Unit 1. The study of Second Language Acquisition.

Unit 1.
The Study of Second Language
Acquisition

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 Unit 1. The study of Second Language Acquisition.

1.1. DEFINING SLA

• Complete the following text with the words or expression from the box.

language loss grammar acquisition wide concerned

native broad settings foreign proficiency processes

learned learners rocket exposure patterns

According to Nunan (2001) “the term Second language acquisition (SLA) refers to
the 1 through which someone acquires one or more second or 2
languages. SLA researchers look at 3 in
naturalistic contexts and in classroom settings.”

According to Gass & Selinker (2008) “SLA is the study of how second languages are
4 , in other words, it is the study of non-primary language; that is , the
acquisition of a language beyond the native language. It is the study of how learners
create a new language with only limited 5 to a second language.

It is the study of what is learned of a second language and what is not learned; it is
the study of why most second language 6 do not achieve the same degree of
knowledge and 7 in a second language as they do in their native
language; it is also the study of why only some learners appear to achieve native-like
proficiency in more than one language. Additionally, second language acquisition is 8
with the nature of the hypotheses (whether conscious or unconscious) that
learners come up with regarding the rules of second language. Are these rules like those
of the native 9 ? Are they like the rules of the language being
learned? Are there new rules, like neither language, being formed? Are there 10
that are common to all learners regardless of the native language being
learned? Do the rules created by second language vary according to the context of use?
Do these rules and patterns vary more in individuals in a second language than they vary
in the native language?”

According to Doughty & Long (2003) “the scope of SLA is 11 ____ It

encompasses basic and applied work on the acquisition and 12 of second (third,
etc.) languages and dialects by children and adults, learning naturalistically and/or with
the aid of formal instruction, as individuals or in groups, in foreign, second language and
lingua franca 13 .”

QUESTIONS:

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 Unit 1. The study of Second Language Acquisition.

After you completed the text with the missing words, re-read the text and answer the
following questions:

1. What is the difference between naturalistic and formal instruction settings? Can
you provide examples for both SLA settings?

2. What, do you think, is the difference between language learning and language
acquisition?

1.2. SLA’s background

Doughty and Long (2003) stated that “SLA has long been a common activity for a
majority of the human species and is becoming ever more vital as second languages
themselves increase in importance. In many parts of the world monolingualism is the
marked case. Countless children grow up in societies where they are exposed to one
language at home, sometimes two, another when they travel to a town nearby to attend
primary or secondary school, and a third or fourth if they move to a larger city or another
province for tertiary education or work.”
“The obvious social importance of second language acquisition is by no means the
only reason for researchers’ interest, and for many, not the primary reason or not at all.
As a widespread, highly complex, uniquely human, cognitive process, language learning of
all kinds merits careful study for what it can reveal about the nature of human mind and
intelligence.”
• Here you have a few statements about the history and background of SLA, are
they True or False in your opinion?

1. ______SLA is a very old discipline with more than a hundred years of tradition.
2. ______The latest studies have been conducted in order to check up to which
extent L1 (native language) influence in the acquisition of L2 (second or foreign
language).
3. ______Those studies have resulted in the “Contrastive Analysis” (CA) hypothesis.
4. ______When contrasting L1 and L2, researchers discarded to focus on how errors
are likely to occur.

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5. ______Contrastivists pointed out that learners’ difficulties to learn a language

could not be predicted on the basis of a systematic comparison of the two
languages.
6. ______In 1967 Corder carried out an intense research on learners’ errors. He made
evident the pathology on the part of learners.
7. ______The systematic study of learners’ errors revealed that learners appeared to
move through a series of stages as they developed competence in the TL.
8. ______ in 1973 Brown conducted a research in which Brown showed that the
relationship between the order of acquisition of some grammar features by some
children and the frequency with which parents used those features was very high.

