Second Language Acquisition

Course Instructor: Ms. Farah Zaib.

Acquisition and Learning

A more significant distinction is made between acquisition and learning. The term acquisition is
used to refer to the gradual development of ability in a language by using it naturally in
communicative situations with others who know the language. The term learning, however, applies
to a more conscious process of accumulating knowledge of the features, such as vocabulary and
grammar, of a language, typically in an institutional setting. (Mathematics, for example, is learned,
not acquired.) Activities associated with learning have traditionally been used in language teaching
in schools and have a tendency, when successful, to result in more knowledge “about” the language
(as demonstrated in tests) than fluency in actually using the language (as demonstrated in social
interaction). Activities associated with acquisition are those experienced by the young child and,
by analogy, those who “pick up” a second language from long periods spent in interaction,
constantly using the language, with native speakers of the language. Those individuals whose L2
exposure is primarily a learning type of experience tend not to develop the same kind of general
proficiency as those who have had more of an acquisition type of experience.
Learner characteristics

By definition, all second language learners, regardless of age, have already acquired at least one
language. This prior knowledge may be an advantage in the sense that they have an idea of how
languages work. On the other hand, knowledge of other languages can lead learners to make
incorrect guesses about how the second language works, and this may result in errors that first
language learners would not make. Very young language learners begin the task of first language
acquisition without the cognitive maturity or metalinguistic awareness that older second language
learners have.

On the one hand, cognitive maturity and metalinguistic awareness allow older learners to salve
problems and engage in discussions about language. It has been suggested that older learners draw
on their problem-solving and metalinguistic abilities precisely because they can no longer access
the innate language acquisition ability they had as young children. In addition to possible cognitive
differences, there are also attitudinal and cultural differences between children and adults.

Course Instructor: Ms. Farah Zaib

Learning conditions

Young second language learners are often allowed to be silent until they are ready to speak. They
may also practise their second language in songs and games that allow them to blend their voices
with those of other children. Older second language learners are often forced to speak from the
earli est days of their learning, whether to meet the requirements of classroom instruction or to
carry out everyday tasks such as shopping, medical visits, or job interviews.

Another way in which younger and older learners may differ is in the amount of time they can
actually spend learning a second language. We know that first language learners spend thousands
of hours in contact with the language or languages spoken around them. Young second language
learners may also be exposed to their second language for many hours every day - in the classroom,
on the playground, or in front of the television. Older learners, especially students in foreign
language classrooms, receive far less exposure perhaps only a few hours a week. Indeed, a typical
foreign language student will have no more than a few hundred hours of exposure, spread out over
a number of years. Adult learners who are immigrants or minority language

speakers often continue to use the language they already know as they fulfil their daily
responsibilities for work and family, and they may use the second language only in limited
situations.

Classroom learners not only spend less time in contact with the new language, they also tend to be
exposed to a far smaller range of discourse types. For example, classroom learners are often taught
language that is somewhat formal in comparison to the language as it is used in most social settings.

In L1, parents tend to respond to the meaning rather than to the grammatical accuracy of their
children's language. Similarly, in second language learning outside classrooms, errors that do not
interfere with meaning are usually overlooked. Nevertheless, interlocutors may react to an error if
they cannot understand what the speaker is trying to say. Thus, errors of grammar and
pronunciation may not be remarked on, but the wrong word choice may receive comment from a
puzzled interlocutor. Especially between adults, it is unlikely that the second language speaker
would be told that something had gone wrong. The only place where feedback on error is typically
present with high frequency is the language classroom.

Course Instructor: Ms. Farah Zaib

One condition that appears to be common to learners of all ages-though not in equal quality or
quantity-is exposure to modified or adapted input. Thisadjusted speech style, called child-directed
speech in first language acquisition, has sometimes been called foreigner talk or teacher talk
depending on the contexts of second language acquisition.

We have all witnessed those painful conversations in which people seem to think that they can
make learners understand better if they simply talk louder!

Studying the language of second language learners

We have seen that children's knowledge of the grammatical system of their first language is built
up in predictable sequences. For example, grammatical morphemes such as the -ing of the present
progressive or the -ed of the simple past are not acquired at the same time, but in a sequence.

 Are there developmental sequences for second language acquisition?

Course Instructor: Ms. Farah Zaib

  How does the prior knowledge of the first language affect the acquisition of the second (or
third) language?
 How does instruction affect second language acquisition?
 Are there differences in the development of learners whose only contact with the new
language is in a classroom and those who use the language in daily life?

