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Brief introdoction to SLA
(2007-11-22 14:35:30)
标签：
人文/历史 |
分类： 语言习得 |
What is
SLA?
●
Second language acquisition is in fact the conscious or unconscious
process by which a language other than one’s mother language is
learnt in either a natural or tutored setting. SLA is the product
of many factors pertaining to the learner on the one hand, and the
learning situation on the other hand.
●
Second Language Acquisition is a new field appeared in the 1960s in
which how the learners of the second language (L2) learn or acquire
their knowledge of L2 is studied. It exerted great influences on
human language learning, development of cognition.
The history of
SLA
Second language
acquisition appeared earlier in the 1960s when at that time, people
gradually shifted their attention from language teaching to
language learning. Beginning in the post –war years, and carrying
out into the 1960s, there was a strong assumption that most of the
difficulties facing L2 learners were imposed by the difficulties
between L1 and L2
It
is assumed that differences between L1 and L2 would interface with
L2 learning, and where the L1 and L2 were similar, L1 would
actively aid L2learning. This assumption were welcomed and accepted
by many researchers at that time. This approach is called
Contrastive Analysis (CA). However, later discoveries by many
scholars in fact challenged this assumption (e.g, Dulay and Burt,
1974). They found that what CA assumed was not so persuasive and
reasonable. The later discoveries focused more on learners’
language and errors, which was called Error Analysis (EA). This
approach provided methods in studying learners’ errors and held
that the errors were full of meanings and significance. Their
theories sound much more reasonable than CA and prospered in the
late 1960s and 1970s. However, still, their theory and framework
were not complete. Based on EA, anther theories called
Interlanguage Hypothesis was established with Selinker as the
pioneer. This theory put the study of second language in a much
wider range. It regarded that language learners’ language is
developing and interlocking; it is open at any stage in their
learning. Following this line, it is easy to find how theories of
second language learning were developed and
constructed.
With the
development of second language acquisition, people focus more on
learners’ factors and the learning environment, etc. and many
findings have been presented since then.
Right now, SLA is a
science of language learning which cover the fields like
linguistics, psycho-linguistics, cognitive science, computer
sciences and neurological science, etc. It has already developed
into a multi-disciplinary sciences with many researchers engaged
in.
Important Terms in SLA
L1: Learners’
mother tongue, or in other words, Learners’ first language
considering the order of language acquisition
L2: The second
language, that is, the language the learners acquire or learn after
his first language considering the order of language acquisition.
L2 is compared with learners’ L1/native language.
NL: native
language
TL: target
language
FL: Any language
other than the mother tongue that is learned by the learners. FL is
compared with learners’ native language/ mother
tongue.
FL/L2: FL and L2
are different if we consider the language environment of learning.
For L2 learning, usually, it means that learners just learn the
language in the target language environment, or in other words,
they learn the language in the target language community, the
natural language environment. While FL learners learn the language
not in the target language environment; they could only learn the
language by formal instruction in the classroom. However, if we
ignore the factor of language environment, L2 and FL are sometimes
used alternatively, referring to the language that has been learner
after L1/native language.
TEFL: Teaching
English as A Foreign Language
TESL: Teaching
English as A Second Language
CA: Contrastive
Analysis
EA: Error
Analysis
IL
Interlanguage
Acquisition/Learning
There are three
approaches to account for second language acquisition, namely,
behaviorism, mentalists and interactinalists (交互论)
Behaviorism行为主义
Behaviorists set
out to explain behavior by observing the responses that took place
when particular stimuli were presented. Therefore different stimuli
produced different responses from a learner. The association of a
particular response with particular stimulus constitutes a
habit.
Pioneers of
behaviorism:
A. Watson: classical
behaviorism (经典行为主义): The presence of the stimulus called forth a
response, and if the stimulus occurred sufficiently and frequently,
the response became practiced and automatized.
B. Skinner:
Neo-behaviorism (新行为主义) ：the learning of a habit, then, could occur
through imitation or through reinforcement (rewarded or
punished)
In short, a habit was formed when a particular
stimulus became regularly linked with a particular response.
Various theories combined, habit formation
involves many factors concerning learning, among which, imitation
and reinforcement were the means by which the learner identified
the stimulus—response associations that constituted the habits of
L2.
