Second Language Acquisition Theories Week 6

1. Second Language Acquisition Theories Week 6

2. Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis • (CAH) • Theoretical bases: structural linguistics and behaviourist psychology • Structural linguistics: detailed descriptions of particular languages from a collection of utterances produced by native speakers (i.e. corpus)

3. Behaviourist psychology: • habit formation by means of ‘stimulus-response-reinforcement’ the ability to perform any tasks • new learning situations helped by means of the transfer of the old habits

4. CAH logic: if the acquisition of the L1 involved the formation of a set of habits, then the same process must also be involved in SLA • 1950s - 1960s: language seen as habit • L1 seen as the major cause for lack of success

5. Types ofhabit formation in SLA • L1 = L2 habits • L1 habits modified or eradicated in the context of L2 • Newly-acquired L2 habits

6. CAH tenets: detailed comparisons between the two languages in order to determine areas that will be easy or difficult to learn for pedagogical purposes • Teaching method: Audiolingualism • stimulus, reinforcement and reward

7. Strongview: prediction of learning difficulties and success (of teaching materials) based on comparison between two languages i.e. predictive contrastive analysis • Language transfer: positive (easy) and negative (difficult) transfer

8. S1 a (TL) S1 b • Hierarchy of difficulty • (most difficult --> easiest) • Differentiation(Split) (NL) S1 English ‘know’ Italian ‘sapere’ ‘conoscere’

9. Underdifferentiation/ Overdifferentation English Vs. Japanese (The Article system) English --> Japanese (absent or underdifferentiation) Japanese --> English (new or overdiffirentiation)

10. Coalescing • Opposite to Differentation • Correspondence • L1 = L2 (positive transfer)

11. Criticisms • 1. Overprediction • L1-L2 contrast learning difficulty • English Vs.French • English: postverbal pronoun placement • He wants them again. • The dog has eatenthem.

12. French: preverbal pronoun placement • Il lesveut encore. • Le chien lesa mange. • Negative transfer: English --> French • *Il veutles encore. • *Le chien a mangeles. • Positive transfer: French --> English • no errors produced

13. 2. Underprediction • L1-L2 similarity  positive transfer • Spanish Vs. English: copular Vs. be • *That very simple. • *The picture very dark.

14. 3. Only a small number of errors as a result of contrasting properties between L1 and L2, i.e. 25% • *He comed yesterday.

15. 4. Difficultyerrors • But in that moment it was 6:00. • Difficulty in tense usage rather • than the preposition from the • learner’s viewpoint

16. 5. Evidence from morpheme studies Dulay and Burt (1974) Natural sequences in child second language acquisition Subjects: 60 Spanish and 55 Chinese children Methodology: Bilingual Syntax Measure (BSM)

17. Article -ing Pronoun case Singular form of to be Possessive Singular auxilary Plural Past -regular -irregular 3rd person singular • seven coloured pictures to elicit • responses on English grammatical • morphemes

18. Result • same developmental patterns across learners of different L1s, i.e natural order

19. Conclusion • language learners = active participants • learning guided by universal innate mechanisms • transfer no longer seen as a major factor, i.e. lack of importance of L1 influence

20. Criticisms • 1. BSM biased the results • Same results in other studies not using BSM • 2. Morphemes with different meanings grouped together ,i.e. English articles

21. 3. Accuracy order = developmental sequences? • Correct forms not necessarily mean correct underlying rules • 4. Grouped data obscured individual variation

22. Error analysis(EA) • Corder’s 1967: ‘The significance of learner’s errors’ • Errors = evidence of the state of the knowledge of L2 learners, not products of imperfect learning • Errors = evidence of an underlying rule-governed system

23. Errors vs. Mistakes • Errors = systematic, not usually recognisable • Mistakes = slips of the tongue • From TL norm, deviant forms are errors but from the learner’s linguistic norm, they are mistakes. • EA methodology: comparison between L2 learners’ errors and the TL system

24. Criticisms • Total reliance on errors (other information needed) • Schachter (1974)’s study of the production of relative clauses by Persian, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese students

25. Data • No of errors Total • Persian 43 174 • Arabic 31 154 • Chinese 9 76 • Japanese 5 63 • Avoidance factor

26. Discrepancy between what linguists interpreted and the learner’s actually performance • Cause of errors: wrong assumption that correct usage of a structure implies correct rule structures • absence of errors may be due to a limited sampling bias

27. Source of errors: multiple sources of errors possible • The English article system • absence of the learner’s L1 • many functions of English articles • EA only provides a partial picture to the linguistic system of L2 learners

28. Interlangauge • Transitional competence • Approximative system • Interlanguage • ‘A separate linguistic system based on the observable output which results from a learner’s attempted production’ (Selinker1972: 214)

29. L2 learners = creators of their own linguistic systems • Independent of L1 and L2 influence • Errors = indicators of progress, learning strategies, procedures • Errors = window to the learner’s built-in syllabus

30. Permeability: ‘the penetration into an IL system of rules foreign to its internal systematicity, or the overgeneralisation or distortion of an IL rule’ • basic grammar --> complicated grammar • Fossilisation: ‘a cessation of further systematic development in the IL’ • imperfect L2 system

31. Language transfer • Interlingual identification (units of equivalence) • same units --> positive transfer • different units --> errors • not an all-or-nothing process (i.e. selective transferability)

32. Role of L1 influence (Cross-linguistic influence) • Avoidance • 3 possible causes • L1 different from L2 • L1 same as L2 • complexity of L2 structures

33. Rate of learning • L1 = L2 --> faster learning • Route of learning • acquisition of English ‘the’ by Chinese and Spanish learners • Chinese: this Spanish: this/ the

34. Overproduction • Topic prominent structures by Chinese and Japanese learners of English • Phonology • Eckman’s Markedness differential hypothesis • unmarked --> marked: difficult to learn • marked --> unmarked : easy to learn

35. Psychotypology • Learners’ perception of the distance between L1 and TL • Transferability and selectivity • some structures are more sensitive to transfer than others

36. CAH and Interlanguage • CAH serves as a tool that helps L2 learners to find some equivalent between L1 and TL. • Source for testable hypotheses • CAH provides a picture of what L2 learners may do in learning TL structures. • Indication of the learner’s progress

37. CAH prepares L2 learners for the fact that they will have some problems learning TL • unsuccessful learning i.e. fossilisation