Introduction : describing and explaining L2 acquisition Ellis, R Second Language Acquisition (3 – 14)

What is second language acquisition?  At first sight : any language that is learned subsequent to the mother tongue.  Definition : the way in which people learn a language other than their mother tongue, inside or outside the class.  The study : Second Language Acquisition (SLA)

What are the goals of SLA?  External factors.  Internal factors.

External factors  Social milieu in which learning take place. Learners have to hear and speak the language and the attitude that they develop towards it.  The input that learners receive. The samples of language to which a learner is exposed.

Internal factors  Cognitive mechanism. Which enable them to extract information about the L2.  Enormous amount of knowledge to the task of learning.  Equipped with knowledge of how language in general works. This is can help them to learn particular language.  Explain why learners vary in the rate they learn an L2. And how successful they ultimately are.

The goals of SLA to describe how L2 acquisition proceeds and to explain this process and why some learners seem to be better at it than others.

Two case studies  A case study of an adult learners.  A case study of two child learners.

A case study of an adult learners Wes is a native speaker of Japan. He had little formal instruction in English. But he has a work in Hawaii now, and he has opportunities to develop his English. His progress in grammar is not too excellent. But he use other ways to learn and speak English. He use formulas-fixed expressions. Such as “hi! How’s it?”, “so, what’s new?”, and etc. So, he became a good conversationalist in English.

A case study of two child learners The research’s target are two boys. J from Portuguese, and R from Pakistan. The research is about their development using request and over sentence. Both of them used hint in their sentence at first, but gradually they can use the more specific sentence. The conclusion is that a learner can use simple form of request sentence even they knew very little of English.

Methodological Issues  Language is such complex phenomenon that researcher have generally preferred to focus on some specific aspects rather than the whole of it.  What it means to say that a learner has ‘acquired’ a feature of the target language.  The learners made considerable use fixed expressions or formulas.

 Problem in trying to measure whether acquisition has taken place concern learners’ overuse of linguist forms.

Issues in the description of learner language Both of these studies set out how to describe how learners’ use of an L2 changes over time and what this shows about the nature of their knowledge of the L2.

 Learners make errors of different kinds.  Learners acquire a large number of formulaic chunks, which they use to perform conversation.  Learners acquire the language systematically or not.

Issues in the explanation of L2 acquisition.  An explanation of L2 acquisition must account for both item and system learning and how two interrelate.  The learners follow a particular developmental pattern because their mental faculties are structured in such a way that is the way they have to learn.

 None of the three learners in the two case studies reached a native-speaker level of performance.  They simply needed more time to learn.  It also possible that L2 learners, unlike L1 learners children acquiring their L1, they just stop learning.  They motivated to learn L2 to extent that they’re able to satisfy their communication needs. Is not necessary for them to learn full grammar of English.  Perhaps they can can only acquire difficult linguist features if they receive direct instruction in them.

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