Transcript Lecture 13

Unit 12
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The Acquisition of English
Review
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What do we mean by a lingua franca?
What are bilingualism and diglossia
respectively?
Major contents
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13.1
13.2
13.3
13.4
Learning and acquisition
Factors in English learning
Aspects of learners’ English
Learners’ English errors
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As never before, people have had to
learn a second language, not just as a
pleasing pastime, but often as a means
of obtaining an education or securing
employment.
Ellis
-- Rod
I3.1 Learning and acquisition
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What is, by nature, the study of English
for Chinese learners?
It is the learning of a second language
in a non-native or non-natural
environment.
Acquisition vs. Learning
implicit, subconscious
explicit, conscious
informal situations
formal situations
uses grammatical 'feel'
uses grammatical rules
depends on attitude
depends on aptitude
stable order of acquisition simple to complex
PP. 235-236 No. 1, 2, 3
13.2 Factors in English
learning
a. The input issue
Second language acquisition (SLA for short) seems
impossible without access to L2 input, whether in
the form of exposure in natural settings or in the
form of formal instruction.
Do learners benefit more from simplified input or
from genuine, natural input? An influential
claim regarding the input issue is the hypothesis
that there must be sufficient, comprehensible
input available to L2 learners, as captured by the
“i+1” formula.
foreigner talk and teacher talk
P. 237 No. 5
Krashen's Five Hypotheses
- The natural order hypothesis; 'we acquire the
rules of language in a predictable order'
- The Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis: 'adults
have two distinctive ways of developing
competences in second languages ..
acquisition, that is by using language for real
communication ... learning .. "knowing
about" language' (Krashen & Terrell 1983)
- The Monitor Hypothesis: 'conscious
learning ... can only be used as a Monitor
or an editor' (Krashen & Terrell 1983)
- The Input Hypothesis: 'humans acquire
language in only one way - by
understanding messages or by receiving
"comprehensible input"'
- The Affective Filter Hypothesis: 'a mental
block, caused by affective factors ... that
prevents input from reaching the language
acquisition device' (Krashen, 1985, p.100)
Evidence for the Input Hypothesis (chiefly Krashen
1985)
i) people speak to children acquiring their first
language in special ways
ii) people speak to L2 learners in special ways
iii) L2 learners often go through an initial Silent
Period
iv) the comparative success of younger and
older learners reflects provision of
comprehensible input
v) the more comprehensible input the greater
the L2 proficiency
vi) lack of comprehensible input delays
language acquisition
vii) teaching methods work
according to the extent that they
use
comprehensible input
viii) immersion teaching is
successful because it provides
comprehensible input
ix) bilingual programs succeed to
the extent they provide
comprehensible input
Noticing Hypothesis
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Schmidt (1990) identifies three aspects of
consciousness involved in language
learning: awareness, intention and
knowledge. The first sense, consciousness
as awareness, embraces noticing.
According to Schmidt (1995, p. 20), "the
noticing hypothesis states that what
learners notice in input is what becomes
intake for learning."
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Schmidt also states that
a) whether a learner deliberately attends
to a linguistic form in the input or it is
noticed purely unintentionally, if it is
noticed it becomes intake;
b) that noticing is a necessary condition
for L2 acquisition. To help clarify Schmidt's
hypothesis and the place of noticing in L2
acquisition the following model, proposed
by Ellis, is useful.
Figure 1: The process of learning implicit knowledge
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press from SLA Research and Language
Teaching by Rod Ellis 1997
Factors that influence noticing in the input
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Instruction
Frequency
Perceptual salience
Skill level
Task demands
b. The output issue
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Output helps language learners notice
the gaps in their linguistic knowledge as
a result of external feedback
(clarification requests, modeling, overt
correction, etc.) or internal feedback
(monitoring) of language they have
produced.
Frequency effect
Output hypothesis
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The originator of the comprehensible
output hypothesis, Merrill Swain (Swain,
1985), does not claim that CO is
responsible for all or even most of our
language competence. Rather, the claim
is that "sometimes, under some
conditions, output facilitates second
language learning in ways that are
different from, or enhance, those of
input" (Swain and Lapkin, 1995, p. 371).
Swain (1985, 1993) and Swain and Lapkin (1995)
argued that L2 output may trigger certain
cognitive processes necessary for second language
learning. Swain’s proposal of the Output
Hypothesis places an emphasis on language
learners “noticing” the gaps in their linguistic
knowledge as a result of external feedback
(clarification requests, modeling, overt correction,
etc.) or internal feedback (monitoring) of language
they have produced. By becoming consciously
aware of ones own language production, output
can serve the metalinguistic function of helping to
internalize linguistic forms, test hypotheses about
the language, and increase control over previously
internalized forms.
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Interaction Hypothesis
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That L2 students' can develop their
Second Language Acquisition (SLA)
through interaction in EFL classrooms
began with research in the early 1980s
by Long which eventually culminated in
his Interaction Hypothesis (1983;
1996). Long found that interaction in
L2 learning gave rise to SLA
opportunities through what he termed
interactional modification (1983).
