches’ either on or off in a language. One example of a parameter is the Head-Parameter
 The Head-Parameter specifies the position of the head in relation to its complements within
phrases for different languages. It only has two possible settings: Head-first (English) or
Head-last (Japanese)
 UG and L1 acquisition – All phrases are made up of Specifier, Head and Complement
elements but children do not know the order of these elements. The possibilities for order
are (S-H-C), (S-C-H), and (H-C-S). There is evidence from FLA research that children have set
the order in a two-word stage (H-C) and (C-H)
 According to Chomsky, ‘Acquisition of language is in part a process of setting the switches
one way or another on the basis of the presented data, a process of fixing the values of the
parameters’
 UG and L2 acquisition – Just because the UG model is useful in FLA does not mean it will be
useful in SLA
 L1 and L2 are similar in that they go through fairly rigid stages, but there are differences:
o L2 learners are cognitively mature
o L2 learners already have knowledge of at least one other language
o L2 learners have different motivations
 There are three hypothesis as to whether or not UG is relevant to SLA:
o No Access Hypothesis – SLA does not take place under the guidance of UG, there is a
critical age period for language acquisition, and adult learners have to resort to
other learning mechanisms
o Full Access Hypothesis – The principles and parameters of UG are still available to
the adult learner and there is no critical period
o Partial Access Hypothesis – The only access to UG is via the L1, only L1-instantiated
UG remains available for L2 learners, which consists of principles which are invariant
across all languages, and only the parameters learnt with the L1. Since new
parameters cannot be learnt, learners resort to other mechanisms such as problem-
solving strategies

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 UG is a theory of language and NOT of language learning. In terms of SLA, there are
arguments supporting UG and against UG:
o For – it’s a valuable tool for linguistic analysis and a useful approach for description
and explanation
o Against – It’s an idealised view of language which focuses on some aspects of
language but not others, it also focuses on the sentence and its internal structure,
when language is a mental object, and it also focuses on competence not
performance
 UG and implications for teaching – learning is setting values for parameters and acquiring
lexical items, there is no need to teach principles, optimum input should be designed for
triggering parameter settings, teaching should emphasise vocab items and specify how they
can occur in grammatical structures
 Krashen’s Monitor Model is a general theory about language learning based on five
hypotheses:
o The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis – premise that acquisition and learning are two
separate processes. Acquisition is subconscious whereas learning is conscious (and
results in ‘knowing about’ the language)
o The Monitor Hypothesis – learning is seen as having only one function, and that is as
the ‘monitor’ or ‘editor.’ This means learning comes into play to ‘make changes’ to
an utterance after it has been produced by the ‘acquired’ system. Basically, you have
acquired competence which initiates an utterance (in charge of fluency) and the
‘monitor’ edits the utterance before it becomes output
o The Natural Order Hypothesis – the acquisition of grammar structures proceeds in a
predictable order
o The Input Hypothesis – linked to the Natural Order Hypothesis, believes that L2
learners move along the developmental continuum by receiving comprehensible
input, which is defined as input just beyond the learner’s current competence in
terms of syntactic complexity. This is basically saying ‘all you need to acquire
language is comprehensible input just above your level, and you will catch up to that
level because of the Natural Order Hypothesis’
o The Affective Filter Hypothesis – this determines how receptive a learner will be
towards comprehensible input, based on their emotional state and attitude, which
acts as a filter that either allows input to pass or partially pass, or totally blocks input
necessary to acquisition. The three main kinds of affective variation in SLA is
motivation, self-confidence and anxiety
 The Natural Approach by Krashen is a teaching approach mostly based on the Input
Hypothesis. Key features are as follows:
o Views the primary function of language as communication
o No use of L1 in instruction
o Emphasis on using comprehensible input rather than practice
o Meaningful communication rather than teaching form
o Listening and reading are encouraged
o Speaking is allowed to ‘emerge’
o Emotional preparedness for learning is optimised

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o Visual aids and written materials are used as comprehensible input

Week 5 – Cognitive Approaches to SLA Part 1
 Important question – Does innate grammar make conversation possible or does

conversation make a ‘grammar’ possible?
 If we assume grammar comes first, how do children acquire language is their input is
incomplete? Innate knowledge would have to fill in the gaps, and without the grammar you
would have no conversation
 However, we assume the conversation comes first, grammar would then be a by-product of
communication.
 Nativism – Nativist theories suggest that language is innate and we have some biological
feature that makes learning possible
 Special Nativism – Principles of UG are unique to language learning and do not function in
any other domain other than language
 General Nativism – SLA is governed by innate principles of learning which are not particular
only to language learning but may also be employed in other kinds of learning
 Property theories – concerned with modelling the nature of the language system which is to
be acquired including properties and features. SLL is seen as different from other types of
learning. The main concern is linguistic competence
 Transition theories – concerned with the mechanisms by which L2 learners progress through
the stages of their interlanguage. SLL is seen as one type of learning among many types. The
main concerns are how language is acquired, stored and what strategies learners can
employ
 There are two main cognitive theories:
o Emergentist/Constructivist – the separation between property and transition
theories is artificial and both the nature of language as well as the way it is
processed can be explained through general cognitive principles
o Processing Approaches (Connectionist) – language knowledge may be ‘special’ but
the main aim is to develop transition or processing theories that complement
property theories
 Emergentist Perspectives:
o Grammatical rules and other forms of language ‘emerge’ from language use and
experience rather than being innate or learned
o L2 learning is bottom-up (the learner uses general learning mechanisms to extract
structure patterns from the language input)
o There are two important factors – Input-related factors and Learner-related
mechanisms
 Input-related factors – researchers investigate how far particular characteristics of the input
can predict the order of acquisition. Characteristics in the input include: frequency, saliency,
redundancy, and lexical and semantic contexts in which a feature occurs. These
characteristics are compared to the L2 order of acquisition of them (they occur like X in the
input; and L2 learners learn them in Y order, so this relates how?)
 The overall idea of input-related factors challenges the ideas of ‘consistent acquisition order’
studies that were conducted in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Those studies claimed morpheme

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acquisition occurred in a predictable order, however these new studies say that morpheme
order could be dependent on a range of factors including L1, input characteristics and
individual learner differences
 A lot of research has been conducted around input-related factors, including:
o Goldschneider and DeKeyser studied oral production of morphemes in 900 children
and adult learners, particularly looking at the features of salience, semantic
complexity, morphological regularity, syntactic category and frequency and they
found that no single feature in isolation predicted learner accuracy, but all five in
combination predicted a significant proportion of accuracy scores, and they also
stress the important of salience
o Collins studied a huge corpus of spoken data containing morphemes from 11-12
year olds and found that ‘easy’ types of morphemes predicted higher success
o Luk and Shirai studied whether semantic and structural similarities between L1 and
L2 morphemes made it easier to learn them
 Competition Model – learners need to use different and sometimes competing cues in the
input (e.g. word order, case marking, agreement, intonation, etc) in order to process the
input. The Competition Model was developed to account for the different ways monolingual
speakers interact with sentences
 In SLA there is a strong tendency to adapt meaning-based strategies (as opposed to
grammar-based) which basically means learners will look at meaning as cues before looking
at grammatical components
 Learners may also first look for cues in the input that are dominant in their L1
 Learner-related factors – there is a focus on general cognitive mechanisms that are thought
to operate in SLA. Cognitive psychologists use their research to develop models of how
people process information, and they infer various mental processes based on a comparison
between the learner’s input and the output they produce
 Frequency – it is suggested that the more times features in the input are encountered, the
faster and more accurately they will be processed and learned
 Overshadowing and attention blocking – processing failures are thought to happen when
other features are more salient, or when other features have been activated or encountered
many times before in the L1. This basically means one feature may overshadow or ‘block’
another, and a learner’s sensitivity towards cues may be affected by other cues
 Connectionist or PDP (parallel distributed processing) Perspectives:
o The brain is considered a ‘recorder of statistics’
o Acquisition occurs when statistical regularities are absorbed via implicit learning and
the learners unconsciously tally up the likelihood that one form will follow another
o There is the idea that if patterns similar to human learners’ productions can be
generated by a computer that has no pre-programmed linguistic constraints, then
human learning could also be driven by computing statistical probabilities
o The brain is often likened to a computer
o The brain consists of neural networks comprising of clusters of links between
information nodes
o Learning occurs through making repeated associations which become strengthened
or weakened with use
o Learners are sensitive to regularities in the input