Van Patten and Benatti (2010) sum up the rest of the SLA history as it goes…

By the early 1980s, Krashen’s ideas on acquisition (see Monitor Theory and
acquisition versus learning, and Input Hypothesis, for example) were mainstream. He had
posited that learners acquire language through interaction with language, most notably
through comprehension of the input they are exposed to. While fundamentally true,
Krashen’s ideas left a good amount of acquisition unexplained and the 1980s overall is
marked by a critical review of his ideas and the quest for more explanatory models about
the specifics of acquisition. For example, if L1 influence is limited, why was it limited? If
learners had a built-in syllabus, what was this built-in syllabus and where did it come
from? And if all learners needed was exposure to input, why were so many L2 learners
non-native-like after so many years of interaction with the language?
The 1990s witnessed a bourgeoning of competing theoretical ideas and
approaches regarding SLA, with an additional plethora of isolated hypotheses that took
hold in the general literature (e.g., noticing, the Output Hypothesis, the Interaction
Hypothesis—all of which had roots in the 1980s). Nonetheless, two major approaches
dominated the field: the application of linguistic theory and the application of certain
psychological approaches, namely, skill theory and the modern version of associationism
(see connectionism). The linguistic theoretical approach continued to be concerned with
an adequate description of interlanguage as well as its explanation. That is, scholars in this
camp focused on the nature of the learner’s internal mental representation and what
constrained it. A central tenet of this approach is that language is special. By special these
scholars meant that language is uniquely human, is encapsulated in its own module in the
mind/brain, and comes equipped from birth with a set of language-specific constraints
called Universal Grammar. Thus, acquisition was a particular kind of experience for
humans that involved the interaction of Universal Grammar with data from the outside
world.
In the 21st Century, SLA as a discipline, it is splintered, with certain fields not in
dialogue with others. Both linguistic and cognitive approaches continue to dominate the
field and we do not envision this changing in the near future, largely because of the sheer
number of people working within these fields and also because of the healthy research
agenda both camps enjoy outside the field of SLA; that is, linguistic theory is alive and well
and is applied to a range of endeavours from child first language acquisition to natural
language processing, and psychology as a discipline is very well situated within academia
and has been for over a century. Thus, we see the field of SLA staying largely focused on
the mind/brain.

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1.3. Related disciplines

Gass and Selinker (2008) claim the importance and impact of SLA in several areas
of study, can you guess which disciplines may be related to SLA?

Moreover…

Language pedagogy:

People have come to realize that if one is to develop language teaching methodologies,
there has to be firm basis for those methodologies in language learning.
Cross-cultural communication and language use:

Expectations that teachers have about students. Similarly, in interactions with speakers of
another language/culture, we have certain expectations and we often produce
stereotyped reactions.

Languages policy and language planning:

Designing programmes can only be debated if one is properly informed of the

realities and constraints of learning a second language.
1.4. Research in SLA

Most research on SLA has been brought about by graduate training in a variety of
fields, including linguistics, applied linguistics, psychology, communication, foreign
language, education, educational psychology and anthropology.
In the 1980s and 1990s the sophistication in the choice data collection procedures
increased alongside with the analysis methods, some of them were original to SLA
researchers.
The vast majority of studies in SLA are cross-sectional with serious resulting
limitations on the conclusions that can be drawn on some important issues.
Cross-sectional vs. longitudinal

The survey literature distinguishes cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, but

most surveys conducted in practice are based on cross-sectional designs. The limitations
of these cross-sectional surveys are that they are confined to a specific point in time. That
is, they provide us with a snapshot of a sample of a population at a single point in time.
Since population characteristics constantly change over time, cross-sectional surveys for
such situations do not reflect the actual situation.
This raises the issue of measuring social characteristics over time in a single study –
the objective of a longitudinal study. The study of change over time is called longitudinal
analysis. In this sense, longitudinal studies involve the study of a process of change over a
period of time.
Cross-sectional studies focus on the product oriented research and Longitudinal
studies on the process oriented research.

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1.7. Final self-assessment

Can you assess yourself?

1. I can spot which are the origins of SLA. 1 2 3 4 5

Grading criteria

2. I can relate SLA to different disciplines. 1 2 3 4 5

3. I can identify the major facts in the history of SLA. 1 2 3 4 5

4. I can define several key concepts in SLA:

1 2 3 4 5
Acquisition, learning, input, intake, fossilization,

1.6. Bibliography and resources

• Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (2008) Second Language Acquisition. An Introductory Course.

New York: Routledge.
• Carter, R & Nunan, D. (2001) The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers
of Other Languages. Cambridge: CUP, 87-92.
• Doughty, C.J. & Long, M. K. (2003) The Scope of Inquiry and Goals of SLA. In
Doughty, C.J. & Long, M. K. The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. (Pp. 3
– 16) Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing,
• Van Patten, B. & Benati, A. (2010) Key Terms in Second Language Acquisition.
London: Continuum
• http://cvc.cervantes.es/ensenanza/biblioteca_ele/diccio_ele/default.htm