Applied Linguistics Prepared by: Joanna Ismail, Asma Abas, Kawa Kader, Hawzhen Rahman 14 November 2011 Lecturer: Assist. Prof Dr. Ali M. jukil

Applied LinguisticsApplied Linguistics

Prepared by: Joanna Ismail, Asma Abas,

Kawa Kader, Hawzhen Rahman

14 November 2011Lecturer: Assist. Prof Dr. Ali M. jukil

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Variability Vs uniformity of language development

The constructed grammar of every child’s native language contains the universal categories and relations of which he has knowledge.

how the same knowledge that all children have could be reflected in their performance?

OR;

The way they understand and produce utterances would be improved in the course of their development?

If the innate knowledge has any psychological reality, the performance data should be in conformity with what can be predicted from the postulated knowledge.

If the innate component is large, the effect of the child’s general cognitive capacities and of his environment should be comparatively small, and there should be a large degree of uniformity for all children both in the way the development takes place, and in the general standard reached.

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Variability Vs uniformity of language development

variations found should be predictable from consideration of associated factors, such as

a.The general learning ability of the children,

b.The kind of environment they grow up in . OR

c. It could be a matter of individual variation, children taking different paths for no obvious external reasons.

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Associated Factors

1. General Cognitive Capacities:

2. The environment:

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When the child is beginning to speak early is a sign of intelligence, and cross-sectional studies have confirmed the relationship between early language development and general learning ability.

There is a very large difference between children, since one child can produce spontaneously at the age of two and a half, while other children at the same age are scarcely beyond the one and two word stage.

Graham (1968) made an experiment on the importance of memory for sentence processing and mentions that children who could repeat correctly two unconnected items could also repeat correctly as in the following example:

- There is a bird flying in the air.

While children who could repeat five unconnected items could also repeat the following sentence;

- The dog that chased the duck is black.

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Demonstrations that language development and general cognitive development are closely related can be interpreted in two ways:

A. Nativists; who will argue that the Graham experiment shows that it is only the limitation on memory span which prevents a child from applying his knowledge of the structure of sentences. non

B.Non-nativistis; who would take the findings to show that children can begin to learn to process structures such as inserted relative clauses only when they have developed the cognitive capacity for dealing with them.

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2. The environment

The discussion about the effects of the environment on language development centered on the social class issue.

The majority of those who come from the lower social classes or national minorities (disadvantaged) fail to learn to read and write. For example in the United States the disadvantaged is often a euphemism for ‘black’.

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2. The environment

Disadvantaged children have;

i. Less language, i.e. what they have is different language (at least partly different),

ii.Different ideas about when and how language is appropriately used

iii.In some studies as when middle and lower class children are asked to substitute a ‘proper word’ for one of the nonsense words in a sentence, social class is not a relevant factor.

iv.There is no difference by social class in the children’s ability to produce the correct form of the verb.

E.g.;

- The tweener baikels meedily.

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2. The environment

The majority of studies uncover social class differentials;

Example;

Church (1971) found social class differences at an early age in the ability of children to answer questions about senses and sense organs;

The questions were:

─What do you smell/ taste/ touch with?

─What are your eyes/ears for?

Lower-class four-year-olds did relatively worse than the majority of middle-class three-year-olds. Robinson (1971, 1972 language) found that in various language communication games lower-class five-year-old and seven-year-old London children gave almost the same responses.

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2. The environment

Two kinds of studies are found:

The studies where no difference is found have to do with very elementary grammatical control.

The studies where social class differences are found have to do with complexity and elaboration of grammatical patterns, appropriateness of usage, and vocabulary control.

{The fact is that,

Although the environment effects the way that children learn to use language, a deprived background does not handicap children in the acquisition of the basics of language. This means that the nativists are born with the basic knowledge, non-nativists that all the environments studied are adequate for the development of command of the basic grammatical relations and categories}

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Second Language Acquisition

What is second language acquisition?

It deals with the developing knowledge and use of a language by children and adults who already know at least one other language.

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Second language acquisition field has;

a) Theoretical importance; which is related of how language is represented in the mind and whether there is a difference between the way language is acquired and processed and the way other kinds of information are acquired and processed, and

b) Practical importance; arises from the assumption that an understanding of how languages are learned will lead to more effective teaching practices.

