Chapter 2: L2 and FL learning (Armendariz-Montani)

Chapter 2:L2 and FL learning (Armendariz-Montani) Patricia Vargas Multimedia October 2010

Index • Learning L2/FL • Learning L2/FL • Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis • Interference/transference concepts • Causes for interference • What is transferred • Conditions for L2 and FL learning • Creative Construction Hypothesis/Natural Order Acquisition • Role of input in L2/FL learning • Interlanguage • Fosilization • Age factor in L2/FL learning • Consciousness during the learning process • Variability in the interlanguage Individual differences and cognitive variables in the L2/FL learning • What are learning styles? • Classification of learning styles • The affective filter • Learning and communication strategies • Learning strategies • Types of learning strategies • Communication competence • Communication strategies Main concepts • Lateralization • Fundamental Difference Theory • Languages studies • Linguistic deprivation • Extreme deprivation

Lateralization • Process in which neurological changes are produced. • Changes determine that the two brain hemispheres work independently and develop specialized functions.

Fundamental difference theory Robert Bley-Wroman developed the fundamental difference theory: • Same limitations occur in L1 acquisition during the critical period (by Lenneberg) as well as L2 acquisition. • Adults need to resort to analysis to solve problems and build a grammatical structure. • This theory may explain the differences present between the L1 acquisition and L2 learning: • achievements humans make after puberty are inferior than those of younger people. • It may be explained by the fact that the neurological tissue involves metabolical costs that the brain has to reduce.

Language studies • There are four distinguished stages in the development of Psicolinguistics studies. • According to Michael Long, these studies helps us make connections between process and product in the development of the interlanguage - immature language: • B.J Skinner (1957) with his stimulus-response theory. • Noam Chomsky: we are born with the language faculty -UG. • Piaget,Vigotsky and Bruner’s theories are mainly based on the functional dimension of language. They studied the language from a socio-cultural point of view and concluded that we learn by doing • Connectionnist theories of McClelland, Rumelhart, Pinker, etc. According to Pinker, learning is achieved when there is a change or adjustment in the weight of connections responding to a stimulus. Thus, L2 learning is likely to occur if there is a linguistic production or input as comprehensible as the response expected from the exposure to the language.

Linguistic deprivation • As the first linguistic community is the family, children may find that school is a quite different communicative context, especially in these aspects: communicative referents and type of affective and attitudinal bonds established between the participants in the language community. • According to Berstein, lower class children have a restringed code, that is values and norms are do not necessarily are explicitly conveyed and therefore are taken for granted. • they may be less informed compared to other classes and less curious than those who master elaborated codes –such as longer phrases and grammatically complex structures, and may find it difficult to respond to non-emotional and abstract language used at school. • In contrast to low class learners, middle class children are more able to be keep up with the requirements of formal academic education, thus adapting more easily to the school environment. • the breach between school and family contexts will mostly depend on the social class students belong to, so we need to take into account this key factor in order to facilitate learning.

Extreme deprivation • Children who for diverse reasons have been unable to develop language for the lack of exposure to a linguistic environment. • Although non linguistic cognitive skills of some of these linguistic-deprived children were relatively “normal”, grammatical skills were deeply disrrupted. • So it proved that grammatical aspects of the language are succesfully acquired only during the critical period.

Learning L2/FL

Contrastive Analysis Hipothesis • Knowledge of the main features of students’ L1: Compulsory for teachers comparison of the main grammatical and phonological aspects of students’s L1’s. • Interference: produced during the learning process, when the speaker uses phonetic, morphological, syntactic or lexical typical of L1. • Transference of typical habits of L1 into L2 or foreign language may facilitate or not new formation of habits:

Interference/Transference concepts According to Kellerman:

Interference due to...

What is transferred... • Forms and meanings of the learner’s own language and culture • Distribution of these forms and meanings to the foreign culture and language, through the production as well as comprehension.

Condition for L2 or foreign language learning Long and intensive practice and production Automatization of the linguistic features of the second or foreign language

Creative Construction Hypothesis and Natural Order Acquisition • Both adults and childern older than five years old had the same order or acquisition in syntax, whether during the L1’s acquisition or L2 learning process. • But process was different from that of children younger than five acquiring a language Creative Construction Hypothesis Following universally innate mechanisms, speakers formulate certain hypothesis about the linguistic system of the target language, until the differences between input-output are resolved favourably.

