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Developmental Sequences in Second Language Learning. Presenters: Jacqueline dos Anjos, Hanna Heseker, Dana Meyer. Let ‘ s assume. Second Language Acquisition. Table of Contents. 1. Background: Influences in SLA 2. Grammatical Morphemes 3. Stages of Development 3.1 Negations 3.2 Questions
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Developmental Sequences in Second Language Learning Presenters: Jacqueline dos Anjos, Hanna Heseker, Dana Meyer
Let‘s assume... Second Language Acquisition
Table of Contents • 1. Background: Influences in SLA • 2. Grammatical Morphemes • 3. Stages of Development • 3.1 Negations • 3.2 Questions • 3.2.1 Activities • 3.3 Relative Clauses • 4. Movement through Developmental Sequences • 5. More about First Language Influence • 6. Conclusion
Background: Influences in SLA • High level of cognitive development • Mental lexicon of real-world concepts • Knowledge of L1 structures • Different learning environments and conditions → Learners develop an interlanguage: Various levels of success in their L2 acquisition
Concept of Grammatical Morphemes • What is a morpheme? “smallest meaningful segment of a language“ • What is a grammatical morpheme? “a word that functions to specify the relationship between one lexical morpheme and another“
Obligatory Contexts • “Obligatory contexts“ in which specific grammatical morphemes must occur: ‘Yesterday I listened to that song three times.‘
-ing (progressive)pluralcopula (‘to be’) auxiliary (progressive as in ‘He is going’)article irregular past regular past –edthird person singular –spossessive ‘s Stephen Krashen‘s Natural Order Hypothesis Source: Lightbrown, Patsy M. and Nina Spada. How Languages are Learned. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 84.
Reception of Accuracy Order • learners may only use morphemes correctly in certain contexts • Morphemes placed in wrong positions not taken into considerations • Results may depend on task construction
What this means for L2 acquisition... • developmental sequences identified in L2 acquisition are similar to those in L1 acquisition • Similarities in L2 acquisition of learners cannot be traced back exclusively to L1 transfer
Questions 1st stage • Dog? Four Children? • Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments 2nd stage • It’s a monster in the right corner? • Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting with rising intonation 3rd stage • Where the children are playing? • Does in this picture there is four astronauts? • Fronting: do-fronting; wh-fronting, no inversion; other fronting
Questions 4th stage • Where is the sun? • Is there a fish in the water? • Inversion in wh- + copula; yes/no questions with other auxiliaries 5th stage • How do you say proche? • What’s the boy doing? • Inversion in wh-questions with both an auxiliary and a main verb 6th Stage • Question tag: It’s better, isn’t it? • Negative question: Why can’t you go? • Embedded question: Can you tell me what the date is today?
Questions 1st Stage • Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments 2nd Stage • Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting with rising intonation 3rd Stage • Fronting: do-fronting; wh-fronting, no inversion; other fronting 4th Stage • Inversion in wh- + copula; yes/no questions with other auxiliaries 5th Stage • Inversion in wh-questions with both an auxiliary and a main verb 6th Stage • Question tag, Negative question, Embedded question
Relative Clauses Source: Lightbrown, Patsy M. and Nina Spada. How Languages are Learned. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 90.
Movement through Developmental Sequences • Stages in language learning are not like “closed rooms“ • Stress situations may cause learners to fall back into an earlier stage • Learners may have difficulty moving beyond a stage when facing similarities between first and interlanguage patterns
More about First Language Influence • First language interacts with developmental sequences • When learners reach a certain stage and perceive a similarity to their first language, they may linger longer at that stage • Addition of a substage • May learn a second language rule but restrict its application
Phenomenon of “Avoidance“ • Feature in the target language too distant and different from their first language → don’t try it • Extent of transfer has do to with the L2 learner’s beliefs about the distance between the L1 and the L2 • Language acquirer • will typically avoid those structures that he is not sure are grammatical in the L2 • knows that idiomatic or metaphorical uses of words are often unique to a particular language
Conclusion • The idea of developmental sequences greatly facilitates our understanding of L2 acquisition • However, the concept of L1 transfer should always be taken into consideration when looking at L2 acquisition processes
List of References • Lightbrown, Patsy M. and Nina Spada. How Languages are Learned. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. • Saville-Troike, Muriel. Introducing Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. • Cook, Vivian. Second Language Learning and Language Teaching. 3rd ed. London: Arnold, 2001.