Knowing more about the development of learner language helps teachers to assess teaching
procedures in the light of what they can reasonably expect to accomplish in the classroom.

Of course, teachers analyse learner language all the time. They try to determine whether students
have learned what has been taught and how closely their language matches the target language.
But progress cannot always be measured in these terms. Sometimes language acquisition progress
is reflected in a decrease in the use of a correct form that was based on rote memorization or chunk
learning. New errors may be based on an emerging ability to generalize a particular grammatical
form beyond the specific items with which it was first learned. In this sense, an increase in error
may be an indication of progress. For example, like first language learners, second language
learners usually learn the irregular past tense forms of certain common verbs before they learn to
apply the regular simple past -ed marker. That means that a learner who says 'I buyed a bus ticket'
may know more about English grammar than one who says 'I bought a bus ticket'. Without further
information, we cannot conclude that the one who says 'bought' would use the regular past -ed
marker where it is appropriate, but the learner who says 'buyed' has provided evidence of
developing knowledge of a systematic aspect of English.

Teachers and researchers cannot read learners' minds, so they must infer what learners know by
observing what they do. Like those who study first language acquisition, we observe learners'
spontaneous language use, but we also design procedures that help to reveal more about the
knowledge underlying their observable use of language. Without these procedures, it is often
difficult to determine whether a particular behaviour is representative of something systematic in
a learner's current language knowledge or simply an isolated ítem, learned as a chunk.

Like first language learners, second language learners do not learn language simply through
imitation and practice. They produce sentences that are not exactly like those they have heard.

Course Instructor: Ms. Farah Zaib

These new sentences appear to be based on interna! cognitive processes and prior knowledge that
interact with the language they hear around them. Both first and second language acquisition are
best described as developing systems with their own evolving rules and patterns, not simply as
imperfect versions of the target language.

Developmental sequences

Second language learners, like first language learners, pass through sequences of development:
what is learned early by one is learned early by others. Among first language learners, the existence
of developmental sequences may not seem surprising because their language learning is partly tied
to their cognitive development and to their experiences in learning about relationships between
people, events, and objects around them. But the cognitive development of adult or adolescent
second language learners is much more stable, and their experiences with the language are likely
to be quite different, not only from the experiences of a small child, but also different from each
other. Furthermore, second language learners already know another language that has different
patterns for creating sentences and word forms. In light of this, it is more remarkable that we find
developmental sequences that are similar in the developing interlanguage of learners from different
language backgrounds and also similar to those observed in first language acquisition of the same
language. Moreover, the features of the language that are most frequent are not always learned
first. For example, virtually every English sentence has one or more articles ('a' or 'the'), but even
advanced learners have difficulty using these forms correctly in all contexts. Finally, although the
learner's first language does have an influence, many aspects of these developmental stages are
similar among learners from different first language backgrounds.

Phonology

Grammar has been the focus for second language teachers and researchers for a long time.
Vocabulary and pragmatics have also received more attention in recent years. However, we know
less about pronunciation and how it is learned and taught. Pronunciation was a central component
in language teaching when the audiolingual approach was dominant. Several techniques for
teaching pronunciation were developed at that time, and most of them focused on the pronunciation
of segmentals, getting learners to perceive and to produce distinctions between single sounds in
minimal pair drills (for example, 'ship' and 'sheep'). When the audiolingual approach was replaced
by other ways of teaching, attention to pronunciation was minimized if not totally discarded.

Course Instructor: Ms. Farah Zaib

Furthermore, evidence for the critical period hypothesis, suggesting that native-like pronunciation
was an unrealistic goal for older second language learners. When communicative language
teaching (CLT) was first introduced in the late 1970s, little attention was given to the teaching of
pronunciation.

We can all think of examples from our own experiences or those of our students. Japanese and
Korean learners of English often have problems hearing and producing l and r because these
sounds are not distinct in their language. Spanish speakers will often say 'I e-speak e-Spanish'
because Spanish words do not have consonant clusters beginning with s at the beginning of a word.
French speakers may place stress on the last syllable of a word because French usually stresses the
last syllable.

Few languages have the th sounds that are frequent in English, and learners may substitute similar
sounds from their first language (for example, t or d, s or z). Sometimes, however, learners
overcompensate for sounds that they know are difficult. Thus, learners may pronounce a th (as in
'thin' or 'this') where a t or a d sound belongs (saying 'thin' when they mean 'tin' for example). Such
errors are similar to the overgeneralization errors that we saw for grammatical morphemes. If they
replace earlier correct pronunciation of t or d sounds, this may represent progress in learners'
ability to notice and produce the th sound.