A knowledge of second language acquisition may help educational policy makers set more realistic goals for programmes for both foreign language courses and the learning of the majority language by minority language children and adults.

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Theories of L2 Learning

Second language acquisition have influenced by linguistic and psycholinguistic theories.

One of the fundamental differences between theories developed in the linguistic and psychological disciplines is the role they hypothesize for internal and external factors in the learning process.

The linguistics do not agree with the psychologists

some linguistics have suggested that language acquisition is based on the presence of a specialized module of the human mind containing innate knowledge of principles common to all languages.

On the contrary, most psychologists have argued that language is processed by general cognitive mechanisms that are responsible for a wide range of human learning and information processing and requires no specialized module.

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Theories of Second language (L2) learning

I. Linguistic Perspectives

a. Universal Grammar

b. Monitor Theory

II. Psychological Perspectives

a. Behaviorism

b. Cognitive Psychology

c. Connectionism

d. Multidimensional Model

III. Interactionist Perspectives

IV. Sociocultural perspectives

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I. Linguistic Perspectives

Universal Grammar: this is the name to the theory that all languages share certain fundamental principles. The term was adopted by Noam Chomsky in order to argue that we are genetically ‘programmed’ with an innate language learning faculty (sometimes called the language acquisition device or LAD).

LAD: the capacity to acquire one’s first language, when this capacity is pictured as a sort of mechanism or apparatus. In the 1960s and 1970s Chomsky and others claimed that every normal human being born with an LAD. The LAD included basic knowledge about the nature and structure of human language.

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Universal Grammar

In 1968 Chomsky came with the idea of universal grammar (UG) of human languages.

His explanation for that fact was :

All children learn language at a time in their cognitive development when they experience difficulty grasping other kinds of knowledge which appear to be far less complex than language.

Children with impaired intellectual ability were usually acquire the language they hear around them.

The kind of information which mature speaker of a language have of their L1 could not have been learned from the language they heard around them . this problem called '' logical problem of language acquisition ''

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Universal Grammar

He also noted that :

Children were exposed to samples of language that were incomplete and sometime degenerate .

Parents did not provide systematic feedback when young children produced speech that did not match the adult language , and yet children eventually acquire full competence in the language they expose to .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thus Chomsky inferred that children must have an innate language faculty which called language acquisition device (LAD)and later as UG .

This faculty was described as a specialized component of the brain , pre –programmed to process language .

UG was said to contain general principle to underlying all languages .the child task is to discover how the language of his\her environment made use of these principles.

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Universal Grammar

۞ Chomsky’s theory of UG was offered as an explanation for L1 acquisition, so can UG explain L2 learning ?

₪

there is a' critical period ' for language acquisition. UG is no longer available (after teenage years )to older learners . Second language acquisition by older learners is more difficult than for younger learners and it is never complete.

With UG perspective the focus is on the linguistic competence of the learner. Therefore , researchers have usually used indirect means of investigating that competence . For example, rather than record spontaneous conversation, the researcher may ask a language user to judge whether a sentence is grammatical or not.

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Monitor theory

Monitor theory:It is a kind of theory which is developed by Krashen in the 1970s . It shares a number of the assumptions (the assumption is that human beings acquire language without instruction or feedback on error) of the UG approach but its scope is specifically second language acquisition .

Monitor theory is presented in term of five hypotheses;

1.The fundamental hypothesis:

According to this theory, there is a difference between 'learning ' and 'acquisition'. Acquisition occurs in a manner similar to L1 acquisition , that is, with the focus on communicating massages and meanings.

Learning is described as a conscious process , learner attention is directed to the rules and forms of the language.

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Monitor theory

This theory suggests that , although spontaneous speech originates in the 'acquired system ', what has been learned may be used as a monitor to edit speech if the second language learner has time and the inclination to focus on the accuracy of the message .

2. The natural order hypothesis:

Since L2 learners like L1 learners , go through a series of predictable stages in their acquisition of linguistic features, Krashen suggests that L2 learning like L1 learning, occurs as a result of exposure to meaningful and varied linguistic input . Linguistic input will be effective in changing the learner's developing competence if it is comprehensible and also offers exposure to language which is slightly more complex than that which the learner has already acquired .

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Monitor theory

3. The affective filter hypothesis:

This theory suggests that a condition for successful acquisition is that the learner be motivated to learn the L2 and thus receptive to the comprehensible input.