Role of input in L2/FL learning According to Chomsky : Linguistic production of speakers INPUT • Does the grammatical complexity of input need to be beyond the level of production, following the natural order hypothesis? • Does it need to be sequenced according to logical and formal criteria?

Interlanguage • Autonomous linguistic system resulting from the learner’s attempt to produce the target language. • It requires access to the latent linguistic structure (Lenneberg,1967), which has given given form to the language acquisition device. • From the latent to realization stage.

Fosilization • L2 learner will tend to keep linguistic items, rules and subsystems in their interlanguage, regardless their age, practice, systematization they receive about or in the target language. • Reason: learners may not have mastered yet these aspects, or having the knowledge, they cannot use them for different factors: • stress • anxiety • extreme relaxation

Age factor in the L2/FL learning • Oyama’s Sensitive period: learning of L2/FL is more difficult than in the Critical Period. • Moreau and Richelle’s Privilege period: it extends up to the age of ten. • According to Selinger: there are multiple critical periods for phonetics, syntax and semantics. All languages have a modular structure They are not necessarily learned in the same way nor simultaneously with the same effectiveness

Consciousness during the learning process • Learning without explicit metalinguistic knowledge • According to Robinson, teaching seems to be effective for the learning of simple grammatical rules, pragmatic and lexical aspects. • However, complex aspects are learned in conditions where attention and meaning are combined. • We should always provide meaningful exposure to the target language and orientation for the discovery of rules.

systematic: predictable, based on the linguistic an d communicative context. observable through the whole process, in which the learners eventually monitor their own production asystematic: frequent in the first developmental stages of L2/FL, and it continues in the following stages, unitl it transforms into systematic. Variability in the interlanguage • Dynamic system: it develops from one stage to the other

Individual differences and cognitive variables in the L2/FL learning

Learning styles Induring tendencies or preferences within an individual Learning styles might be thought of as “cognitive, affective, and physiological traits that are relatively stable indicators of how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment.”(Keefe 1979:4)

Classification of learning styles •  Field dependence/independence •  Contextual global or sequential detailed/linear •  Impulsive experimental /analytical reflective •  Conceptual/concrete •  Responding to input: • visual • auditory •  kinesthetic

The affective filter •  personality •  affective variables •  Learning another language makes us reflect about ourselves and our relationships with the others. •  It requires not to avoid opportunities to speak a foreign language. •  We need empathy and interest to risk something in any communicative process

Learning strategies: It relates to input -to processing, storage and retrieval, to taking in mesages from others. Learning and Communication Strategies Communication strategies: It pertains to output, how we productively express meaning, how we deliver messages to others.

 Metacognitive strategies that involve planning for learning, thinking about the learning process as it is taking place, monitoring one’s own production or comprehension, and evaluating learning after an activity is completed. Learning strategies  Cognitive they involve more direct manipulation of the learning material itself.  Socioaffective they have to do with social-mediating activity and transacting with others.

 Metacognitive advance organizers  directed attention  selective attention  self-management  functional-planning  self-monitoring  delayed production  self-evaluation Learning strategies  Socioaffective  cooperation question for clarification  asking for repetition  Cognitive  repetition  resourcing  translation  grouping  note taking  deduction  elaboration  transfer

Communication competence •  According to Chomsky: linguistic competence, which is related to psychological as well as sociolinguistic factors •  Four aspects can be distinguished: •  Grammatical competence: including lexis •  Sociolinguistic competence: related to the rules of interaction among the speakers •  Discursive competence: includes cohesion and coherence •  Strategic competence: techniques that the learners resorts to when there is a break in communication

Communication strategies • Paraphrase • approximation • word coinage • circumlocution: the learner describes the characteristics or elements of the object or action instead of using the target language item or structure. •  Borrowing • literal translation • language switch •  Mime •  Appeal for assistance •  Avoidance

Chapter 2: L2 and FL learning (Armendariz-Montani)