SLA Chapter 1 - Describing and Explaining L2 Acquisition

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What is second language acquisition?

The differences between acquisition and learning are:

1. Acquisition is natural.

2. Acquisition is universal.

Language acquisition occurs in response to a learners’ environment and as a result of a biological predisposition. Language acquisition is natural, universal. It does not require instruction.

L2 acquisition is the systematic study of how people acquire a second language. It is a recent phenomenon and belongs to the second half of the twentieth century. L2 acquisition is the way in which people learn a language subsequent to their mother tongue, for instance, naturally as a result of living in a country where it is spoken or through instructions in a classroom. Second language acquisition (SLA) is the study of this.

The aims of SLA

The question is how learners acquire a second language. So one of the aims is the description of L2 acquisition, we collects and analyse samples of learners language (the language learners produce when they have to use an L2 in speech or writing). Another aim is explanation by figuring out internal and external factors which play a role for learners who acquire an L2: internal factors like cognitive mechanisms and knowledge and external factors like the social milieu and the input.

Two case studies

A case study is a detailed study of a learner´s acquisition of an L2. These studies are longitudinal (samples of the learner´s speech or writing are collected over a period of time). The first case study is a study of an adult learner learning English in surroundings of daily communication. It was about Wes, 33 years old artis and a native speaker of Japanese. He had ever learned English in a formal course in English. He never used his English in Japan because there were no English native speaker. He began to use English whe he worked in Hawaii. Schmidt did a research about Wes’s language development by asking him to make recording in English and writing the transcriptions. He found that Wes’s grammar developed in three years but Wes did not completely obtain English because Wes still used some of the features with native-like accuracy.

The second case study is a study of two children learning English in a classroom. They were J, an adventurous and confident learner from Portugal and R, a boy from Pakistan. They learned English in London. The focus of the study of them was request. Their development of requesting could be seen clearly. At the first time, they requested something using gestures. Later, they could use nouns in their request and developed to the use of imperative verbs. On the next stage, they began to use modal to request such as ‘want’ and ‘got’. They were able to perform simple requests, but, the requests tended to be very direct. It means that they were less polite without using ‘please’.

Methodological issues

1. The second study is more typical of SLA because researchers have to focus on some specific aspects of language rather than on the whole complex phenomenon.

2. A learner has acquired a particular feature. Acquisition is defined in terms of wether the learners manifest patterns of language use that are more or less the same as native speakers of tarhet language. Researchers have to make a distinction between their knowledge and what learners can do.

3. A possibility to measure whether acquisition has taken place or not is to consider the overuse of linguistic forms. SLA researchers recognize the need to investigate how the relationship between form and function in learners‘ output compoares with that native speaker.

Issues in the description and explanation of learner language

The first issue is that learners make errors of different kinds. It means that they failed to use requests in socially appropriate manner. The second is that learners acquire a large number formulaic chunks, which they use to perform communication functions that are important to them and which contribute to their fluency. An explanation of L2 acquisition must account for both item and system learning and how the two interrelate. The systematic nature of L2 acquisition also requires explanation.