Copy of English Language Learners

• Interlanguage is the abstract and mental system, developed by the learner in order to organize his/her production of L2 representations.

. Grammatical sensitivity

Ability to recognize the grammatical functions of words in sentences. (For example: the subject and object of a sentence).

. Inductive language learning ability

Identify patterns of correspondence and relations between form and meaning. (For example: recognize that in English “to” can denote direction and “at” location).

. Rote learning ability

Ability to form and remember associations between stimuli. Important in vocabulary learning.

Learning strategies

. Resultative motivation

Motivation is the cause of L2 achievement. However, it is also possible that motivation is the result of learning.

. Behavioural - For example, repeating new worked aloud to help you remember them.

. Mental - For example, using the linguistic or situational context to infer the meaning of a new word.

. Cognitive strategies - Involved in the analysis, synthesis or transformation of learning materials.

Motivation:

. Metacognitive strategies - Involved in planning, monitoring, and evaluating learning.

. Social/affective strategies - Concern the ways in which the learners choose to interact with other speakers.

. Intrinsic motivation

Involves the arousal and maintenance of curiosity and can ebb and flow as a result of such factors as learners particular interests and the extent to which they feel personally involved in learning activities.

. Instrumental motivation

Seems to be the major forte determining success in L2 learning. For example, in settings where learners are motivated to learn an L2 because it opens up educacional and economist opportunities for them.

. Integrative motivation

Some learners may choose to learn a particular L2 because they are interested in the people and culture represented by the target-language group.

. Learnability

A task-based approach aims to stretch the interlanguage of the learner - by means of error correction - according to the principle of learnability, in respect to the learner’s internal syllabus. Learning is not a smooth progression in a predictable order. Instruction has an effect, it fastens the progress, but it is indirect and non-immediate.

7. Linguistic Aspects Of Interlanguage:

. Typological Universals: Relative Clauses

In languages like English, a relative clause can be attached to the end of a matrix clause.

. Critical Period Hypothesis

The hypothesis claims that there is an ideal time window to acquire language in a linguistically rich environment, after which further language acquisition becomes much more difficult and effortful.

teachability hypothesis.

. Markedness

Involves the characterization of a "normal" linguistic unit against one or more of its possible "irregular" forms.

• For Teresa, she failed, but this study with additional research carried out in Australia, led Pienemann to propose the

. Universal Grammar

SLA also owes a considerable debt to another branch of linguistics – that associated closely with Noam Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar. Chomsky argues that language is governed by a set of highly abstract principles that provide parameters which are given particular settings in different languages.

This hypothesis predicts that instruction can only promote language acquisition if the interlanguage is close to the point when the structure to be taught is acquire in the natural setting. So the teachbility hypothesis, suggests that instruction does not subvert the natural sequence of acquisition but rather help to speed up learner’s passage through it.

. Cognitive versus Linguistic Explanation

In short, it comes down to wheter L2 acquisition is to be explained in terms of a distinct and innate language faculty or in terms of general cognitive abilities, because there is no consensus on this issue.

* Pedagogic Relevance: is limited as teachers are not likely to know which learners in their class are ready to be taught a particular structure and will have no easy way of finding out.

8. Individual Differences In L2 Acquisition

FORM-FOCUSED INSTRUCTION

Language aptitude:

“Any planed instructional activity that is intended to induce language learners to pay attention to linguistic form” - R. Ellis

Why some structures seem to be permanently affected and others are not?

It has been suggested that people differ in the extent to which they possess a natural ability for learning an L2.

Two types of computational model

• Components of language aptitude:

9. INSTRUCTION AND L2 ACQUISITION

There are three possibilities:

1. It depends on the nature of instruction.

2. It depends on the nature of the target structure.

3. When learners have subsequent opportunities to hear and use the target structure in communication.

The author explains about a research which theme is: what impact teaching has on second language learner, and he considers three branches of this research.