One of the controversial issues in pronunciation is related to the question of whether the goal of
second language acquisition is to sound like a 'native speaker.' One obvious problem with the
question is that it suggests that there exists a single correct variety of English, and this is far from
true. Not only are there many different pronunciations of English by American, Australian, British,
Canadian 'native speakers', there are also many other varieties of English that have come to be
used as a lingua franca around the world. Jane Setter and Jennifer Jenkins (2005) and Barbara
Seidlhofer (2011) are among the many scholars who stress the role of English as a lingua franca
(ELF). Indeed, there are now far more speakers of ELF than of English as a first language.

Grammatical morphemes

Researchers have examined the development of grammatical morphemes by learners of English as

a second language in a variety of environments, at different ages, and from different first language
backgrounds. In analysing each learner's speech, researchers identify the obligatory contexts for

Course Instructor: Ms. Farah Zaib

each morpheme, that is, the places in a sentence where the morpheme is necessary to make the
sentence grammatically correct. For example, in the sentence 'Yesterday I play baseball for two
hours', the adverb 'yesterday' creates an obligatory context for a past tense, and 'for two hours' tells
us that the required form is a simple past ('played') rather than a past progressive ('was playing').
Similarly, 'two' creates an obligatory context for a plural -s on 'hours'.

The similarity among learners suggests that the accuracy order cannot be described or explained
in terms of transfer from the learners' first language, and some researchers saw this as strong
evidence against the CAH. However, a thorough review of all the 'morpheme acquisition' studies
shows that the learners' first language does have an influence on acquisition sequences. For
example, learners whose first language has a possessive form that resembles the English ‘s (such
as German and Danish) seem to acquire the English possessive earlier than those whose first
language has a very different way of forming the possessive (such as French or Spanish). And even
though articles appear early in the sequence, learners from many language backgrounds (including
Slavic languages, Chinese, and Japanese) continue to struggle with this aspect of English, even at
advanced levels.

Course Instructor: Ms. Farah Zaib

Negation

The acquisition of negative sentences by second language learners follows a path that looks nearly
identical to the stages for first language acquisition. However, second language learners from
different first language backgrounds behave somewhat differently within those stages. This was
illustrated in John Schumann's (1979) research with Spanish speakers learning English and
Henning Wode's (1978) work on German speakers learning English.

Stage 1

The negative element (usually 'no' or 'not') is typically placed before the verb or the element being
negated. Often, it occurs as the first word in the sentence because the subject is not there.

• No bicycle.
• I no like it.
• Not my friend.

'No' is preferred by most learners in this early stage, perhaps because it is the negative form that is
easiest to hear and recognize in the speech they are exposed to. Italian- and Spanish-speaking
learners may prefer 'no' because it corresponds to the negative form in Italian and Spanish (No
tienen muchos libros). They may continue to use Stage 1negation longer than other learners
because of the similarity to a pattern from their first language. Even at more advanced stages, they
may also use Stage 1 negatives in longer sentences or when they are under pressure. Thus,
similarity to a learner's first language may slow down a learner's progress through a particular
developmental stage.

Stage 2

At this stage, 'no' and 'not' may alternate with 'don't'. However, 'don't' is not marked for person,
number, or tense and it may even be used before modals like 'can' and 'should'.

• He don't like it.

• I don't can sing.

Stage3

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Learners begin to place the negative element after auxiliary verbs like 'are', 'is', and 'can'. But at
this stage, the 'don't' form is still not fully analysed.

• You can not go there.

• He was not happy.
• She don't like rice.

At this stage, German speakers, whose first language has a structure that places the negative after
the verb may generalize the auxiliary-negative pattern to verb-negative and produce sentences such
as:

• They come not [to] home. (Sie kommen nicht nach Hause.)

Stage 4

In this stage, 'do' is marked for tense, person, and number, and most interlanguage sentences
appear to be just like those of the target language.

• lt doesn't work. We didn't have supper.

However, some learners continue to mark tense, person, and number on both the auxiliary and
the verb.

• I didn't went there.