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o These patterns become strengthened by repeated activation or encountering

o Learning is NOT rule-governed but instead based on a construction of associative
patterns
o Connectionism is a transition theory that aims to explain how associative patterns
emerge in learners
o Specific innate language is ignored in favour of the environment
o What is ‘innate’ is simply the ability to learn, not specifically in a linguistic manner
o Frequency is highly emphasised as being important
o Language is represented in the mind as a large number of linguistic units with
varying degrees of likelihood of co-occurrence, rather than as a set of linguistic rules
for creating sentences (i.e. linguistic components have X amount of change of
occurring, and Y amount of chance of occurring together in different manners)
o Learners gradually build up their knowledge through exposure
o Eventually learners develop strong mental connections between the elements they
have learned, so that the presence of one linguistic element will activate another in
their mind
o Language is often learned in large chunks rather than single words
o Findings of Connectionist research have shown that: a learning mechanism
simulated by a computer was able to ‘learn’ what it heard as well as ‘generalise’ to
the point of over-generalising
o One criticism is that most Connectionist studies have deal with vocab and
grammatical morphemes only
 Connectionism and L1:
o Rumelhart and McClellend made a computer model for learning irregular past
tenses in English, intending on presenting the computer with novel input and
comparing it’s output to a human
o This model was based on three phases that children go through: correct production
(e.g. went, fell), overgeneralisation (e.g. goed, falled), and correct production again
(able to allow for exceptions to ‘rules’)
o The computer model produced the same U-shaped learning curve for learning
irregular verbs
 Connectionism and SLA:
o Sokolik and Smith studied the acquisition of gender in French. They taught a
computer French gender on the basis of input alone and no abstract rules. The
computer was, however, able to assign gender accurately to novel nouns on the
basis of regularities and ‘patterns’ it observed in the data
o Ellis and Schmidt studied adult acquisition of plural morphology in an artificial
language (half were regular, half were irregular). Their connectionist model
accurately mirrored human data, which demonstrates associative mechanisms are
all that is needed to explain the acquisition of plurals
 Criticism about Connectionism:
o Only controlled lab research
o Use of artificial languages or fragments of real languages
o Tends to concentrate on simple language phenomena

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o Questionable how far experimental conditions mirror real life

o Danger about possibly ignoring how different aspects of language interact
 Processing-based Perspectives:
o Focus on the processing mechanism of the human brain and how these mechanisms
operate within the context of SLA
o Asks how learners are able to process complex language
o Evidence suggests what has been learned may affect what can be processed
 Processability Theory by Pienemann
o In the beginning, L2 learners are limited by their capacity for what syntactic
information they can hold in memory during processing
o Learners will gradually develop the capacity to match grammatical information
within and across units in the linguistic material they encounter
o They will become capable matching information across more distant units
o This matching, however, presents a hierarchical and difficult processing problem
across categories
o To understand SLA, we need a theory of both grammar and processing
o Aim is to clarify how learners acquire the computational mechanisms which operate
on the linguistic knowledge they construct
o Language acquisition is the gradual acquisition of computational mechanisms or the
skills necessary for processing language
o Learners face the processing challenge where they must exchange grammatical
information across sentences and phrases (e.g. agreement) and this is called feature
unification

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Week 6 – Cognitive Approaches to SLA Part 2
 Implicit learning occurs incidentally and without awareness

 Three indicators of implicit learning include:
o Influencing actions without awareness (‘feel’ or intuition VS rules or memory)
o Used automatically
o Uses different brain systems
 Intelligence may, in some cases, interfere with implicit learning
 The Noticing Hypothesis by Schmidt
o Nothing is learned unless is has been noticed
o Noticing does not result in acquisition but it is a starting point
o In order to acquire a language feature, learners must ‘notice’ this feature in the
input
o Whether a learner needs to be aware they are ‘noticing’ a language feature in the
input in order to acquire it is still under debate
 Declarative Knowledge – Involves acquisition of isolated facts and rules (knowing THAT
language). Declarative knowledge is also referred to as ‘explicit knowledge’ or ‘conscious
knowledge’ and can be seen as ‘knowing the mechanisms involved with driving a car’
 Procedural Knowledge – Requires practice and involves processing longer units and
increasing atomization (knowing HOW or skills). It is also referred to as ‘implicit knowledge’
and can be seen as ‘knowing how to drive a car’
 Memory Systems in L2 learning

o Different memory systems are involved in learning
o Memory is central to learning
o Procedural knowledge (implicit/without awareness) uses procedural memory
o Declarative knowledge (explicit/with awareness) uses declarative memory
o Some linguists believe there is no communication between the two memory systems
o Others believe there is collaboration and competition between the two systems
 Explicit Knowledge is accessible to conscious awareness, it capable of being put into words,
tends to be used when learners feel less time pressure, is learned faster than implicit
knowledge, is learnable at any age, is stored as declarative knowledge, and is more prone to
decay over time
 The computer metaphor for memory:
o Input processes
o Information manipulation process AND/OR information storage
o Output processes
 Skill Acquisition model
o Info from environment (input)
o Processing
o Working Memory AND/OR Long Term Memory
o Behaviour
o Back to input
 Information Processing Models (IP models) – main characteristics:

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o The mind is a general purpose, symbol processing system

o Complex behaviour is composed of simpler processes which are modular
o Component processes can be studied individually of other processes
o Processes take time and predictions about reaction time are possible
o There are limits on how much can be processed at one time
 Some cognitive psychologists on IP
o Segalowitz – SLA is the building up of knowledge for automatic use of speaking and
understanding. The learner first pays attention to aspects of language (controlled
processing) and then through experience and practice, they become able to easily
process information (quicker automatic access)
o DeKeyser – SLA is ‘skill learning’ and learning starts with declarative knowledge
which becomes procedural knowledge through practice
o McLaughlin – SLL is a complex cognitive skill, and to learn a language is considered a
skill. Learning involves a shift from controlled to automatic
 Controlled Processing – Slow access, under control of attention, limited in capacity
 Automatic Processing – Quick access, requires little attention, needs little capacity
 IP involves four key ideas:
o Attention-processing – Learners have to pay attention to language aspects which
suggests there is a limit on how much information they can engage with at one time.
Through experience, information becomes easier to process and shifts to automatic
knowledge
o Skill learning – Some researchers believe SLA is ‘skill based’ and suggest that learning
starts with declarative knowledge. Through practice, this becomes procedural
knowledge. Once skills become procedural, thinking about the declarative
knowledge while trying to perform the skill disrupts the performance
o Restructuring – Sometimes changes in behaviour don’t seem explainable in terms of
building up fluency through practice, so restructuring may account for what can
appear to be sudden bursts of progress or backsliding. It may result from acquisition
of new knowledge interacting with knowledge we already had (e.g. over-generalising
based on grammar rules)
o Transfer appropriate processing – Information is considered best retrieved in
situations that are similar to those in which it was acquired.
 Pros of IP models – They highlight that SLL involves both knowledge representation and
retrieval, explain the U-shape behaviour in learning, emphasis short term memory
limitations, and show the cognitive differences between individual learners
 Cons of IP models – Many scholars disagree that knowledge must be declarative first, it’s
difficult to tell when a process is automatic, and it is also difficult to determine how much
practice is necessary to automate any given language features
 Learning Strategies are procedures undertaken by the learner and applied to learning tasks
in order to make language learning as efficient and effective as possible. There are three
main categories:
o Metacognitive Strategies – selective attention, planning and monitoring, self-
evaluation

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o Cognitive Strategies – rehearsal and organisation, summarising, deducing, using

imagery, transfer and elaboration
o Social or Affective Strategies – co-operation with peers, questioning for clarification,
self-talk

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Week 7 – Interaction in SLA
 Individual perspectives of SLL look at learning as something that is accomplished by an

individual mind who uses relatively autonomous internal mechanisms to exploit and process
input data from the environment
 Social perspectives of SLL view language learning in social terms (e.g. Sociocultural theorists)
 There are two main perspectives on L2 interaction: Psycholinguistic (individual) and
Sociolinguistic (social)
 Psycholinguistic Perspective:
o LL is an individual process
o Interaction fine-tunes the language input
o Values comprehensible input
o Involves negotiation of meaning
o Positive and Negative Feedback used to develop interlanguage
o Questions whether error correction is valuable
 Krashen’s Input Hypothesis – All the learner needs is comprehensible input. Exposure to
comprehensible input is necessary and sufficient for LL. L2 learners supposedly move along a
continuum of development simply by receiving comprehensible input, which is defined as
input just above the learner’s current competence in terms of syntactic complexity
 Long’s Interaction Hypothesis focuses on learner interaction to fully understand the nature
and usefulness of input to SLL
 Negotiation of Meaning – The more input is negotiated to increase its comprehensibility, the
greater its usefulness towards development
 Child Directed Speech (CDS) - When you try to explicitly teach or control the way a child’s
language develops. In may facilitate L1 acquisition with things such as: managing attention,
facilitating segmentation, providing positive and negative feedback, provision of correct
models, reducing processing load, encouraging conversational participation, and explicitly
teaching social routines. CDS is supported by recasting, however CDS caretakers generally do
not have teaching motivation and cross-cultural studies reveal that not all societies engage
in CDS
 Input can be turned into Intake in three stages:
o Understanding a comprehensible input form (linking form and meaning)
o Noticing a gap (a difference between this input form and the learner’s current
interlanguage approximation)
o Reappearance of the form in input with minimal frequency
 Problems with the Input Hypothesis include: very little evidence, not easily testable, ‘i+1’ is
vague, concepts of ‘understanding’ and ‘noticing the gap’ are not easily defined
 Swaine’s Comprehensible Output Hypothesis claims that L2 language production forces
learners to undertake grammatical processing and thus encourages the development of L2
syntax and morphology
 According to Swaine, learner output has three functions: noticing, hypothesis-testing,
metalinguistic (reflective) function
 The Interaction Hypothesis by Long claims that conversation and interaction promotes
comprehension of input, and that comprehensible input promotes acquisition. In addition,

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by focussing on how learners interact we can understand more about the nature and use of
input in SLL
 Foreigner Talk Discourse (FTD) – Studies show that “foreigner talk” grammar is often regular
but simplified linguistically, meaning a narrower range of vocabulary and less complex
grammar
 Task type is considered important and may be closed or open. Closed tasks are generally
focussed, have a language goal and can be concluded. Open tasks are usually more open
 Some limitations of Interaction studies include: mainly from Western educational
institutions, general descriptions of conversational repair, too much emphasis on negotiation
of meaning in FTD, not enough attention to grammatical aspects in FTD
 Long formulated a new version of the Interaction Hypothesis, claiming negative evidence
gained in interaction may contribute to development, and introducing the idea of input
becoming intake through selective attention
 Negative evidence is evidence in language production that deviates from the standard or
“correct” form, and indicates to learners their mistakes or lack of success
 CDS may involve negative input where the caretaker repeats children’s poorly formed
utterances
 Classroom studies investigate the role of explicit error correction, and show that recasts are
the more common type of error correction but are less likely to lead to immediate self-
correction from students
 A mix of positive and negative evidence may be required to ensure effective acquisition
 Negative evidence in FLA – UG theorists argue that language is not learnable from input
alone, because it provides mostly positive feedback and lacks negative feedback
 There are several different kinds of corrective feedback:
o Explicit correction – Learner is clearly told they have made an error
o Recast – Teacher reforms all or part of the learner’s utterance without errors
o Clarification Request – Learner is asked to clarify their meaning without any
indication of an error being present
o Metalinguistic Feedback – Comments, information or questions relating to the form
of the learner’s utterance
o Elicitation – The learner is prompted to reform their utterance
o Repetition – The teacher repeats the utterance including errors
 Processing capacities and degree of attention may limit a learner’s ability to transform input
into intake
 Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis outlines the differences between ‘noticing’ and ‘awareness’
 Noticing is the process of bringing some stimulus into attention and focussing on it
 Examples of visual input enhancement include: underlining, bolding, highlighting, uppercase
letters, differing fonts, differing font colours, differing font sizes
 Examples of oral input enhancement include: differing stress, differing volume, differing
intonation and pitch, differing pace, inserting pauses, repetition of morphemes
 Examples of grammar enhancement include: drawing arrows to demonstrate rules in a
comparison between languages