. Phonemic coding ability

Ability to handle sound-symbol relationships. (For example: identify the sound which “th” stands for).

• * Early research on progressive –ing, revealed that instruction in this feature caused learners to increase their use of it in their communicative speech, often incorrectly, but that effects were short-lived.
• * Other studies have shown that instruction can have effects that are both beneficial and long-lasting. For example, a carefully designed set of materials for teaching the distinction between two French verb tenses resulted in clear gains in accuracy, which were evident not only immediately after this period of instruction but also three months later. In fact, the learners’ ability to use these verbs forms correctly went on improving.
• There is ample evidence that the acquisition of at least some linguistic structures can be permanently influenced by instruction.

Serial processing: the information is processed in a series of sequential steps and results in the representation of what has been learned as a rule or strategy. E.g.: to all verbs in the past we add -ed

Parallel distributed processing: the learner has the ability of perform a number of mental tasks at the same time. It rejects the idea of general rules. Instead, it considers the connections between separated items.

E.g.: some verbs are more connected with –ed than others.

Processing operations

• * First: whether teaching learners grammar has any effect on their interlanguage development. Do learners learn the structures they are taught?
• * Second: About the individual learners differences. Do learners learn better if the kind of instruction they receive matches their preferred ways to learn a second language?
• * Third: About strategies training. Does it help to teach learners how to use learning strategies employed by ‘good language learners’?

But how durable are these effects ?

Operation principles: Extract and segment linguistic information. Ex: Avoid: interruption, rearrangement of linguistic units and exceptions.

Multidimensional model: is a theory that proposes mechanisms to account the motives why learners follow a definite acquisition route.

The processes involved are known as “processing constraints”. E.g: adopting a word order strategy (put the adverb first)

1. INTRODUCTION: DESCRIBING AND EXPLAINING L2 ACQUISITION

CONCEPTS:

- Can refer to any language that is learned subsequent to the mother tongue.

- L2 acquisition can be defined as the way in which people learn a language other than their mother tongue, inside or outside of a classroom, and ‘Second Language Acquisition’ (SLA) as the study of this.

Communication strategies

Strategies learners use to communicate orally:

- Change words (picture place = art gallery)

- Go to the L1

- Use approximated meanings of words. (image = picture)

- Substitute verbs (make = irregular for ask=regular)

Do these strategies contribute for the learners’ interlanguage? Do they serve as a consciousness need to be better at some aspect?

Implicit knowledge:

Explicit knowledge:

Second Language Acquisition

HOW TO EXPLAIN THE SLA?

Be inclusive: reflect the community

• Identifying the external and internal factors that account for why learners acquire an L2 in the way they do.
• EXTERNAL FACTORS: the social milieu in which learning takes place, social conditions influence the opportunities that learners have to hear and speak the language and the attitudes that they develop towards it.
• The input that learners receive, that is, the samples of language to which a learner is exposed.
• INTERNAL FACTORS: learners posess cognitive mechanisms which enable them to extract information about L2 from the input. They also posess general knowledge about the world.

know rules that guide the performance but don’t know what the rules consist of. Example: “How do you do?”

know the rules, but sometimes don’t know how to use it. “How = interrogative pronoun”, “do= auxiliary verb”, “in questions the auxiliary goes before the noun”.

Bruna Sedrez, Carolina Alvarenga, Débora Machado, Élton Maia, Gustavo Wouters, Leandra Cauduro, Moisés Courtois.

TWO CASE STUDIES

One is of an adult learner learning English in surroundings where it serves as a means of daily communication and the other of two children learning English in a classroom.

1 - A case study of an adult learner – Wes, one native speaker of Japanese with little instruction in English and contacts with native speakers. It was only when he began to visit Hawaii, in connection with his work, that he had regular opportunities to use English.

Richard Schmidt, a researcher at the university of Hawaii, studied Wes’s language development over three-year period from the time he first started visiting until he eventually took up residence there. Schmidt made recordings

and transcriptions of informal conversations between Wes and friends in Honolulu.

