Language Day Conference for Teachers – 17 th September 2011

1. Department of Language and Linguistics Language Day Conference for Teachers – 17th September 2011 Why don’t they learn things I’ve taught them? – understanding how second language knowledge develops in classroom learners Roger Hawkins

2. You may have come across exchanges like the following of a parent trying to teach a child first language learner some aspect of the TL (from de Villiers and de Villiers 1979): Adult: Say ‘tur’. Child: Tur. Adult: Say ‘tle’. Child: Tle. Adult: Say ‘turtle’. Child: Kurka. The child appears not to learn something the adult is trying teach her/him

3. A similar observation can be made of classroom L2 learners: “A teacher has drilled students in the structure known as indirect questions: Do you know where my book is? Do you know what time it is? Did he tell you what time it is? As a direct result of the drills, all students in the class were able to produce the structure correctly in class. After class, a student came up to the teacher and asked, ‘Do you know where is Mrs Irving?’ In other words, only minutes after the class, in spontaneous speech, the student used the structure practised in class incorrectly.” (From Gass and Selinker 2008, p.15)

4. What is the grammatical property of English the learner has apparently failed to acquire? In embedded questions (indirect questions) tense-marked verbs do not precede subjects: I wonder where his book[subject] was/*I wonder where was his book She wonders what Mrs Irving[subject] likes/*She wonders what does Mrs Irving like?

5. The example illustrates an important characteristic of classroom L2 learners: They can establish two distinct types of knowledge explicit (conscious, verbalisable) knowledge implicit (unconscious, not necessarily verbalisable) knowledge 40 years of empirical research on second language acquisition has uncovered a number of the characteristics of explicit and implicit knowledge.

6. - Explicit knowledge can be used in certain kinds of task but not all: Typically accessible in classroom drills, grammar exercises, written translation Explicit knowledge of the form of embedded questions in English is what allowed all learners in the Gass & Selinker example to perform to criterion in the class drills

7. - Explicit knowledge is not easily accessible in spontaneous, natural communicative uses of language (conversation, discourse where the focus is on meaning (could be written or spoken), non-scripted monologues) The implicit knowledge of the learner who spontaneously asked ‘Do you know where is Mrs Irving?’ in the Gass & Selinker example does not distinguish main from embedded clauses for question formation.

8. Implicit knowledge of an L2 develops according to a kind of ‘internal mental timetable’. • Certain properties emerge in a learner’s mental grammar before others This is true not just of ‘immersion’ learners, but also classroom learners who have traditional instruction + practice exposure (examples to follow shortly) - Implicit knowledge often appears to make ‘mistakes’; learners produce things they have not heard in the input they get Crucially, these mistakes are often evidence of acquisition, and not failure to acquire

9. Examples of a timetable for the development of implicit knowledge of properties of an L2 in classroom learners: 1. In L2 English, subject-verb agreement on forms of the copula be emerge before agreement on main verbs. L1 speaker of Japanese orally retelling an aurally-presented story: Mr Jones always read the weather forecast in the morning newspaper. When it forecast raining he bring umbrella with him. … Unfortunately sometimes weather forecast is not correct. When he arrive at work he … his clothes are wet …

10. 2. In L2 French, implicit knowledge of the gender of articles goes through a stage where one form of the article is restricted to the correct set of nouns, while the other is overgeneralised. A typical pattern is a speaker using la (fem) only with feminine nouns, but le (masc) with both masculine and feminine nouns: La balle (f), la chose (f), le carré (m), le mur (m), *le balle (f), *le chose (f) Careful counting of the use of articles in contexts where implicit knowledge is accessed shows that use is systematic, although it may appear superficially random 3. Development of implicit knowledge of word order in German by classroom L2 learners is in stages.

