Lecture 6 SLA and Classroom Instruction Luo Ling

1.Second Languag Acquisition 2.Theories of Language Acquisition 3.The Study of SLA (stages of language development.) 4.Factors affecting SLA

Second Language: In narrow sense, second language refers to the language that one learns or picks up after his (or her) mother tongue; In broad sense, second language refers to all languages (including foreign languages) that one learns or picks up after his (or her) mother tongue.

Acquisition vs. learning (Krashen1982) Natural and subconscious Instruction in classroom Now acquisition and learning are used interchangeably in the literature of second language research.

Second language learning painstaking unsuccessful

First language acquisition unconscious successful

Language acquisition Language acquisition refers to the natural process of children’s language development.

Second language acquisition SLA the process by which a language other than the mother tongue is learnt in a natural setting or in a classroom.

Theories of Child Language Acquisition A behaviourist view of language acquisition An innatist view of language acquisition An interactionist view of language acquisition

A behaviourist view of language acquisition Traditional behaviorists view language as behavior and believe that language learning is simply a matter of imitation and habit formation. Imitation and practice are preliminary, discrimination and generalization are key to language development in this theory. pick out words/patterns generalize them to new contexts create new forms or new uses of words figure out how the forms are used by adults

An innatist view of language acquisition (Noam Chomsky) Chomsky believes that language is somewhat innate, and that children are born with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which is a unique kind of knowledge that fits them for language learning.

According to this view, children are born with potentialities for acquiring any language, but also with knowledge of the nature of the world and specifically with knowledge of the nature of language. This knowledge is universal. Chomsky argues that LAD probably consists of three elements: a hypothesis-maker, linguistic universal, and an evaluation procedure.

An interactionist view of language acquisition The interactionist view holds that language develops because of the complex interplay between the human characteristics of the child and the environment in which the child develops.

What’s crucial in children’s language acquisition is the modified language suitable for children’s capability. Caretaker speech (motherese) 保姆式语言 ( 亲情语言 ) It is simple, modified speech used by parents, baby- sitter etc. whey they talk to young children who are acquiring their native language.

Special properties of caretaker speech: slow rate of speech, high pitch, rich intonation, shorter and simpler sentence structures, frequent repetition, paraphrasing and limited vocabulary. In addition, the topic is closely related to the child’s current surroundings, activities and needs. It is important for children to be exposed to comprehensible language. Only when the language is modified and adjusted to the level of children’s comprehension, do they process and internalize the language items.

The Study of SLA The study of second language acquisition is a branch of linguistic studies. It mainly deals with how the second language is acquired. The process does not involve linguistics only but also a great many subjects including linguistic physiology, psychology, psycholinguistics, cognitive science and so on.

“For children, how do they master the complexities of human language?” Through observations and experiments they have found that children all undergo certain stages of language development.

Stages The pre-linguistic stage 前语言阶段（ 3 － 10 months) The one-word /holophrastic stage 独词 / 整体语阶段 (12 － 18 months) The two-word stage 双词阶段（ 18 － 20 months ） The Multiword stage (telegraphic speech) 多词句阶段 ( 2 － 3 years)

This stage is simply called ‘cooing’ and ‘babbling’. Cooing: 3 months old the first recognizable sounds with velar consonants such as [k] [g] as well as high vowels such as [i] [u] Babbling: 6 months old fricatives, nasals, syllable type sounds 9 months old recognizable intonation, patterns, combination months old use vocalizations to express emotions and emphasis The pre-linguistic stage

The one-word or holophrastic stage Sounds are related to meanings A single form can function as a phrase, a concept or a sentence (e.g. “more” might mean “Give me more candy”). Single forms are used for naming familiar people, objects in the child’s environment (e.g. Mama, doggy), indicating certain actions and demands (e.g. More! Up!) or conveying emotion (No!).

Holophrastic stage Mama is coming ! Mama I saw Mama’s socks !

Holophrastic stage Milk I want milk ….

The two-word stage Begin Around 18 to 20 months, As child’s vocabulary moves beyond 50 distinct words. Combinations: Mama Book. Toy mine. Baby chair. Sock pretty.

Telegraphic speech stage between 2-3 years old producing a large number of utterances telegraphic speech: strings of lexical morphemes in phrases develop some sentence-building capacity can order some forms correctly a number of grammatical inflections begin to appear

Telegraphic speech Cathy build house. Cat stand up table. Daddy like this book. Chair all broken. I good boy today.

Factors affecting SLA Social factors (external factors) Social context language policy and the attitude of the public sector. Social demand with the trend of globalization of the world economy, it is widely accepted among educators and national leaders that proficiency in another language is an indispensable quality of educated people

Learner factors (internal factors) Motivation Age Learning strategy

Factor ： Motivation The starting point of their study is this question: “How is it that some people learn a second or foreign language so successfully while others find it almost impossible, given the same opportunities to learn?” Gardener and Lambert(1972)

They put forward a socio-psychological interpretation of the cause of success or failure. Instrumental motivation( 工具性动机 ) Integrative motivation( 融入性动机 )

They found that learners who are integratively motivated are more likely to be successful, because they are psychologically prepared to adopt various aspects of the behavior which characterizes members of another linguistic-cultural group, and even eventually to become a member of that group Limitation : the relation between motivation and success is unidirectional.

Savignon (1972) reported that students’ desire to learn French increased with gains in French proficiency. The idea that the learners have a sense of achievement as long as they learn is of vital importance. This kind of motivation may be termed Cognitive motivation （认知性动机） also termed as resultant motivation by some scholars.

Factor ： Age In the late 1950s and early 1960s age was seen as a factor that determines success. The critical period hypothesis states that there is a period when language acquisition takes place naturally and effectively. It was believed that the optimal age falls within the first ten years based on two assumptions : 1 the neurological basis of language of children is different from that of adults; 2 children outperform adults in all aspects of SLA.

Research shows that age does not change the route of acquisition. (1970s and 1980s ) Adults acquired a set of grammatical morphemes in an order similar to that of children (plural-s earlier than 3rd person singular –s ) Although children do better in pronunciation,but they are outperformed by adults in mastering morphology and syntax within the same length of time. In conclusion, children and adults have their respective advantages and disadvantages, Adults are better in cognitive abilities, while children are better learners in pronunciation.

Factor ： Learning strategy learning strategies are the particular approaches or techniques that learners employ to try to learn a second language, especially in solving specific problems they encounter. O’Malley et al. (1985) designed a study to identify the type and frequency of learning strategies used by beginning and intermediate students of English as a second language They make a distinction between cognitive strategies and meta-cognitive strategies.

Cognitive strategies: such as inferring or guessing meaning from context. Meta-cognitive strategies : directing attention to the learning task, monitoring and evaluating learning.

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