Focus of the study - use of auxiliary be, plural –s ( for example: person –s), regular past tense (jumped).

Wes did succeed in using these grammatical features. However, he was not successful in the use of progressive form – ing.

He also supplied it in sentences when it was not required:

It would be wrong, however, to think of Wes as a complete failure as a language learner. Although he did not learn much grammar, he did develop in other ways. Wes achieved considerable success as a communicator.

3. Interlanguage

"So yesterday I didn’t painting."

A mentalist theory of language learning:

Discussion Question #1

Behaviourist learning theory

According to this theory, language learning is like any other kind of learning in that it involves habit formation. In other words, learners receive input linguistic of speakers that are in the middle and positive reinforcement by correct repetition and imitation.

These statements were developed in the 1960s and 1970s.

1. Only human beings are capable of learning language.

2. The human mind is equipped with a faculty for learning language, referred to as a Language Acquisition Device. This is separate from the faculties responsible for other kinds of cognitive activity (for example, logical reasoning).

3. This faculty is the primary determinant of language acquisition.

4. Input is needed, but only to “trigger” the operation of the language acquisition device.

• Identifying Erros
• One day an Indian gentleman, a snake charmer, arrived in England by plane. He was coming from Bombay with two pieces of luggage. The big of them contained a snake. A man and a little boy was watching him in the customs area. The man said to the little boy ' Go and speak with this gentleman'. When the little boy was speaking with the traveller, the thief took the big suitcase and went out quickly. When the victim saw that he cried ' Help me! Help me! A thief! A thief! A thief! The policeman was in this corner whistle but it was too late. The two thieves escape with the big suitcase, took their car and went in the traffic. They passed near a zoo and stop in a forest. There they had a big surprise. The basket contain a big snake.

Interlanguage development cannot be

However we do not yet have a definitive answer to this important question.

Different kinds of English

WHAT DO THESE CASE STUDIES SHOW US?

They raise a number of important methodological issues relating to how L2 acquisition should be studied, they raise issues relating to the description of learner language.

Do all L2 learners learn following the same route?

Group 1

production-based instruction

Krashen: need to distinguish learning from acquisition.

Richard Shmidt:

intentionally: when the learner decides to learn some L2 knowledge.

incidental: when the learner picks up L2 knowledge through exposure. Both involve consciousness attention to features in the input.

ELL Programs

The role of consciousness in L2 acquisition

We need to consider exactly what we mean by ‘acquisition’ when we talk about the effects of instruction. This is a crucial issue. It is one thing for instruction to have an effect on learners’ ability to manipulate structures consciously and quite another for it to affect their ability to use structures with ease and accuracy in fluent communication. There is now ample evidence that the effects of form-focused instruction are not restricted to careful language use but are also evident in free communication.

Second Language Acquisition ( SLA) can be investigated by describing and analysing samples of learner language.

Errors and errror analysis

1) Identifying errors

2) Describing errors

3) Explaining Errors

4) Error evaluation

CHAPTER 2

THE NATURE OF LEARNER LANGUAGE

Group 2

input-based instruction

restructuring continuum:

DESCRIBING ERRORS: Omission, Misinformation,Misordering

EXPLAINING ERRORS: Omission, overgeneralization, Transfer errors.

ERRORS EVALUATION: Global errors, local errors.

DEVELOPMENTAL PATTERNS : There are different stages in L2 acquisition.

1) Silent period

2) Acquisition Order

3) Sequence of Acquisition

Learner - instruction matching

Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis:

2 - A case study of two child learners – both were almost complete beginners in English at the beginning of the study. (12 month)

J was a ten-year-old Portuguese boy

R was an eleven-year-old boy from Pakistan speaking Punjabi as his native language.

Both learners were learning English in a language unit in London. The unit catered exclusively for L2 learners who had recently arrived in Britain.