Monitor theory has been criticized for the vagueness of the hypotheses and for the fact that some of them are difficult to investigate in empirical study. However, it has a significant impact on the field of L2 teaching because many teachers and students intuitively accept the distinction between learning and acquisition ,recalling experiences of being unable to spontaneously use their L2 even though they had study it in the classroom.

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II. Psychological Perspectives

Behaviorism: is the psychological theory, popular in the mid-twentieth century, that viewed learning as a form of habit formation. Behaviorism dominated psychology and education and theories of learning and teaching. It was based on the view that learning occurs through a process of imitation, practice, reinforcement and habit formation.

According to behaviorism the environment is crucial because:

It is the source of linguistic stimuli that the learners need in order to form associations between the words they hear and the objects and events they represent

It provides feedback on learners' performance . Skinner 1957 claimed that when learners correctly produce language that approximates what they are expose to in the input , and these efforts receive positive reinforcement , habits are formed .

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Behaviorism

In 1968 Chomsky attacked behaviourism when he questioned the notion that children learn their first language by repeating what they hear in the surrounding environment . He argued that children produce novel and creative utterances that they would never have heard in their environment. They are not simply mimicking what they hear in the speech of others , but rather , applying rules and developing an underlying grammar.

The notion that the L1 habits which learners has already established would interfere with the formation of new habits in the L2. The contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH), which was proposed to account for the role of the L1in L2 learning, predicted that where similarities existed between L1 and L2 structure there would be no difficulty for L2 learning. where there were differences, the learners would experience problems.

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Behaviorism

The CAH was not fully supported. it fail to predict errors that L2 learners were observed to make, and it predicted some errors that did not occur. it was found that these errors would not have been predicted by a contrastive analysis between L2 and L1 learners. These findings, together with the rejection of the behaviourist learning theories led to argument that there was very little L1 influence in second language acquisition . Later on research has shown that the influence is complex and it changed as the learner's competence in the second language develops.

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Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive Psychology: a branch of psychology that deals with perception and thinking.

The interest in psychological theories of language learning has been revived since the late 1980s. They believe that there is no reason to assume that language acquisition requires specific brain structure used uniquely for language acquisition. They considered L2 acquisition like other learning requires the learner's attention and efforts – whether or not the learner is fully aware of what was being attended to.

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☻Some information processing theories suggested that language , like other skill activity , is first acquired through intentional learning of what is called 'declarative knowledge'', and that through practice the declarative knowledge can become 'procedural knowledge ''.

☻ The difference between controlled and automatic processing according to some theorists is that:

oControlled processing is not is not necessarily intentional . It occurs when a learner is accessing information that is new or rare or complex. It requires mental efforts and takes attention away from other controlled processes.

On the other hand,

oAutomatic processing occurs quickly and with minimal attention and effort. it is argued that we cannot prevent automatic processing and have a little awareness or memory of its occurrence.

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Why learners in the initial phases of learning seem to put so much effort into understanding and producing language?

The information processing model offers a useful explanation, as according to this model, learning occurs when controlled knowledge becomes automatic through repeated practice.

In addition to practice , it is also hypothesized that a process referred to as 'restructuring ' may result in learner appearing to have made quiet sudden change in their interlanguage system rather than gradually increasing the speed with which they use construction that were already present. Restructuring is a cognitive process in which previously acquired information that has been somehow stored in separated categories is integrated and this integration expands the learner's competence . Sometime the restructuring can lead learner to make errors that had not previously been present .

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Some researchers working within information have argued that nothing is learned without 'noticing'. That is, in order for some feature of language to be acquired , is not enough for the learner to be exposed to it through comprehensible input. The learner must actually notice what it is in that input that makes the meaning.

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Connectionism

Connectionism: Is a psychological approach to understanding language learning. This approach is like the behaviorist approach in the sense that hypothesize the development of strong associations between items that are frequently encountered together. According to this view, brain creates networks which connect words or phrases to other words or phrases (as well as to events and objects) which occur at the same time. It is suggested that these links (or connections) are strengthened when learners are repeatedly exposed to linguistic stimuli in specific contexts.