Questions

Manfred Pienemann, Malcolm Johnston, and Geoff Brindley (1988) described a sequence in the
acquisition of questions by learners of English from a variety of first language backgrounds. An
adapted version of the sequence is shown in Stages 1-6 below. The examples (except those in Stage
6) come from French speakers who were playing a game in which they had to ask questions in
order to find out which picture the other player ,(the researcher) was holding. As we saw for
negation, the overall sequence is similar to the one observed in first language acquisition. And
again, there are some differences that are attributable to first language influence.

Stage 1

Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments.

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 • Dog?
• Four children?
• What's that?

Stage2

Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting.

• It's a monster in the right comer?

• The boys throw the shoes?

Declarative order with rising intonation is common in yes/no questions in informal spoken French.
French speakers may hypothesize that in English, as in French, inversion is optional.

Stage3

Fronting: do-fronting, wh-fronting without inversion, other fronting.

• Do you have a shoes on your picture?

• Where the children are playing?
• Does in this picture there is four astronauts?
• Is the picture has two planets on top?

French has an invariant form est-ce que (literally 'is it that') that can be placed before a declarative
sentence to make a question. For example, Jean aime lecinéma becomes Est-ce que]ean aime le
cinéma? ('is it that)John likes movies?' French speakers may think that 'do' or 'does' is such an
invariant form and continue to produce Stage 3 questions for some time.

Stage4

lnversion in wh- + copula; yes/no questions with other auxiliaries.

• Where is the sun?

• Is there a fish in the water?

At Stage 4, German speakers may infer that if English uses subject-auxiliary inversion, it may
also permit inversion with full verbs, as German does, leading them to produce questions such as
'Like you baseball?' (Magst du basebalP.)

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Stage5

lnversion in wh- questions with both an auxiliary and a main verb.

• How do you say 'proche'?

• What's the boy doing?

French-speaking learners may have difficulty using Stage 5 questions in which the subject is a
noun rather than a pronoun. They may say (and accept as grammatical) 'Why do you like
chocolate?' but not 'Why do children like chocolate?' In this, they are drawing on French, where it
is often ungrammatical to use inversion with a noun subject ( *Pourquoi aiment les enfants
lechocolat?).

Stage6

Complex questions.

• question tag: It's better, isn't it?

• negative question: Why can't you go?
• embedded question: Can you tell me what the date is today?

Possessive determiners

A developmental sequence for the English possessive forms 'his' and 'her' has been observed in the
interlanguage of French- and Spanish-speaking learners. In English, the choice of 'his' or 'her' (or
'its') is determined by the natural gender of the possessor. In French and Spanish (and many other
languages), the correct form of the possessive determiner matches the grammatical gender of the
object or person that is possessed. This can be illustrated with the following translation equivalents
for French and English:

• Sa mere = his mother or her mother

• Son chien = his dog or her dog
• Ses enfants = his children or her children

Note that when the object possessed is a body part, French typically uses a definite article rather
than a possessive determiner.

• Il s'est cassé le bras = He broke the [his] arm.

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Eights stages can be grouped into three main stages. The examples shown below come from
French-speaking students learning English. They are describing cartoon drawings of family events
and interactions.

Stage 1: Pre-emergence

No use of 'his' and 'her'. Definite article or 'your' used for all persons, genders,

and numbers.

• The little boy play with the bicycle.

• He have band-aid on the arm, the leg, the stomach.
• This boy cry in the arm of your mother.
• There is one girl talk with your dad.

Stage2: Emergence

Emergence of 'his' and/or 'her', with a strong preference to use only one of the forms.

• The mother is dressing her little boy, and she put her clothes, her pant, her coat, and then
she finish.
• The girl making hisself beautiful. She put the make-up on his hand, on his head, and his
father is surprise.

Stage3: Post-emergence

Differentiated use of 'his' and 'her' but not when the object possessed has natural gender.

• The girl fell on her bicycle. She look his father and cry.
• The dad put her little girl on his shoulder, and after, on his back.

At the end of the post-emergence stage, in what White (2008) calls Stage 8, learners finally achieve
error-free use of 'his' and 'her' in all contexts including natural gender and body parts.

• The little girl with her dad play together. And the dad take his girl on his shoulder and he
hurt his back.

When English speakers learn French, or other languages that use grammatical gender as the basis
for choosing possessive determiners, they must also learn a new way of determining the gender of

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the possessive determiner. The need to learn the grammatical gender of each and every noun
further adds to the challenge.

