INTERLANGUAGE

FOSSILIZATION

INTERLANGUAGE

CONCLUSION

- Introduced to the field of SLA by Larry Selinker (1972)

- It was intended to describe the competence of L2 learners and the source of that competence

- Basic concepts:

• Transfer
• Overgeneralization
• Fossilization

- Children and adults differ in acquiring the L2

-It is a process that affects every learner's interlanguage

-Within the SLA literature there exist a wide range of different conceptions about the nature of fossilization

FOSSILIZATION

-There is no uniform answer to what fossilization is

-It refers to the end-state of SLA that is not native-like

- Cognitive (mental processes)

- Empirical (speech or writing)

Empirical evidence

Critical Period Hypothesis

- Advanced-learners approach studies : "near- native speakers"

- Lennon (1991): studied errors in advanced IL (six-months)

• What circumnstances fossilization may set in.

- German girl (24 year-old): University of Reading in England

- Is there a critical period? When does it end?

- Two versions:

• Children must learn their first language by puberty or will not be able to learn the language afterwards
• Learning will be more difficult after puberty

After 15 interviews, she made errors in 5 areas:

1) Adverb order

2) There is / there are

3) Have got

4) Use and overuse of "always"

5) Future time forms

- Cases 2, 3 ,4 - dynamic

-Case 5 - fossilization: she uses present simple as a future forms and it is part of her competence influenced by her L1

- The mechanisms used to acquire the L1 "turn off" by a certain age

REFERENCES:

Global Vs. Local

Can L2 learners become native-like?

Stabilization Vs. Fossilization

-Major question: To which degree can an L2 learner develop native-like ability? How far can learners get in acquisition?

3. L2 learners can achieve native-likeness in some domains

- Some researchers have viewed fossilization as occurring globally to the entire interlanguage system (Fossilized competence)

- Others have maintained that fossilization could only happen locally in parts of the interlanguage system (Fossilized error)

- Tarone (1986): distinguished between:

• Fossilized learners (type 1)
• Non- fossilized learners (type 2)

1. L2 learners cannot become native-like

-This position holds that learners cannot achieve native-like ability

-Other research: their mental representation of language may be native like but for some reason there is a disconnect betweem competence and performance.

-Evidence: grammatical development and pronunciation Advanced native-like L2 learners compared with native speakers on a variety of grammatical features.

-Donna Lardiere: studied a Chinese speaker with English L2 whom she had known for over 20 years

- Patty's speech was marked by a number of non-native structures:

e.g. I met him and he go out

I went to school and learn English

-James Fledge: has demonstrated that early L2 learners can attain native-like accent but that late L2 learners do not.

-Dissociation between morphosyntactic competence and phonological representation

2. L2 learners can become native-like

-Patty's phonological representation was constrained by transfer from her L1, Chinese

-Native-like in terms of morphological and syntactic representation of tense, but non native-like in terms of phonological competence

-Bongaerts has produced a number of studies that demonstrate that L2 learners can become native-like in pronunciation.

- ZhaoHong Han, Fossilization in Adult Second Language Acquisition, Trynity Collage, Dublin (Ireland)

- VanPatten B. and Benati A. G., Key terms in Second Language Acquisition, London, 01/2010

-Achiva M., Second Language Acquisition, 2: Learning to Request in a Second Language: A Study of Child Interlanguage Pragmatics, Ed. Multilingual Matters, 10/2002

- Different or synonymous?

- Selinker and Han (2001) provided a detailed discussion: they assert that stabilization and fossilization can form a continuum.

- there are at least three possible cases of stabilization:

• A temporary stage of "getting stuck"
• IL restructuring
• Long-term cessation of IL development

-David Birdsong supports the idea that L2 learners can become native-like in the syntax and morphology of language.