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Connectionism

Example,

When L2 learners produce (I go) and (She goes), She goes is not the reflection of having knowledge about a rule for the placement of ‘s’ with the third person singular. Rather, the connection between (she) and (goes) is thought to be established through high-frequency exposure to these co-occurring structures in the linguistic input. The pronoun (she) activates (goes) and the pronoun (I) triggers (go) because the learner has heard these forms in combination many times.

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Multidimensional Model:

One of the central questions within psychological accounts of L2 acquisition is that, why L1 & L2 learners go through a series of predictable stages in their acquisition of grammatical features?

For L1 acquisition, ‘operating principles’ was proposed by Slobin (1973) to explain what L1 learners found easier or harder to process and learn, while for L2 acquisition, there is ‘Multidimensional Model’ that represents a way to relate underlying cognitive processes to stages in the L2 learner’s development.

The multidimensional model was originally developed as a result of studies of the acquisition of German word order and later, on the basis of research with l2 learners of English.

In this research, L2 learners were observed to acquire certain syntactic and morphological features of the L2 in predictable stages. These features were referred to as ‘developmental’.

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Other features, that were referred to as ‘variational’, appeared to be learned in fixed sequence.

With respect to the developmental features, it was suggested that each stage represented a further degree of complexity in processing strings of words and grammatical markers.

For example, learners begin by picking out the most typical word order pattern of a language and using it in all contexts. Later they would notice words a the beginning or end of sentences or phrases and would begin to be able to move these.

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Pedagogical implication of Multidimensional Model

One of the pedagogical implications drawn from the research related to the multidimensional model is the ‘Teachability Hypothesize’ that learners can only be taught what they are psycholinguistically ready to learn.

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Sociocultural perspectives

This theory, initially proposed by Vygotsky (1987), brought to the field of L2 acquisition by researchers including Lantolf, Swain and Ohta (2000).

₪ Theorists working within a Sociocultural perspective of L2 learning operate from the assumption that there is an intimate relationship between culture and mind. And that all learning is first social then individual. It is argued that through dialogue communication , learners jointly construct knowledge and this knowledge is later internalized by the individual.

₪ Like cognitive psychologists, Sociocultural theorists assume that the same general learning mechanisms apply to language learning as with other forms of knowledge. However, Sociocultural theorists emphasize the integration of the social, cultural and biological elements.

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Learner Language

In the 1970s, a number of researchers dealt with the fact that, although the language produced by L2 learners did not conform to the target language, the ‘errors’ that learners made were not random, but reflected a systematic knowledge of the L2. the term ‘interlanguage’ was coined to characterize this developing linguistic system of the L2 learner.

Several error analysis studies in the 1970s classified L2 learners’ errors and found that many errors could not be attributed to L1 influence. For example both, both L1 and L2 learners of English make similsr over-generalization errors such as two mouses and she goed.

This led some researchers not only to reject traditional contrastive analysis, but to claim that L2 learners did not only rely on L1 as a source of hypotheses about the L2.

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Developmental Sequences

In the 1970s, a number of researchers studied L2 acquisition in ways that were based on previous work in L1 acquisition. This was reflected in the methods which were used to investigate interlanguage, the specific linguistic features under investigation, and the theories proposed to explain language development.

One of the most influential studies of the acquisition of L1 english was Brown’s longitudinal research on language development of three children.

One part of that study focused on hoe children acquired grammatical morphemes such as (possessive ‘s) and (past tense –ed). Brown and colleagues (1973) found that children acquired these forms in a similar order.

Other L1 studies showed that children acquire syntactic patterns such as interrogative and negative sentences of the L1, in a series of stages that are common to all children learning the same L1.

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Developmental Sequences

L1 learners also make errors which show that they are not simply repeating words or phrases exactly as they have heard others produce them. For example, a typical L1 error in English is putting an ‘s’ on foot to express the plural.

This king of error is based on a logical generalization since the pattern of adding ‘s’ to express plurality works with regular nouns in English.

The finding that children go through a series of predictable stages in the acquisition of their first language and that their errors are systematic and similar among learners is used as evidence to support the hypothesis that language learning is based at least in part on internal processes, not just on simple imitation of speech or environmental factors such as frequency of occurrence and feedback on error.

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L1 influence

Although some language acquisition researchers have rejection of contrastive analysis, most teachers and researchers have remained convinced that learners draw on their knowledge of other languages as they try to learn a new one.