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Revision Week 8
 SLA is the process of acquiring any language after your first language
 SLA is important for many theoretical and practical reasons, including: understanding the
nature of language, understanding how language is represented in the mind, understanding
the way language is acquired and processed, understanding learning in general,
understanding how to best teach languages
 Internal factors are learner differences including: age, gender, culture, motivation, aptitude,
attitude, intelligence, etc
 External factors are social, environmental and interaction based
 Property Theories – Concerned with language features, view language as an object and want
to understand “what you acquire” (e.g. UG)
 Transition Theories – Concerned with how language is processed (e.g. Connectionism and
Emergentism)
 Top-Down – You learn the rules first and then apply it to the language (e.g. UG)
 Bottom-Up – Exposure comes first and you extrapolate the rules yourself
 LAD (Language Acquisition Device) Theories such as UG claim the brain is modular and there
is a module in your brain for innate learning
 General cognitive Theories believe language learning is like any other type of learning
 Some differences between FLA and SLA include: Age factors, differing end-state, and when
you learn a L2 you already have knowledge of a L1
 Linguistic Perspective include UG and the Monitor Model
 Universal Grammar by Chomsky – Main concepts:
o Poverty of the stimulus – Input is not enough to explain output
o Children come up with things they’ve never encountered in input
o Repetition is not applied
o Overgeneralising rules
o Innate principles and parameters – Principles are abstract properties of grammar
that exist in ALL language, and Parameters are the “on/off” switches that differ
between languages
o Existence of the Critical Age Period
o Focus on competence and not performance
o Positive VS Negative Evidence – Positive evidence shows you the “correct” or
possible, and Negative evidence shows you the “incorrect” or not possible
o Role of the environment in UG claims the input sets your parameters
 UG and L2 has three hypotheses:
o No Access Hypothesis – UG is not available to L2 learners and they have to rely on
other cognitive strategies to learn language
o Full Access Hypothesis – UG is fully available to L2 learners
o Partial Access Hypothesis – UG is partially available to L2 learners
 The Monitor Model by Krashen contains 5 hypotheses:
o Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis – Learning is conscious and Acquisition is
unconscious
o Monitor Hypothesis – Learning only exists as an editor for output

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o Natural Order Hypothesis – Things are acquired in a natural order and explicit
teaching or correction has no effect
o Comprehensible Input Hypothesis – All you need to acquire language is
comprehensible input, which is input that is just above the learner’s current
competence in terms of syntactic complexity
o Affective Filter Hypothesis – Your emotional state will impact on whether you
process and acquire language
 Psycholinguistic Perspectives include Behaviourism and Cognitive Theories such as IP
models, Connectionism and Interactionist Perspectives
 Behaviourism – Main concepts
o Stimulus, response and repetition creates habit formation and this is how learning
occurs
o The role of the environment is a source of linguistic input which provides feedback
on the learner’s performance, and with positive reinforcement habits are formed
o Chomsky criticizes this, claiming that children produce utterances they’ve never
heard before, which is not imitation
o Role of the L1 – L1 habits would interfere with the formation of new habits in the L2
o The CAH (Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis) proposed to account for the role of L1 in
learning a L2
 Behaviourism isn’t entirely dead, as some of its principles have re-surfaced in Connectionism
 Cognitive Theories – Main concept is that there is no reason to assume language learning
requires any specific brain structures, and language learning happens the same way as any
other type of learning. SLA requires the learner’s attention and effort, and input is not
enough for the learner unless it is noticed
 Information Processing Theories (IP Theories/Models)
o Language, like any other skill, is first acquired through intentional learning and
“declarative knowledge”
o Through practice, this “declarative knowledge” can become “procedural knowledge”
o The idea that controlled processes can become automatic processes
o Control processing takes mental effort and takes attention away from other
processes which explains why learners in early stages put so much effort into
understanding and producing language
 Important concepts in cognitive theories:
o Restructuring – Organisation of things in your brain, for example when you learn a
rule and then learn exceptions for the rule, you need to restructure it
o Long term memory – Things are already processed and understood and you just
need to access them
o Short term memory – Temporary where things are currently being processed
 Connectionist Models liken the brain to a computer and learning occurs through repeated
associations which become weaker or stronger with use
 Emergentist Perspectives believe grammatical rules emerge from use and exposure
 Main concepts of Connectionist and Emergentist Perspectives:
o There is a development of strong associations between items which are frequently
found together

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o The brain creates networks which connect words and phrases together with other
words and phrases which occur at the same time
o Connections may be strengthened or weakened with use and repeated exposure in
specific contexts
o Some studies created computer simulations of the learning of either artificial
languages or small units of real languages
o Language is represented in the mind as a very large number of linguistic units with
varying likelihood of co-occurrence
 Interactionist Perspectives:
o A great deal of language learning takes place through social interaction, partially
because the people interacting adjust their speech to make it more accessible for
the interaction
o There were studies researching children’s interactions with their caretakers and
peers, using language that was tailored to children’s linguistic and cognitive abilities
o Interactions between NS and NNS indicate considerable adjustments made in
communication to negotiate meaning through linguistic modifications and
simplifications, paraphrasing, repeating, clarifying, etc
o Interactional adjustments improve comprehension and that comprehension allows
for acquisition
 Learner Language – The language produced by L2 learners does not conform to the target
language but Corder says the errors they make are systematic and not random, and this
reflects an incomplete knowledge of the L2. Selinker suggests an “interlanguage” which is
the continuum between L1 and L2 where the learner does not yet fully comprehend the L2
so they use approximations from their L1 to understand rules
 Error Analysis – While contrastive analysis looked at L1 issues to predict issues in the L2,
Error Analysis looks at L2 errors and tries to trace their sources. Some errors in fact cannot
be attributed to L1 influence as not all L2 learners rely on their L1 as an approximation
source
 Developmental Sequences – Research found that children go through a series of predictable
stages in their FLA and that their errors are systematic and similar among learners. This is
used as evidence to support the hypothesis that language learning is based on an innate
internal process and not just imitations or environmental factors
 There are similarities across L2 learning that suggest it is at least partly governed by internal
mechanisms (Partial Access Theory). This does not mean there is no influence of L1, but the
patterns were more similar than different, where L2 learners also acquire grammatical
features in a predictable order

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Week 9 – Meaning-based Perspectives on SLA
 UG theorists believe that the nature of grammar is too complex to be learned in its entirety
from scratch by each individual, and therefore it must be innate to some extent
 Emergentist perspectives believe formal grammars can be built with general learning and
cognitive mechanisms through experience and language use
 Functionalist approaches believe language development is driven by pragmatic
communication needs. They are concerned with the role of language in actual
communication, how language is used, how L2 learners make meaning, and the
development of communicative competence
 Functionalist approaches have two main orientations:
o Form-orientated approach (form-to-function)
Begins with a form (e.g. English past tense) and follow the use of the form to
discover how it functions
o Concept/meaning orientated approach (function-to-form)
Identifies one function, concept or meaning, and investigates how it is expressed
with form
 Discourse is the context of text or speech in which an utterance occurs. To investigate
language function, we need to consider the context and discourse
 Grammaticality of a sentence relates to when it can be used. A sentence is grammatical if it
can be used in some context, but it is felicitous only if it is used in the proper context
 Pragmatics is concerned with the system underlying what makes an utterance felicitous
 Topic-Comment Structure – Sentences in a discourse can generally be divided into a topic
and a comment on the topic. The topic is what the sentence is about, and the comment is
what the sentence says about the topic. Many languages, such as Japanese, use particles to
explicitly mark topics
 Li and Thompson (1976) proposed that languages can be differentiated into two types:
o Topic Prominent languages – the sentence is usually structured with the topic first
followed by the comment (e.g. Mandarin and Japanese)
o Subject Prominent languages – the concept of “subject” is given less important,
however there are no “meaningless” subjects (e.g. “it rains”) and double subjects
are also common (e.g. “as for fish, mackerel is the best”)
 The article used in English is also determined by context. Indefinite articles (a/an) are used
with new information, and definite articles (the) are used for old information
 Many L2 researchers have concentrated on the use of language in context to see how this
language develops in L2. It is obvious there is a great deal of pragmatic knowledge involved
in language use in addition to the things which render a sentence grammatical or
ungrammatical
 Givon proposed two modes of expression where language acquisition moves along this
continuum:
o Pragmatic Mode – speakers rely heavily on contributions of context and relativity,
little reliance on structure and syntax, subject-predicate structure, fast rate of
delivery, word order governed by semantic principles, nouns used more frequently
than verbs, semantically complex verbs used, elaborate use of grammatical
morphology