Reference to past

A number of researchers, including Jürgen Meisel (1987), have observed the developing ability to
use language to locate events in time. The research has shown that learners from different first
language backgrounds and acquiring a variety of second languages, acquire the language for
referring to past events in a similar pattern. Like young children, learners with limited language
may simply refer to events in the order in which they occurred or mention a time or place to show
that the event occurred in the past.

• Viet Nam. We work too hard.

• My son come. He work in restaurant.

Later, learners start to attach a grammatical morpheme marking the verb for past, although it may
not be the one that the target language uses for that meaning.

• Me working long time. Now stop.

Past tense forms of irregular verbs may be used before the regular past is used

reliably.

• We went to school every day. We spoke Spanish.

After they begin marking past tense on regular verbs, learners may overgeneralize the regular -ed
ending or the use of the wrong past tense form (for example, the present perfect rather than the
simple past).

• My sister catched a big fish.

• She has lived here since fifteen years.

First language can have an influence here too. Laura Collins (2002) investigated the different
English verb forms used by French speakers. The past tense that is most commonly used in spoken
French and that is usually a translation of a simple past form in English is a form that resembles

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the present perfect in English. Thus, the equivalent of 'Yesterday he ate an apple' is Hier il a mangé
un epomme - literally, 'Yesterday he has eaten an apple'.

Syntax:

Another way in which learners' first languages can affect second language acquisition is by making
it difficult for them to notice that something they are saying is not a feature of the language as it is
used by more proficient speakers. Lydia White (1991) gave the example of adverb placement in
French and English. Both languages allow adverbs in several positions in simple sentences.
However, as the examples in Table 2.4 show, there are some differences. English, but not French,
allows SAVO order; French, but not English, allows SVAO.

lt seems fairly easy for French-speaking learners of English to add SAVO to their repertoire and
for English-speaking learners of French to add SVAO, but both groups have difficulty getting rid
of a pattern that does not occur in the target language if it is similar to one in their first language.
English speaking learners of French continue to accept SAVO as grammatical, and French-

Course Instructor: Ms. Farah Zaib

speaking learners of English accept SVAO. As White points out, it is difficult to notice that
something is not present in the input, especially when its translation equivalent sounds perfectly
all right and communication is not disrupted. This may be even more challenging when learners
interact with others from the same first language background. Their own errors are not likely to
cause misunderstanding and, in fact, they may hear others make the same errors.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of how language is used in context to express such things as directness,
politeness, and deference. Even if learners acquire a vocabulary of 5,000 words and a good
knowledge of the syntax and morphology of the target language, they can still encounter difficulty
in using language. They also need to acquire skills for interpreting requests, responding politely to
compliments or apologies, recognizing humour, and managing conversations. They need to learn
to recognize the many meanings that the same sentence can have in different situations. Think of
the many ways one might interpret an apparently simple question such as 'Is that your dog?' It

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might precede an expression of admiration for an attractive pet, or it might be an urgent request to
get the dog out of the speaker's flowerbed. Similarly, the same basic meaning is altered when it is
expressed in different ways. For example, we would probably assume that the relationship between
speaker

and listener is very different if we hear 'Give me that book' or 'I wonder if you'd mind letting me
have that book when you've finished with it'. Researchers identified five Stages:

Stage 1 consists of minimal language

that is often incomplete and highly context-dependent. Stage 2 includes primarily memorized
routines and frequent use of imperatives. Stage 3 is marked by less use of formulas, more
productive speech, and some mitigation of requests. Stage 4 involves more complex language and
increased use of mitigation, especially supportive statements. Stage 5 is marked by more
refinement of the force of requests. The five stages, their characteristics and examples are given
below.

Stage 1: Pre-basic

Highly context-dependent, no syntax, no relational goals.

• Me no blue.
• Sir.

Stage2: Formulaic

Reliance on unanalysed formulas and imperatives.

• Let's play the game.

• Let's eat breakfast.
• Don't look.

Stage 3: Unpacking

Formulas incorporated into productive language use, shift to conventional

indirectness.

• Can you pass the pencil please?

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 • Can you do another one for me?

Stage 4: Pragmatic expansion

Addition of new forms to repertoire, increased use of mitigation, more complex syntax.

• Could I have another chocolate because my children-1have five children.

• Can I see it so I can copy it?

Stage 5: Fine tuning

Fine tuning of requestive force to participants, goals, and contexts.

• You could put some Blu Tack clown there.

• Is there any more white?

Course Instructor: Ms. Farah Zaib