Mentalists 心灵主义（也叫内在主义）
Mentalist was
symbolized by Norm Chomsky. In his article, Chomsky attacked
Skinner’s theory of language learning. Chomsky stressed the active
contribution of the child and minimized the importance of imitation
and reinforcement. He claimed that the child’s knowledge of his
mother tongue was derived from a Universal Grammar (UG) which specified the
essential from that any natural language could take. Chomsky
believed that there must exist a certain mechanism in the mind that
help the children to acquire language, help to turn universal
grammar into specific grammar. He named this mechanism as Language
Acquisition Device (LAD). According to Chomsky, LAD served as a
trigger for activating the
McNeill (1970)
stated that Universal Grammar existed as a set of innate
linguistic principles which comprised the ‘initial state’ and which
controlled the form which the sentence of any given language could
take.
UG
could be the gift biologically inherited from parents, which
consists of a set of principle and parameters, and environment of a
specific language will trigger the mechanism of language
acquisition (LAD), thus learners’ UG will gradually change into the
specific language.
In
short, mentalist view of L1 acquisition posited the
following:
1.
Language is human-specific faculty.
2.
Language exists as an independent faculty in the human
mind.
3.
The primary determinant of L1 acquisition is the child’s
acquisition device’ which is genetically endowed and provides the
child with a se of principles about grammar.
4.
The process of acquisition atrophies with age.
5.
The process of acquisition consists of hypothesis-testing, by
which, we mean the grammar of the learners’ mother tongue is
related to the principles of the ‘universal grammar’.
Contrastive
Analysis (CA)
Contrastive
Analysis was rooted in the practical need to teach a L2 in the most
effective way possible. It’s psychological base is behaviorism and
linguistic base is structuralism. The theory was first advanced by
Lado in the 1950s when he wrote his famous monograph Linguistics across Cultures. In this book, Lado
proclaimed that most of the difficulties originated from the
differences between L1 and L1. He believed that the more different
the two languages are, the more difficult learning would be, and by
knowing this, we could predict what errors would appear. For
enthusiasts, language learner’s error is the failure of learning
and thus needs to be avoided. It is obvious that the linguistic and
psychological bases of CA are structuralism and behaviorism
respectively. Furthermore, Lado and his followers even provided the
degree of differences between two languages. There existed a strong
and a weak form of Contrastive Analysis (Wardhaugh 1970). The
strong form claims that all L2 errors can be predicated by
identifying the differences between the target language and the
learner’s L1. The weak form of the hypothesis claims to be
diagnostic. (To check where could be erroneous).
Although CA seemed
to be somewhat reasonable, still, it met many challenges from
researchers, especially researcher of an academic school, namely,
Error Analysis (EA). Many researchers found that the predictability
of CA is doubtful, besides, not all the errors occur because of L1
interference and errors predicted by CA did not appear while errors
not predicted actually appeared. What’s more, with the rising of
Chomsky’s mentalists’ theory, the psychological base (behaviorism)
was declined, and CA was almost abandoned by people.
Anyway, even though
CA was criticized and challenged, some of its theory is still
effective and meaningful. For instance, contrast between L1 and L2
is still necessary, and, we cannot ignore L1 transference in L2
learning. There needs to be a reappraisal of CA.
Error
Analysis
In
the late 1960s, CA went to its end and many researchers shifted
their attention to some other theories, which paved the way for
Error Analysis. Error Analysis was actually established with
applied linguist Corder as the pioneer. In his famous article
The Significance of Learners’ Errors,
Corder (1967) points out that learners’ errors are significant in
three ways:
●
They provide the teacher with information about how much the
learner has learnt;
●
They provide the researcher with evidence of how language has been
learnt;
●
They serve as devices by which the learners discover the rules of
the target language.
For Corder and
other researchers, errors are meaningful, which are viewed as a
reflection on learners’ mental knowledge of the second language –
their interlanguage grammar. Corder (1967) believes that that both
L1 and L2 learners make errors in order to test out certain
hypotheses about the nature of the language they are learning.
Corder sees the making of errors as a strategy and evidence of
learners’ internal processing (Ellis, 1994:47).
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