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o Syntactic Mode – speakers structure sentences in a more target-like and systematic

way, topic-comment structure, slow rate of delivery, word order governed by
pragmatic principles, equal ratio of nouns and verbs, semantically simple verbs used,
grammatical morphology absent
 Informal speech conveys meaning through reliance on context (pragmatic mode)
 Formal speech rely on more elaborate language coding with reduced dependence on
context (syntactic mode)
 The general idea is that L2 learners start in pragmatic mode and move towards syntactic
mode. This suggests that topic-comment structures would be very common in the speech of
early L2 learners
 There is no reason to believe Grammatical and Pragmatic Knowledge are independent forms
of language knowledge. L2 learners have been observed to acquire the grammatical
structure without using it in the correct contexts
 It is suggested that people may move from Pragmatic to Syntactic Modes due to a need to
sound more target-like, or due to communicative needs. How people transition between
these two modes is rarely addressed, but it is suggested that Syntactic Mode is reached
when learners have enough knowledge of complex syntactic structures to make judgements
on the language
 The European Science Foundation Project
o Study looking at form-function relationship in SLA
o Participants were 40 adult immigrant learners immersed in target language without
specific instruction, recorded over a 2.5 year period, creating about 20-25 two hour
recordings for each speaker
o Aims – to describe naturalistic interlanguage development, to document
characteristics of NS-NNS communication, to identify internal and external factors
influencing rate of acquisition and overall success
o Central Idea – the basic structure of learners’ utterances derives from the desire to
refer to people or objects, and grammatical structures are the result of the
acquisition process
o Perdue and Klein (1992) found three developmental levels in the basic organisation
of learners’ utterances:
 Nominal Utterance Organisation (NUO) e.g. “one man for the window” or
“the boat away”
 Infinite Utterance Organisation (IUO) e.g. “back door stand policeman” or
“car gone”
 Finite Utterance Organisation (FUO)
o These three varieties are in fact stages during the course of development
o NUO and IUO seem closest to Pragmatic Mode
o The most important indicator of development towards FUO was the acquisition of
finiteness (e.g. gradual appearance of verb inflections)
 Parallel developments – pronoun system, cleft structures, means of subordination,
development of more complex topics
 At the advanced stage of FUO, L1 may influence the rate of success of developing beyond
the Basic Variety

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 Time Talk – study by Bardovi-Harlig concluding that IL users of any language will pass
through three successive stages when talking about time:
o Pragmatic stage – to express time, learners rely on scaffolding by interlocutors,
inference from context, contrasting events, chronological order
o Lexical stage – learners rely on temporal and locative adverbials, connectives (and,
and then), calendar references (May, Saturday), and verb lexis (start, finish)
o Morphological stage - learners start to use verb morphology (tense and aspect) as
indicators of temporality
 There are four main principles in Time Talk:
o The acquisition of morphology is slow and gradual
o Form often precedes function
o Irregular morphology precedes regular morphology
o Learners notice and use verbal suffixes to denote past meanings before using any
other means such as auxiliary verbs
 Studying spontaneous production is not always a good indicator of the actual knowledge of
L2 learners
 Basic learner variety is characterised by the small number of phrasal patterns used
 Second Language Pragmatics has had enormous developments over the last two decades.
Pragmatics is the field of studying linguistic features in relation to users of the language.
Pragmatics generally examines context-dependant aspects of meaning, communicative
intent of speakers, social relationships between interlocutors, and the speech they wish to
perform, and so on
 Sociopragmatics is the understanding of the conventions governing interaction in different
settings
 Pragmalinguistics is the linguistic means to achieve conversational goals
 Interlanguage Pragmatics is the study of learners’ use and acquisition of linguistic action
patterns in a second language. The premise of IL Pragmatics is that it is not enough just to
know the equivalent words and phrases in a L2, but learners also need to be situation-
appropriate, e.g. what can be said, where it can be said, when it can be said, and how to say
it most effectively
 The big questions are whether learners can transfer their existing L1 pragmatic competence,
and what the appropriate research methodologies are
 Pragmatic competence can be assessed through the ability to perform speech acts. Some
common speech acts include: accepting, advising, agreeing, commanding, commenting,
complaining, complimenting, demanding, greeting, insulting, inviting, ordering, questioning,
refusing, requesting, suggesting, warning, etc
 Some research methodologies for studying illocutionary acts and speech acts in IL include:
discourse completion tasks, role plays, interviews, and naturally occurring speech
(conversational analysis)
 Speech Acts can be assessed as to whether or not they are appropriate in certain contexts
 Thomas (1983) comments that pragmatic failure is the inability to understand what is meant
by what is said. Pragmatic failure can be divided into two types:
o Pragmalinguistic failure – arises due to the user’s ignorance with linguistic strategies
and conventional formulaic expressions, and thus they resort to inappropriate or
direct language transfer from the L1

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o Sociopragmatic failure – a failure that stems from the user’s unawareness of the
different Sociocultural rules and concepts of politeness, so they apply inappropriate
strategies in certain contexts
 Very little is known about how a L2 learner acquires the “rules of speaking”
 The study of IL pragmatics has focused on oral production and has paid very little attention
to written production
 Language knowledge includes sophisticated knowledge of language use (pragmatics),
aspects of which differ from language to language

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Week 10 – Sociocultural Perspectives
 In a Sociocultural perspective of SLA, language learning is viewed as social rather than

individual
 This means interaction is seen as more than just a source of input for autonomous and
internal individual learning mechanisms. Interaction is also part of the learning process
which is social and later becomes individual
 One key figure in this perspective is Lev. S. Vygotsky who wrote “Thought and Language”
(1934)
 Vygotsky’s main theory – Human activity is mediated through tools
o Mediation can be physical (e.g. axe, hammer, pencil, telescope) or symbolic (e.g.
language, ideas, modes of action
o Tools can be seen as a link between the world of the mind (mental) and the
world of objects (material world)
o The prime symbolic tool for the mediation of mental activity is language
o Vygotsky believes through language we can direct our attention to significant
features in the environment, formulate a plan, and articulate steps to be taken
in solving a problem
o Learning itself is mediated through learners’ developing use and control of
mental tools
o Learning is also seen as socially mediated, as it is dependent on face-to-face
interaction and shared processes such as joint problem solving and discussion,
with experts as well as with peers
 Regulation – a mature skilled individual is capable of self-regulation which is known as
autonomous functioning. Children who are not mature in skill learn under the guidance
of parents and teachers through a process of other-regulation. Regulation is typically
mediated through language, and children are inducted into a shared consciousness
through collaborative talk until they are able to internalise or appropriate new language
skills into their own individual consciousness. Successful learning is achieved when the
shift from collaborative inter-mental to autonomous intra-mental activity is completed
 Scaffolding – The process of supportive dialogue which directs the attention of the
learner to key features of the environment and prompts them through successive steps
of a problem. Key features:
o Recruitment of an adult, where they direct the child’s involvement in a
meaningful and culturally desirable way beyond the child’s current
understanding or control
o Assistance where the adult uses a process of “online diagnosis” to understand
the learner’s understanding and skill level and estimate the amount of support
required
o Support which is not a uniform prescription, but may vary in mode (e.g physical
gesture, verbal prompt, extensive dialogue, etc) as well as amount
o The support provided is then gradually withdrawn as control of the task is
transferred to the learner