Focus of the study – requests

For example:

i + 1 = a little more advanced than the current state of the learner’s

The same instructional option is not equally effective for all L2 learners

Individual differences

The type of instruction learners

Learners vary in the particular types of ability they are strong in.

1) A man and a little boy was watching him.

were

2) went in the traffic

into

3) the big of them contained a snake.

bigger

the big one

4) The basket contain a snake.

contained

Scaffolding: learners use the discourse to say that they don’t understand something.

i.g. A: Come here. B: No come here.

According to Vygotsky, zones of proximal development are created through interaction with more knowledgeable others

Strategy training

Both learners began to use imperative verbs in their requests: Give me.

"Give me a paper."

Some time after this, they learned to use ‘Can I have……?' "Can I have one yellow book, please?"

Both learners progressed in much the same way despite the fact that they had different native language.

Teaching learners specific grammatical structures.

An alternative approach

Focused on vocabulary

Training students to use strategies

The idea of strategy training is attractive

"Give me your pencil." - "Can I have your pencil?"

The role of output in L2 acquisition

Psycholinguistic is the study of mental processes involved in the acquisition and use of language.

L1 transfer: influence of the learners’ L1 .

Negative transfer: when the learner make mistakes due to their comparison with L1. Example in Portuguese: adjectives order.

Positive transfer: when the learner’s L1 facilitate L2 acquisition. e.g.: past continuous.

Avoidance: when learners avoid some structures they do not have in L1. e.g. Present/past Perfect

Overuse: when learners overuse some structures or expressions. e.g.: use of the confirmation structure.

Transfer is governed by learners’ perception of what is transferable and their stage of development.

Krashen: “speaking is the result of acquisition not its cause”.

Merrill Swain: believes that output also plays a part in L2 acquisition, in which learners can learn from their own output, serving as they realize problems and gaps in their interlanguages.

DOES FORM-FOCUSED INSTRUCTION WORK?

6. Psycholinguistic aspects of interlanguage

In one study, Teresa compared three groups of second-language learners-an untutored group, a tutored group and a mixed group (one that had experience both instruction and naturalistic learning).

10. Conclusion: multiple perspectives in SLA

The Acculturation Model Of L2 Acquisition

John Schumann’s acculturation model.

Based

What kind of form-focused instruction works best?

the metaphor of ‘distance’.

The problems

• he did not progress beyond the first stage in the development of negatives.
• he continued to use declarative word order rather than inversion in question.
• he acquired virtually no auxiliary verbs. and he failed to mark regular verbs for past tense or nouns for possession.

e.g "where you get that?"

* Tutored group was more accurate plural than untutored group but less accurate on progressive verb – ing. The mixed group was intermediate in both cases.

SO: Teresa suggests that the effects of instruction may depend on target structure that is being taught.

Instruction may be effective in teaching items but not in teaching systems, particularly when these are complex.

Negotiation of meaning:

As presented by Schumann, social factors determine the amount of contact with the L2 individual learners experience and there by how successful they are in learning.

Strategy training

Figure 9.1 Input-based and production-based instruction

Teaching learners specific grammatical structures.

An alternative approach

Focused on vocabulary

Training students to use strategies

The idea of strategy training is attractive

Hiroko: A man is uh. drinking e-coffee or tea with uh the saucer of the uh uh coffee set is uh in his uh knee.

Izumi: in him knee.

Hiroko: uh on his knee

Izumi: yeah

Hiroko: on his knee

Izumi: so sorry, on his knee

(from S. Gass and E. Varonis. 1994. 'Input, interaction and second language production.' Studies in Second Language Acquisition 6:283-302)

Different kinds of English

Everyday english:

This is the easier of the two for ELLs to master

The vocabulary in this directly relate to their surroundings, daily lives and needs

Academic english:

This is harder for ELLs to master

This kind of english is used to express concepts and ELLs must learn how to compare and contrast, how to hypothesize, how to generalize, etc.