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In the interactionist literature, research
has found that learners test hypotheses
about the target language and modify
their output in response to clarification
or confirmation requests by their
interlocutors (Pica, Holliday, Lewis &
Morgenthaler, 1989).
In his Interaction Hypothesis, Long (1996)
proposed that conversational interaction promotes
L2 development because interaction “connects
input, internal learner capacities, particularly
selective attention, and output in productive ways”
(pp. 451–452). Much of the current line of
interactionist research in SLA addresses the
question of how interaction works to bring about
L2 development, focusing on issues such as the
relative developmental contributions of positive
and negative evidence and enhanced salience
(Leeman, 2000), together with explorations of the
specific nature and contribution of different
interactional features to L2 learning.
c. The motivation issue
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L2 learners are said to possess a sort of
“socioaffective filter” governing how much
of the input made available to them gets
through to their language processing
mechanisms.
Some learners, owing to their lack of (strong)
motivation, are “closed” to the L2 input. Once
they have obtained sufficient L2 knowledge to
meet their communicative and emotional
needs, they may stop learning, resulting in
so-called fossilization or backsliding.
Fossilization
For most of us the acquisition of second
language is less spectacular than that of L1.
If we are past the age of around 7-10 years
the acquisition of an L2, in marked contrast
to the way we acquired our first language
(L1), can turn out to be rather slow,
laborious and, even in talented L2 learners,
tends to stop short of native-like proficiency.
This "stopping short" has been referred to
as fossilization (Selinker, 1972) or
incompleteness (Schachter, 1990).
Selinker(1996)
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[F]ossilization is the process whereby
the learner creates a cessation of
interlanguage learning, thus stopping
the interlanguage from developing, it is
hypothesized, in a permanent way ….
The argument is that no adult can hope to
ever speak a second language in such a
way that s/he is indistinguishable from
native speakers of that language.
d. The strategy issue
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The serious study of learner
strategies dates back to the 1980s.
Three types of strategies have been
distinguished: learning strategies,
production strategies, and
communication strategies.
e. Other learner-related issues
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Age, gender, aptitude, cognitive style,
and personality
13.3 Aspects of learners’
English
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receptive vocabulary (which they can only
use in reading and listening)
productive vocabulary (which they can also
use in writing and speaking)
declarative knowledge refers to their static
knowledge of words, grammar rules, pragmatic
conventions
procedural knowledge refers to their ability
and facility regarding how to put such
knowledge into actual use
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Accuracy
Complexity
Fluency
Idiomaticity
13.4 Learners’ English
errors
1) structuralist views (prior to 1960)
Errors are evidence of bad learning and
should be avoided/corrected/not
allowed to occur.
2) Post-structuralist view
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Influenced by the idea that learning a language
involves making constant hypotheses about the
structure of the target language, scholars
believed that errors are evidence of learners'
incorrect hypotheses. Selinker (1972) put
forward "interlanguage", a separate linguistic
system based on the observable output which
results from a learner's attempted production of
a target language form". It has features of both
the first and second languages but is neither.
Thus errors are evidence of the learning process.
Presentation session
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Chinglish
Error analysis
a. Mother tongue interference (phonological,
lexical, grammatical, textual, pragmatic)
contrastive analysis: positive/negative
transfer
study/learn knowledge
see/open TV
If you are convenient .…
He is easy/possible to make mistakes.
Have you eaten? / Eat slowly.
b. Cross-association (lexical,
structural)
develop /envelop
I hope you to win.
I hope that you would win.
He assisted me to do the homework.
c. Overgeneralization and over-extension
V-ed
open/give
d. Strategies of communication
e. Performance errors/lapse
a,b,c and d related to competence; d related to
performance
Pragmatic failures
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Pragmatic failure is different from
performance errors. It has to do with
inappropriateness in terms of social
conventions,
cultural
differences,
manner of talking, etc. It is often
treated as “behaving badly” rather than
“speaking badly”, hence its significance.
Pragma-linguistic failure
a. mother tongue interference
e.g. Salesgirl: What do you want?
(Can I help you?)
b. poor command of the target language
A: Thanks a lot.
B: Never mind.
A: John, have you finished your homework?
B: Yes, I have finished my homework.
Socio-pragmatic failure
a. compliment/response
b. addressing
A: (to a foreigner teacher) Teacher Mary, where
are you from?
c. taboo topics
A: (to a foreigner) How much do you earn a
month?
d. degree of formality
A: (to a close friend) Could you possibly help me
with the luggage?
Communicative competence
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Noam Chomsy's notion of linguistic competence:
the ability of an ideal native speaker to construct
and recognize grammatical and only grammatical
sentences in his language; not enough to enable
him to use the language appropriately;
Dell
Hymes's
notion
of
communicative
competence (1970): both the user's knowledge
about his language and his knowledge about
language use. e.g. what is grammatically
possible, what is pragmatically appropriate, what
is meaningful, what is practically feasible.
Assignments:
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PP. 238-239 No. 8
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PP. 245-246 No. 6
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PP. 247-248 No. 7