The Teachability Hypothesis

Stages of acquisition of morpho-syntactic structures follow a set developmental order. Stages cannot be skipped as a result of formal instruction and instruction will be beneficial only if it focuses on structures from the ‘next stage’. Premature instruction may have a deleterious effect on (=may harm) learning.)

For example Stage 1: “Four children”? Stage 2: “The boy throw the shoes?’” Stage 3: “What the dog is playing?” “Is the boy is beside the bus?” Stage 4: “Is there a fish in the water?” “Where is the ball”? Stage 5: “How do you say …?” “How do you say ‘lancer’”?” Stage 6: “Can you tell me what the date is today?”

Instruction, First Language Influence, and Developmental Readiness in Second Language Acquisition Spada, N. & Lightbown, P. M. (1999) The Modern Language Journal, 83 (1),1-22

Questions: Is instruction that is targeted to the next stage in the L2 learner’s development more effective than instruction that targets a more advanced stage? Is implicit instruction that is targeted to the learner’s next developmental stage sufficient to move the learner into more advanced stages? How does the L1 influence the L2 learner’s progress through developmental stages?

Previous research Strong patterns of developmental stages L1 can help learners move faster, or introduce sub-stages Instructed learning shows same developmental order (if spontaneous production is observed, not metalinguistic knowledge). Cannot ‘skip’ stages.

Conclusion: learners only learn if ready for ‘next’ stage. Krashen: no point in ‘targeting’: just provide generally i+1 input Pienemann: target at next level (‘teachability hypothesis’) – but didn’t define what kind of instruction. Pienemann and others found empirical support Some evidence that if you teach a more advanced stage, learners will move through the earlier ones without explicit instruction.

The present study: question forms in English Identified five stages 1.Single words or fragments: A spot on the dog? A ball or a shoe? 2.SVO with rising intonation: A boy throw the ball? Two children ride a bicycle? 3.Fronting 1.‘Do’-fronting: Do the boy is beside the bus? Do you have three astronaut? 2.Wh-fronting: What the boy is throwing? Where the children are standing? 3.Other fronting: Is the boy is beside the bus? 4.Wh- with copula be: Where is the ball? Where is the spaceship? Yes/No questions with auxiliary inversion: Is the boy beside the garbage can? Is there a dot on the bus? 5.Wh- with auxiliary second: What is the boy throwing? How do you say ‘lancer’?

Procedure 150 Francophone students aged Most learners identified as having reached stage 2 or 3 Instruction targeted at stages 4 and 5

Schedule Pretest end of April Intervention in the form of one hour a day over two weeks teaching stage 4-5 questions Post-test mid-May Delayed post-test mid-June Also administered a test that had been given to similar population, same teachers, last year (‘control’)

Intervention Lots of exposure to examples of questions No explicit rules No extensive drilling or practice Simple ‘recast’ correction Focus on form e.g. by eliciting question forms from word cards (but right answer immediately available)

Tests Oral production (spontaneous production of questions: guess which picture-card I’m holding) Scrambled questions (make a question from scrambled words: cartoon with scrambled words underneath) Preference (which form is right? – could be either, both or neither) Picture-cued Written Questions (free written production: busy airport, speech balloons: what are they asking?)

Post-test stage Pre-test stage No. of SsUp One stage No changeDown one stage 27929%68% %56%26% 4250%40%56% 51n.a.100%0 Oral Production Task

Comments Had to produce at least two samples of the required level to be considered at that level. Most moved only one stage, or stayed where they were.

StageNo. of questionsPretestPost-test 21045%30% 3850% 41263% 5748% Scrambled Questions Task

Comments Improvement: fewer Stage 2, more Stage 4

Preference task StageNo. of questionsPretestPost-test 2556%49% 31660%65% 41163%73% 5948%62%

Comment More able to recognize than produce sentences at higher stages

Picture-cued Written Questions Delayed post-test only StagePercentage (N=144) 33% 475% 521%

Discussion On the Oral Production test: Only 18% of the students at stage 3 and none at stage 4 moved up a stage following high frequency exposure to stages 4-5 questions But 29% moved from 2 to 3, and 2 students from 2 to 4. This does not support the teachability hypothesis: students ready to progress to 4 did not do so, while many who showed progress ( 2 to 3) were at a stage where input at stages 4-5 would have been assumed to be ineffective. But it does support the hypothesis that in any case they don’t skip stages, but have to go through the acquisition sequence

Some students accepted both grammatical and ungrammatical questions e.g. both ‘Where can I buy a bicycle’ and ‘Why fish can live in water’ – maybe because of L1 interference (French)

Points for discussion Possibly the type of instruction makes a difference: explicit rules and practice may be more effective, including contrastive analysis Influence of L1 Instruction ‘ahead’ of the appropriate stage seems to help Learners do, on the whole, observe the natural developmental order

Conclusions 1.The natural developmental order of acquisition of grammatical structures probably exists. 2.This does not necessarily mean we need to teach according to it: 1.heterogeneous classes, all at different levels 2.difficulty of diagnosing where a student is 3.some levels are ungrammatical

But… 1.We can become aware that students’ difficulties may be rooted in this development 2.We need to be aware of, and value, students’ progress from one stage to the next, even if ‘the next’ is still ungrammatical 3.We need to ‘recycle’ the teaching of grammatical structures

Assignment Read through the article yourself: note any interesting points that we did not discuss in class in our coverage of the article.