Hiroko: A man is uh. drinking e-coffee or tea with uh the saucer of the uh uh coffe set is uh in his uh knee.

Izumi: in him knee.

Hiroko: uh on his knee

Izumi: yeah

Hiroko: on his knee

Izumi: so sorry, on his knee

(from S. Gass and E. Varonis. 1994. 'Input, interaction and second language production.' Studies in Second Language Acquisition 6:283-302)

The role of input and interaction in L2 acquisition

Native speakers modify their speech while communicating with learners.

Pierce’s social theory of L2 acquisition affords a different set of metaphor. L2 acquisition involves a ‘struggle’ and ‘investment’. Learners are not computers who process input data but combatants who battle to assert themeselves and investor who expect a good return on their effort.

There are two types of foreign talk:

ungrammatical – are socially marked. They usually undervalue learners excluding some grammatical aspects, as: to be, modal verbs, tense forms of verbs and use “no+verb”.

when learners signal they didn’t understand interaction modifications are made and them can contribute to L2 acquisition.

Negotiation of meaning:

Grammatical – use slower rhythm of speech, the language is simplified, are regularized or basic, elaborate language to make the meaning clear.

The notions of ‘subject to’ and ‘subject of’ are central to Bonny Pierce’s view of the relation between social contexto and L2 acquisition.

Social identity and investment in L2 learning

evident when learners are conciously attending to their choice of linguistic forms, as when they feel need to be ‘correct’.

. The careful style

5. Discourse aspects of interlanguage

Major concern of the chapter.

For example: how discourse influences the kinds of errors learners make.

evident when learners are making spontaneous choices of linguistic form, as is likely in free conversation.

• A strategy that helps readers work their way through new and difficult text

It can be broken down into 3 parts:

1. The teacher must support students by helping them unpack the text

2. The strategy unfolds in 3 stages- before, during, and after reading

3. The teacher can give tips and models so students can use reading strategies

Acquiring discourse rules

. The Vernacular style

Interlanguage as a stylistic continuum

Regularities in which native speakers hold conversations.

In U.S, for example, a failure in answering to a compliment can be considered a sociolinguistic error.

A: I like your sweater.

native: B: It’s so old. My sister bought it for me in Italy some time ago.

L2 learner: fails or answer: B: Thank you.

So, the acquisition of discourse rules is systematic.

It lacks evidence to demonstrate which aspects are universal and which are cultural (specific of the mother language).

input

• Build a bridge and form a connection from their prior knowledge (ie. first language), to their newly acquired language
• Encourage students to use their L1 during class and assignments (dual-language assigments)
• Allow them to work with same-language partners before alternating to English
• Celebrate cultural diversity- We Are All Related
• Mixed media work from students who attended George T. Cunningham Elementary that demonstrates how linguistic and cultural diversity can be used as a foundation for building students' language skills

Prior Knowledge: A foundation to learning

intake L2 knowledge

Short term memory

The concept of interlanguage leads to the notion that the human mind function works as a computer due to L2 acquisition.

Long term memory

output

A computational model of L2 acquisition

1. Interlanguage is a abstract system of L2 rules in which L2 learner bases his/her comprehension and production of L2;

2. The L2 learner grammar is permeable, that is, it can be influenced by internal and external elements;

3. The L2 learner grammar is transitional, that is, the learner can add or delete rules in order to restructure the system in a interlanguage continuum;

• The first views interlanguages as consisting of different ‘styles’ which learners call upon under different conditions of language use.
• The second concern how social factors determine the input that learners use to construct their interlanguage.
• The third considers how the social identities that learners negotiate in their interactions with native speakers shape their opprtunities to speak and, thereby, to learn an L2.

4. Social Aspect Of Interlanguage

Three rather different approaches to incorporating a social angle on the study of L2 acquisition can be identified:

“A learner’s interlanguage is, therefore, a unique linguistic system.”

What is ‘interlanguage’?