Current research shows that L1 influence is a subtle & evolving aspect of L2 development, which means that learners do not simply transfer all patterns from the L1 to the L2 , and there are changes over time, as they come to know more about the L2 and thus to recognize similarities between L1 and L2 that were not evident in earlier stages of L2 acquisition.

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L1 influence

What are the aspects of language that are more susceptible to L1 influence than others?

Pronunciation and word order are more likely to show L1 influence than grammatical morphemes.

Learners seem to be sensitive to the fact that some patterns in the L1 are idiomatic or unusual in some way and are therefore not transferable. Also there is evidence that when learning a language which is very different from the L1, learners are less likely attempt transfer.

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L1 influence

One important aspect of L1 influence is the way in which it appears to interact with developmental sequences.

e.g.;

Although all learners seem to pass through a stage of pre-verbal negation (I no like that), Spanish L1 learners tend to use this from longer than learners whose L1 does not have pre- verbal negation.

Another way in which the L1 interacts with developmental sequences is in the constraints which L1 influence may place on the use of L2 patterns with in a particular stage.

e.g.;

French speaking learners of L2 who had reached an advanced stage in the use of subject-verb inversion in questions, and failed to use questions in which the subject was a noun.

- 'Can he play baseball?' (They use and accept this question)

- Can john play baseball?' (Rejected this question)

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Instruction and second language acquisition

Researchers shows that instruction can have a significant

effect on L2 acquisition;

It does not prevent learners from going through developmental

stages.

It permits learners to move through the stages faster.

It replaces some learner language characteristics with more

targets-like use of the L2.

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Regarding the role of instruction in L2 acquisition;

Krashen (1982) argued that instruction tended to lead only to what he called "learning" and that instruction could interfere with language "acquisition".

Pienemann (1989) recommended a more precise matching of instructional input and developmental stages.

Some other researchers confirms that input and instruction targeted to the next stage beyond the learner's current developmental level is most effective.

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Learners can be provided with more natural input through;

The teaching is done through communicative and content-based language teaching.

The emphasis is on meaning.

Learners are exposed to language which is not presented according to sequence of grammatical forms but rather according to a theme or a lesson in a school subject such as history or science.

(Such instructional environments allow learners to develop more effective comprehension and communication skills that are typical in more traditional language teaching approaches).

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What are the limitations in the richly communicative environments on the L2 input available for acquisition?

Swain(1988) has reported that, even in history lessons in French immersion classes, learners may not hear the past tense used regularly. Teachers often use the historical present tense to make the events more engaging to the learner.

Thus, learners whose only or primary exposure to the L2 is in the classroom will inevitably have gaps in their knowledge of the language and the way it is used outside the classroom setting.

Another limitation of L2 acquisition in such rich environment is that learners may not develop high levels of accuracy. For example, while L2 learners in communicative and content- based classrooms develop comprehension & fluency abilities, they may face problems with grammatical accuracy &lexical precision.

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Certain types of errors may be easier for L2 learners to overcome than others;

In the context of communicative interaction, learners seem to be able to benefit more from instruction and error feedback which focuses on semantic or lexical errors than from that which targets syntactic errors. Through this instruction feedback, is likely to make the information more memorable to the learners but it is also the case that such error usually involve a change in a single word or phrase rather than of a more systematic pattern in the learner's inter language.

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An example of a French-speaking learner of English, saying;

'She is wearing a skirt red.'

o This example shows that errors that are influenced by the L1 and do not interfere with meaning may be particularly difficult, because when a French- speaking learner of English says that , the word order error does not lead to confusion. Learners may never head that more proficient speaker of English do not use this word order in this case instruction which in clouds explicit information about how L1 and L2 differ may be the only way for learners to eliminate these features from their L2.

o This shows that learners in communicative and content-based classrooms benefit from opportunities to focus on language from, in particular when the instructional input is more explicit in nature.

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Conclusion

Since the 1960s,till today, the field of L2 acquisition has enormous scope & depth, both in terms of the variety of topics under investigation & the research approaches used to investigate them.

So in this chapter only some of the principal topics in second language acquisition are mentioned.

Thank You

Documents

Applied Linguistics Prepared by: Joanna Ismail, Asma Abas, Kawa Kader, Hawzhen Rahman 14 November 2011 Lecturer: Assist. Prof Dr. Ali M. jukil