THE NATURE OF LEARNER LANGUAGE

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Introduction: describing and explaining L2 acquisition

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Introduction: describing and explaining L2 acquisition 1

Chapter 1

Introduction: describing and explaining L2 acquisition

What is second language acquisition?

            Second language acquisition, or sequential language acquisition, is learning a second language after a first language is already established. It is learning the second language after the first language is already set up or learning which comes after our mother tongue.

L2 acquisition defined as the way in which people learn a language other than their mother tongue, inside or outside the classroom

What are the goals of second language acquisition?

1.      The description of L2 acquisition.

2.      Identifying the external and internal factors that account for why learners acquire an L2 in the way they do.

3.      Describes how L2 acquisition proceeds and to explain this process and why some learners seem to be better at it than others.

4.      Illustrates more specifically how SLA researches have set about trying to achieve these goals we will now examine two case studies of L2 learners.

External Factors

External factors relate to factors outside of individual which give him/her opportunity to acquire input of language and practice it.

v  Social milieu in which learning take place

Social conditions influence the opportunities that larners have to hear and speak the language and the attitudes that they develop towards it.

v  the input that learner receive

The samples of language learning is exposed. Language learning cannot occur without some input. A question of considerable interest is what type of input of input facilities learning.

Internal factors

}  Internal factors relate to cognitive mechanisms which enable them to extract information about the L2 from the input such as aptitude, attitude, interest, motivation and personality.

Two case studies

A case study is detailed study of a learner’s acquisition of an L2. The two case studies which we will now examine were both longitudinal. One is learning English in surrounding where it serves as a means of daily communication and the other of two children learning English in a classroom.

·         A case study of an adult learner

Wes (the object of investigation) is a naturalistic learner : someone who learns the language at the same time as learning to communicate in it.

The case : Wes did not have the same knowledge of progressive –ing as a native speaker, He had little or no knowledge at the beginning of the study of most grammatical structure, he was still far short of accuracy three years later. E.g. He continue to omit –s from plural nouns, rarely put –s on the third person singular of versbs, and never used the regular past tense.

·         A case study of two childs learners

Their request were verbless

E.g. When J needed a cut out of a big circle in a mathematics lesson he said:

            “Big circle.”

Methodological issues

 One issue has to do with what it is needs to be described.  Schimdt was concerned broadly with how Wes developed the ability to communicate in an L2, examining his grammatical development, his ability to use English in situationally appropriate ways, and how he learned to hold succesful conversations.

Another issue concerns what it means to say that a learner has ‘acquired’ a feature of the target language. Schmidt, like many other researchers, defines ‘acquisition’ in terms of whether the learner manifests patterns of language use that are more or less the same as native speakers of the target language.

There is a problem in determining whether learners have ‘acquired’ a particular feature. Both Schimidt and I point out that the learners made considerable use of the fixed expressions or formulas.

Another problem in trying to measure whether ‘acquisition’ has taken place concerns learners’ overuse of linguistic forms. Schimdt showed that Wes knew when to use the present progressive correctly but he also showed that Wes used this form in contexts that did not require it

Issues in the description oof learner  language

These studies set out how to describe how learners’ use of L2 changes over time and what this shows is about the nature of their knowledge of the L2. One finding is that learners make errors of different kinds. We failed to use some grammatical features at all and used others incorrectly. These are errors of omission and overuse.

Another finding is that L2 learners acquire a large number of formulaic chuncks, which they use to perform communicative functions that are important to them and which contribute to the fluency of their unplanned speech

One of the most interesting issues raised by these case studies is wether learrners acquire the language sistematically.

Issues in the explanation of L2 acquisition

v  What can account for these descriptive finding?

We can begin that L2 acquisition involves different kinds of learning. On the other hand Learners internalize chunk of language structure (i.e. formulas). On the other hand, they acquire rules (i.e. the knoowledge that a given linguistic feature is used in a particular context with a particular function).

Why did Wes seem to learn some grammatical items before others? Why did J and R learn the different ways of making a request in the particular sequence they did? There are number of possible explanation. One is that learners follow a particular developmental pattern bacause their mental faculties are structured in such a way that this is the way they have to learn. These faculties, it is argued, regulate what learners take from the input and how they store the information in their memories. Other explanations emphasize the importance of external as opposed  to internal factors.

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