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 The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is essentially the zone where learning can most
productively take place or what the learner can do with guidance but not alone. ZPD
may be different for individual learners, for example two children may have the same
amount of actual knowledge, but may have to travel different distances to reach their
potential knowledge
 Microgenesis – There is a genetic law of cultural development which states the same
learning principles may apply on a range of different timescales. Learning appears twice,
first on a social level and later on an individual level; first between people and then
inside the individual learner. As adults, new concepts continue to be acquired through
social interaction and this process can be traced visibly in the course of talk between
expert and novice (e.g. “I learned this because this happened”). This local,
contextualised learning process in adults is called micogenesis and is central to the
Sociocultural perspectives of SLA
 Private Speech – coined by Piaget, private speech is when people talk to themselves
aloud. According to Piaget it shows egocentrism or an inability to view the world from
another’s perspective, however Sociocultural theorists believe private speech is
evidence of a learner’s growing ability to self-regulate (e.g. when a child talks to
themselves while painting a picture)
 Inner Speech – coined by Vygotsky, inner speech is a tool of thought. While private
speech occurs verbally, inner speech occurs internally and can also be used for self-
regulation. When a learner is fully autonomous, private speech may develop into inner
speech
 Activity Theory – developed by Leontiev, activity theory is a series of proposals for
characterising the social context for learning. Learning comprises of a subject, object,
actions and operations (e.g. in a classroom, Subjects are the students, Objects are the
goals for learning, Actions are goal directed like reading or guessing, and Operations are
the way the action is carried out and can become routine/automatic)
 L2 Learning and Sociocultural Perspectives
o L2s are learned through a process of co-construction between experts and
novices
o Language learning is seen as the appropriation of a tool through the shift from
inter-mental to intra-mental processes
o Learners first need the help of experts in order to scaffold them into the next
developmental stages before they can appropriate new knowledge and skills
o L2 Learning is seen as a social process where interaction plays a centre role as a
shaper of development as well as a source of input
o Application of the ZPD to L2 learning assumes that new language knowledge is
jointly constructed through collaborative activity, which may or may not involve
formal instruction and meta-talk (depending on whether learning is naturalistic
or classroom based)
o The new language is then appropriated and internalised by the learners
o Emphasis on the importance of teacher mediation and peer-to-peer
collaboration

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o According to Well (1999) to learn in the ZPD does not necessarily require a
teacher, as people may collaborate in an activity and assist each other and learn
from the contributions of each other
 The Role of the Teacher – Vygotsky believes all development of a child’s mental life
occurs in social interaction and the teaching process is central to this as it helps create
new mental formations and develop higher processes of mental life. Teaching is seen as
a motivator in terms of development as well as playing a mediation role (e.g. error
correction where teachers aim to scaffold so that the learner corrects themselves)
 Types of scaffolding in SLA include: visual, contextual, textual, emotional, and social
 The Role of Collaborative Tasks – Vygotsky believes collaborative tasks are important as
working together results in the construction of common assumptions, procedures and
information. In child/child collaborative tasks, each child uses speech as a tool to guide
their partner and in turn to be guided by their partner’s speech. Exposure to this kind of
social regulation can lead to children mastering difficult problems collaboratively that
they could not do individually and can also help to develop their own set of tools to
master problems on their own in the future
 Activity Theory in SLA
o Some researchers argue for the distinctive nature of individual interactions as
experienced by the participants
o Personal goals may vary while the tasks remain the same
o Student goals are critical in influencing the nature of the activity experienced
o Learners may approach a conversation task with a personal goal of achieving
accurate performance, even if the task was designed to test fluency
o Learner goals may differ from task goals
 The use of private speech among L2 learners has been documented. Private speech gives
insight as to how language mediates and regulates thought processes
 In both L1 and L2, learners may impose order on a task by speaking and identifying the
task with private speech. This may help to manage ongoing learning activities
 Languaging is the use of L1 private speech to monitor and scaffold L2 production
 Differences between Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Vygotsky’s ZPD
o i+1 – essentially believes comprehensible input is all that is needed, the input
must be a structure a bit beyond the learner’s current internalised stage, relies
on the learner’s LAD, no teacher involvement
o ZPD – essentially believes there is a gap between actual knowledge and
potential knowledge which relies on adult guidance, involves maturation,
teacher/adult involvement
 Differences between the Interaction Hypothesis and Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
o Interaction Hypothesis – Interaction needs to be modified through negotiation
of meaning, emphasis on the individual cognitive processes in the mind of the
learner, input taken from interactions seems to be more important
o Sociocultural Theory – Language acquisition takes place in the interactions of a
learner and interlocutor, greater importance is attached to conversations as
learning occurs and development is shaped through social interaction
 Evaluation of Sociocultural Theory
o Relatively new theory

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o Range of constructs that address a range of aspects (e.g. private speech, activity
theory, scaffolding, regulation)
o Mainly involves small scale studies which have methodological strengths and
weaknesses
o Few causal relationships have been identified
o Communication seen as central to the joint construction of knowledge which is
first developed inter-mentally and then internalised by the individual and
becomes intra-mental
o View of the mature of language not offered
o Typically deals with form-focussed instruction
o Assumes general learning mechanisms will apply to language learning
o Does scaffolding lead to faster learning?
o What counts as learning?

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Week 11 – Sociolinguistic Perspectives
 Sociolinguistics is the study of language in use. It is a social rather than individual view of SLA
which sees learning as collaborative, language knowledge as socially constructed, and
language and culture as interdependent
 Research in Sociolinguistics in SLA involves two main strands:
o Describing L2 use in its social and cultural contexts. This includes socially influenced
language patterns and structures that may occur (e.g. ethnography of L2
communication, variation in L2 use)
o Explaining L2 learning and development (e.g. Pidginisation, Acculturation, Second
Language Socialisation, Communities of Practice)
 The ethnography of L2 Communication studies the social roles of language and helps to form
identities of individuals and the culture of communities and societies.
o It involves a study of the characteristics of speech events, mainly focussing on
structures and routines used between NS and NNS (e.g. phone conversations,
service encounters, job interviews)
o Main areas of study include contexts where participants may be struggling to
communicate in L2 or in cross-linguistic/cross-cultural settings (e.g. L2 classroom,
migrant workers, international business)
o There are four key themes: power relations in L2 communication, change in cultural
expectations, social identity and the idea of “face,” and affect and emotion in L2 use
o Implications – Comments on understanding and brings attention to linguistic issues,
shows relationships in NS-NNS interactions, addresses sensitivity management of
issues of “face,” raises awareness of issues in general, gives rise to the idea of
Communicative Competence
 Communicative Competence is the ability to participate accurately and appropriately in
relevant speech events. Most models of CC include:
o Linguistic Competence – knowledge of the language such as phonemes, grammar
rules, etc (being accurate)
o Pragmatic Competence – knowledge of what constitutes appropriate linguistic
behaviour in a given situation (being appropriate)
o CC is generally accepted as the broad eventual target of L2 learning
 Variation in L2 use – Variation is when learners commonly produce different versions of
particular constructions which are close to the target form within a short time span (e.g.
using both “no+Verb” and “don’t+Verb”)
o These two differing patterns may be used simultaneously over an extended period
of time
o Variability is a basic characteristic of interlanguage that needs explanation
o Some researchers have linked variability to linguistic context, psychological
processing factors, social context, and language function
o Explanations for external variability may include: style and task-based variation,
gender-based variation, interlocutor