11. In German main clauses, non-finite parts of the verb (participles, particles) always come at the end: Johann hat ein Buch gekauft Johann has a book bought Linguists refer to this as ‘verb separation’ In main clauses the finite (tensed) part of the verb always appears in second position: Heute hat Johann ein Buch gekauft Today has Johann a book bought Linguists refer to this as ‘verb second’

12. In subordinate clauses, both parts of the verb appear at the end of the clause: Er glaubt, dass Johann ein Buch gekauft hat He believes that Johann a book bought has Linguists refer to this as ‘verb final’ In terms of implicit knowledge, L2 learners acquire these properties in the order: verb separation → verb second → verb final

13. However, in classrooms word order is often presented to learners in the order: verb second → verb separation → verb final Ellis (1989) – 39 English-speaking adult ab initio German learners – teaching of grammar + communicative activities Despite teaching in the order verb second → verb separation → verb final on a picture description task, accuracy of word order was: verb separation → verb second → verb final

14. Let me now give you an example of how implicit knowledge in L2 learners can give rise to ‘mistakes’ that in fact indicate that acquisition is going on Repeated observation: L2 speakers of English who know the passive construction produce and accept sentences like (1a-c) (examples from Zobl, 1989: 204 and Yip, 1995: 130) 1a. My mother was died when I was just a baby b. The most memorable experience of my life was happened 15 years ago c. Rush hour traffic can be vanished because working at home is a new version

15. Here passive morphology is supplied with verbs which for native speakers disallow it: intransitive unaccusative verbs like die, happen and vanish: 2a. My mother died when I was just a baby b. The most memorable experience of my life happened 15 years ago c. Rush hour traffic can vanish because working at home is a new version Passive morphology is used significantly more often with: unaccusatives: die, happen, disappear, break, sink, melt than: unergatives: cry, shout, cough, laugh, run, walk

17. Because the single argument with unaccusative verbs has ‘object properties’, a number of linguists have argued that at an abstract level of representation the single argument IS an object, in contrast to unergatives: 3a e happened this experience 15 years ago (unaccusative) b The student shouted loudly (unergative) The object of the unaccusative must move to the empty subject position. Notice that the passive in English involves the movement of an object to a subject position:

18. 4a Everyone enjoyed the experience b e was enjoyed the experience (by everyone) c The experience was enjoyed (by everyone) We now see that the L2 learners are simply extending the passive construction in English to the case of arguments in the object position of unaccusative intransitives. They do not do this with unergatives because unergatives do not have objects.

19. This ‘misuse’ of the passive in the implicit mental grammars of L2 learners shows: (a) That they have acquired the English passive rule (although have not yet learned that it is restricted to transitive verbs) (b) That they know that the abstract representations of unaccusative and intransitive verbs are different

20. Returning to our question: “Why don’t L2 learners acquire the things I’ve taught them?” In relation to explicit knowledge they may well learn what you teach them: (‘tense-marked verbs do not precede subjects in embedded questions’, ‘chose in French is la and not le’, ‘tensed verbs always come second in German main clauses’, etc) And they can use this knowledge in some circumstances.

21. In natural communicative tasks, however, learners access implicit knowledge, and this is apparently not directly affected by teaching. Implicit knowledge develops according to its own timetable (S-V agreement on copula be before agreement on main verbs (English); over-generalisation of one gender-marked article and under-generalisation of the other (French); verb separation → verb second → verb final (German)) Learners will show patterns of use that may well be non-target-like (over-generalisation of the passive to unaccusative intransitive verbs (whose single argument has ‘object’ properties)) These patterns are common to all learners (classroom or immersion) These non-target-like patterns are evidence of acquisition (not failure to learn)

22. There is a debate about whether explicit knowledge might ‘feed’ implicit knowledge indirectly, after a delay There is some evidence that the implicit knowledge of tutored learners gets to more target-like levels than non-tutored learners Explicit knowledge might have the effect of highlighting the kind of properties of the input that the implicit language acquisition device can make use of. So don’t give up on teaching learners about the language just yet!