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o Explanations for internal variability may include: linguistic markedness, language

change, universal developmental constraints, L1 transfer or degree of planning or
processing factors
 Schumann (1978) sought to account for the social factors in learning and his study focussed
on L2 acquisition by immigrants. Two main concepts are linked with his study:
o Pidginisation – concerned with the study of languages in contact, a group
phenomenon
o Acculturation – concerned with individuals adapting to a new culture
 Pidgin Language features:
o No native speakers
o Result of a contact between two or more languages
o Not mutually intelligible with their source languages
o Usually draw most of their lexicon from one source language (referred to as the
lexifer)
o Have simplified grammars
o Have systematic grammars
o Tend to have simple phonological systems
o May have small vocabularies which cover a wide semantic range
 Schumann’s Study
o 6 native speakers of Spanish acquiring English untutored
o Interest in development sequences in negation and question formation, etc
o Alberto did not seem to progress. His IQ didn’t seem to be the problem, and neither
did age because the other learners were progressing
o Alberto’s speech showed pidgin-like characteristics
o Schumann’s Pidginisation Hypothesis – “the speech of the SL learner will be
restricted to the communication function if the learner is socially and/or
psychologically distant from the speakers of the target language”
o Pidgin and early L2 interlanguage systems both lack verb inflection
o Schumann argues that “Pidginisation may be a universal first stage in SLA”
 Acculturation is the process of becoming adapted to a new culture. Movement beyond the
Pidginisation stage to acquire the L2 depends on the degree to which a learner acculturates
to the target language group
o Schumann’s Acculturation Model seeks to explain difference in learners’ rates of
development as well as their ultimate level of achievement in terms of the extent to
which they adapt to the target culture
o Social Distance – The extent to which learners become members of the target
language group (a group dimension). It is concerned with power relations between
the two language groups
o Psychological Distance – The extent to which learners are comfortable with the
learning task (a personal dimension). It is mostly concerned with affective factors
and motivation
 Schumann’s proposals about Pidginisation and Acculturation are important because he tries
to explain the differential success of L2 learners, however subsequent research has not

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provided sufficient support because of the important differences between early

interlanguage and pidgin languages (e.g. different syntactic features)
 Second Language Socialisation is based on anthropological linguistics. The main beliefs
include:
o Language and culture are not separable but are acquired together and provide
support for the development of each other
o Language and culture and interdependent
o Linguistic knowledge is embedded in Sociocultural knowledge
o You cannot separate the study of language acquisition from the social context in
which it occurs
 Socialisation is the process of internalisation through which humans become members of
particular cultures
o Children come to internalise and gain performance competence through their
participation in an interactional display of expected ways of thinking, feeling and
acting
o Primary socialisation takes place during childhood with family
o Secondary socialisation to specialised forms and uses of language takes place in
schools, community and work settings
o Socialisation occurs through language, and socialisation can occur for the use of
language
o Children and other novices in society acquire knowledge of social order and systems
through exposure to and participation in language-mediation interactions
o Many features of discourse carry Sociocultural information such as phonological and
morpho-syntactic constructions, lexicon, speech acts, and so on
o Part of the meaning of grammatical and conversational structures is Sociocultural as
well. These structures are socially organised and so they carry information
concerning social order
o Language use is a major tool for conveying Sociocultural knowledge and a powerful
medium of socialisation
 Language learning as socialisation – to view language learning as language socialisation
suggests that cultural, pragmatic and other forms of learning happen alongside language
acquisition. While learning a language, the learner learns how to participate in the worldly
experiences as social and cultural beings. Thus, the learning of a second or foreign language
is re-socialisation for the learner into a world mediated through and created in the target
language
 Foreign Language Learning as re-socialisation – Learners are established in their L1
socialisation, and are challenged with L2 socialisation. They must learn to establish and
negotiate relationships with culturally diverse groups in the target language, and must also
represent themselves in the target language
 Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern or passion for something
they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly (Lave and Wegner, 1991)
o Another definition of CoP is a group of people who come together around mutual
engagement in some common behaviour
o In the course of their joint activity around that endeavour, practices emerge

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o A CoP is different from the traditional idea of community as it is defined by its

membership and its practice
o There are three types of CoP – Domain, Community, Practice
o CoPs are focussed on a domain of knowledge and over time accumulate expertise in
this domain
o They develop their shared practices by interacting around problems, solutions and
insights, and building on a common store of knowledge
o L2 socialisation researches view the classroom as a CoP
o Other examples include: migrants in the workforce, all levels of schooling,
international university students
 Evaluation of Sociolinguistic Perspective on SLA
o Strengths – detailed descriptions, good account of cross-cultural L2 communication,
exploring speech events holistically, focus on language and social/cultural context
o Weaknesses – Does not address the nature of L2 grammar or lexicon, and does not
address L1/L2 development

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Week 12 – Individual Learner Differences
 While all children with normal facilities under normal circumstances will master their mother
tongue, for second language learners language mastery is often not the outcome. A much
broader range of proficiency levels is achieved
 This is because success in SLA depends on a variety of factors (e.g. age, quality/quantity of
input, context, etc)
 Individual differences are psychological traits which are relatively stable within a single
individual but vary across individuals. They have been categorised in many different ways.
Several categories are consistent across all three studies, however some are inconsistent
 Some individual differences may include:
o Intelligence
o Motivation
o Anxiety
o Aptitude
o Working Memory
o Age
o Personality
o Learning Styles
o Willingness to Communicate
o Learner beliefs
 Dornyei (2005) says individual differences are generally stable within individuals but some
can be manipulated (e.g. motivation, learning strategies, beliefs) while others are more or
less fixed (e.g. aptitude, personality)
 Teachers and learners need to acknowledge and better understand the influences these
individual differences may have in the classroom
 Research on learners characteristics aims to establish correlations between a particular
factor and proficiency levels. However it is difficult as it is not possible to directly measure
qualities such as aptitude and motivation, language proficiency is also hard to measure,
causal relationships may not be easy to identify or interpret, and learners can only report
their approach to learning in relation to specific learning activities they are engaged in
 Much of the research relies on quantitative methods of data collection (e.g. surveys) but
some qualitative methods include observations, self-reports and diaries
 There are several different definitions of Motivation, however the more prominent says
motivation is the extent to which the individual strives to learn the language because of a
desire to do so and the satisfaction experienced in this activity (Gardner)
o Dornyei (2005) also says motivation is the stimulus that drives learners to initiate
and sustain the L2 learning process
o Motivation is one of the most thoroughly researched areas of individual differences
o Most researchers consider motivation to be the most important factor
o Teachers are concerned with how to increase learner motivation
o Motivation to learn a L2 is considered very different from motivation to learn other
subjects
 Gardner and Lambert (1959) define two different types of motivation:

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o Integrative Motivation – motivation to learn the language for your own personal
goals such as identifying with the ethnolinguistic group
o Instrumental Motivation – motivation to learn the language for a purpose such as
furthering your career, improving social status, meeting an educational requirement,
etc
 Gardner and Lambert (1959) believe Integrative Motivation is a better predictor of
achievement than Instrumental Motivation, however many studies show mixed results and
their model is too static. Learners’ orientations and goals change over time
 Since the 1990’s research on Motivation has entered a new approach where motivation is
seen as dynamic, fluid and changing. Even within a single class or activity, motivation may
increase or decrease
 Dornyei (2005) created a process-orientated model of motivation that consists of three
phases:
o Choice motivation – getting started and setting goals
o Executive motivation – carrying out necessary tasks to maintain motivation
o Motivation retrospection – appraisal of and reaction to learners’ performance
 Extrinsic Motivated behaviours are actions carried out to achieve some kind of instrumental
aim. They may come from external sources such as your boss or your parents. They are
influenced by three types of regulation:
o External regulation (benefits and costs)
o Introjected regulation (pressure that individuals take on)
o Identified regulation (personal relevant reasons)
 Intrinsic Motivation is the motivation to engage in an action or activity because it is
enjoyable to do so. Intrinsically motivated learners are more self-directed and self-regulated.
Intrinsic Motivation is influenced by three things that could be gained:
o Knowledge
o Accomplishment
o Stimulation
 Ten general commandments for motivating students include: setting a good example by
being a motivated teacher, creating a pleasant classroom atmosphere, presenting tasks
properly, developing good relationships with students, increasing students linguistic self-
confidence, making classes interesting, promoting autonomy, personalising the learning
process, increasing student’s goal-orientatedness, and familiarising students with target
language culture
 Attitude - Learners may have different attitudes towards language, teaching methods and
target language speakers. Some studies suggest a positive attitude towards the target
language may result in success
 Willingness to Communicate – This is related to motivation and is relatively new to this area
of research. It is defined as a predisposition towards talkativeness that learners may have in
the classroom and potentially outside the classroom. Willingness to communicate also
addresses multiple dimensions of the learners’ experiences, including psychological,
linguistic, educational, and communicative
 Most researchers in this area have shown that a variety of factors, rather than a single
factor, appear to work together to influence WTC in class. These include: personality, self-
confidence, emotion, L2 proficiency, reliance on L1, topic, task type, etc

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 Learning Strategies are strategies that a learner applies either directly to the language or to
themselves, in attempt to make language learning easier and more effective (includes
indirect and direct strategies). Some categories (according to Dornyei and Skehan, 2003)
include:
o Cognitive – involving use of the brain to manipulate L2 input in order to better retain
it (e.g. memorisation, repetition, visualisation)
o Metacognitive – involving use of higher order thinking to plan, monitor, organise
and evaluate learning (e.g. planning to use certain techniques and then evaluating
those techniques)
o Social – activities in which learners seek out others to help them in their learning
(e.g. conversing with native speakers)
o Affective – involving managing emotional factors in order to facilitate learning (e.g.
relaxing, breathing, rewarding yourself)
 Learning Styles – Learners tend to have preferred learning styles, but are still flexible. Each
learning style has advantages and disadvantages. Some dimensions include:
o Cognitive – relating to the preferred patterns of mental functioning
o Executive – concerning the degree to which a person seeks order, organisation and
closure, and manages their own learning process
o Affective – concerning values, beliefs and attitudes that influence what a learner
pays attention to in a learning situation
o Social – concerning the preferred extent of involvement with other people while
learning
o Psychological – concerning a person’s sensory and perceptual tendencies
o Behavioural – concerning the extent to which someone actively seeks to satisfy their
learning preferences
 Personality – Those characteristics of a person that account for consistent patterns of
feeling, thinking and behaving. Personality is comparatively stable but very difficult to
measure or draw general conclusions about
 The Big Five Personality Traits (Goldberg, 1993) OCEAN
o Openness (curious, original, intellectual, creative, open to new things)
o Conscientiousness (organised, systematic, punctual, dependable)
o Extraversion (outgoing, talkative, sociable)
o Agreeableness (tolerant, sensitive, trusting, kind, warm)
o Neuroticism (anxious, irritable, temperamental, moody)
 Anxiety is defined as the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and
worry. Anxiety can play an important role in the SLA process as it may interfere with
learning. There are two different types of anxiety:
o Trait Anxiety – a more permanent predisposition to be anxious
o State Anxiety – a type of anxiety experienced in relation to a particular event, or a
specific temporary context
 Overall, research on personality has failed to demonstrate a clear relationship between
personality and language learning, possibly due to effects of personality being situation-
dependent, being mediated by other variable such as attitudes or motivation, or failure to
investigate learners’ performance under varying conditions

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 Aptitude refers to the ability to learn quickly and is thought to predict success in learning.
Language aptitude tests usually measure ability to identify and memorise new sounds,
understand the function of particular words in sentences, figure out grammatical rules from
language samples, and memorise new words
 Working Memory is a temporary storage system that allows individuals to hold and process
information for a short period of time. WM is continually processing information as it comes
in; because of its limited capacity the information either exits the WM or is transferred to
long-term memory. It is not language specific, but is heavily implicated in the processing of
language. It is also unclear as to whether learners with large WM capacity are more
successful
 Difficulties in researching Learner characteristics and differences:
o Definition and measurement of variables unclear (e.g. willingness to communicate)
o Characteristic are not independent of each other
o Definition and measurement of language proficiency (e.g. academic skills VS
conversational skills)
o Correlation VS Causal relationship (unclear whether characteristics actually cause
effects)
o Sociocultural factors (e.g. power relationship between L1 and L2)

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Summary - lectures 1-12

Second Language Acquisition (Griffith University)

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Second Language Acquisition Notes

 Some teaching/learning assumptions:

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Week 2 – Historical Perspectives Part 1

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 Problems that arose with the strong version of CAH:

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Week 3 – Historical Perspectives Part 2

 Some notes about the nature of interlanguage:

Level of proficiency Transfer errors Developmental errors

Beginner High Low

Intermediate Medium High

Advanced Low Low

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Week 4 – Universal Grammar and the Monitor Theory

 Linguistic research has three main questions it aims to answer:

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o Emergence is not triggered by external events

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o Visual aids and written materials are used as comprehensible input

 Important question – Does innate grammar make conversation possible or does

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o These patterns become strengthened by repeated activation or encountering

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o Questionable how far experimental conditions mirror real life

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Week 6 – Cognitive Approaches to SLA Part 2

 Implicit learning occurs incidentally and without awareness

 Memory Systems in L2 learning

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o The mind is a general purpose, symbol processing system

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o Cognitive Strategies – rehearsal and organisation, summarising, deducing, using

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Week 7 – Interaction in SLA

 Individual perspectives of SLL look at learning as something that is accomplished by an

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Week 9 – Meaning-based Perspectives on SLA

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o Syntactic Mode – speakers structure sentences in a more target-like and systematic

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Week 10 – Sociocultural Perspectives

 In a Sociocultural perspective of SLA, language learning is viewed as social rather than

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