Chapter 7

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Some students speak more than one language. Those students who acquire
any additional language after the language they had in their homes are
learning their second language (L2). Even though it may be their third,
fourth, or tenth to be acquired, the term used is L2. Another common term
for L2 is target language (TL), which refers to any language that is the aim or
goal of learning (Saville-Troike, 2006). The language that they had earlier is
called first language (L1). L1 is often named with the term “native language”
or “mother tongue”. In addition, L1 is not necessary the language that a
person dominantly use. One can also uses L2 more frequent than the L1.

The linguistics field that studies how language learners learn additional
language is called Second Language Acquisition (SLA), refers both to the
study of individuals and groups who are learning a language subsequent to
learning their first one as young children and to the process of learning that
language. Gass and Selinker (2008, as cited in Van Patten & Benati, 2010)
define SLA as the study of how learners create a new language system. As a
research field, they add that SLA is the study of what is learned of a second
language and what is not learned. SLA has been very active in the past
decades in learning how a learner learns the new language(s) and has
contributed significant inputs for language teaching and learning. Many
concepts, methods and approaches in language learning are developed from
notions and theories in SLA. This linguistics field has become a foundation for
understanding the phenomena of language learning.

SLA has emerged as a field of study primarily from within linguistics and
psychology (and their subfields of applied linguistics, psycholinguistics,
sociolinguistics, and social psychology). There are corresponding differences
in what is emphasized by researchers who come from each of these fields:

1. Linguists emphasize the characteristics of the differences and

similarities in the languages that are being learned, and the linguistic
 competence (underlying knowledge) and linguistic performance (actual
production) of learners at various stages of acquisition.

2. Psychologists and psycholinguists emphasize the mental or cognitive

processes involved in acquisition, and the representation of
language(s) in the brain.

3. Sociolinguists emphasize variability in learner linguistic performance,

and extend the scope of study to communicative competence
(underlying knowledge that additionally accounts for language use, or
pragmatic competence).

4. Social psychologists emphasize group-related phenomena, such as

identity and social motivation, and the interactional and larger social
contexts of learning.

A. First Language vs. Second Language (L1 vs. L2)

Most of us realized that we are capable in using a language although we

would never be able to describe the step-by-step activities or tasks we follow
when we learn that language. The language is called the first language (L1),
or the mother tongue. We learn our first language without we even notice
that we are learning. Most of the development of the first language
happened when we are raised in the family and that of course the process
where we use the language to communicate with our parents or the family
members as well as the community in our surrounding most dominantly
during our childhood beginning before the age of about three years old. This
process is called acquisition. Acquisition of more than one

Language during early childhood is called simultaneous multilingualism.

Simultaneous multilingualism results in more than one “native” language for
an individual, though it is undoubtedly much less common than sequential
multilingualism.

Second language, however is tied with some functions in our lives. We should
try to see the differences of functions so that we will be able to see clearly
how the learners in each second language context acquire the target
language. Seville-Troike provides a list of distinguishable definition for second
language:

1. A Second language is typically an official or societal dominant

language needed for education, employment, and other basic
purposes. It is often acquired by minority group members or
immigrants who speak another language natively.

2. A Foreign language is one not widely used in the learner’s immediate

social context which might be used for future travel or other cross-
cultural communication situations, or studied as a curricular
requirement or elective in school, but with no immediate or necessary
practical application.

3. A Library language is one which functions primarily as a tool for further

learning through reading, especially when books or journals in a
desired field of study are not commonly published in the learner’s
native tongue.

4. An Auxiliary language is one which learners need to know for some

official functions in their immediate political setting, or will need for
purposes of wider communication, although their first language servers
most other needs in their lives.

5. A language for specific purposes is a restricted or highly specialized

function for second language, for example: English for Aviation
 Technology, Spanish for agriculture and French for hotel management,
Etc.

However, the same learners in different learning context can learn in both
ESL and EFL. A group of Japanese students learning English in their Class in
Japan is learning English as Foreign Language (EFL). When the same
Japanese students learn English in an English class, say, in USA, they would
be learning English as Second Language (ESL). In either case, they are trying
to learn another language (additional language), so the expression second
language learning is used more generally to describe in both situations.
(Yule, 2006).

B. Why Studying Second Language Acquisition?

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) involves a wide range of language

learning settings and learner characteristics and circumstances. This book
will consider a broad scope of these, examining them from three different
disciplinary perspectives: linguistic, psychological, and social. Different
approaches to the study of SLA have developed from each of these
perspectives in attempts to answer the three basic questions: What exactly
does the L2 learner come to know? How does the learner acquire this
knowledge? Why are some learners more (or less) successful than others?

Much of our L1 acquisition was completed before we ever come to school,

and this development normally takes place without any conscious effort. By
the age of six months and infant has produced all of the vowel sounds and
most of the consonant sounds of any language in the world, including some
that do not occur in the language(s) their parents speak. If children hear
English spoken around them, they will learn to discriminate among those
sounds that make a difference in the meaning of English words (the
phonemes), and they will learn to disregard those that do not.

On average children have mastered most of the distinctive sounds of their

first language before they are three years old, and an awareness of basic
discourse patterns such as conversational turn-taking appear at an even
earlier age. Children control most of the basic L1 grammatical patterns
before they are five or six, although complex grammatical patterns continue
to develop through the school years.

Human are born with a natural ability or innate capacity to learn language.

Such a predisposition must be assumed in order to explain several facts

Language Acquisition

A. First Language (L1) Acquisition

1. Children begin to learn their L1 at the same age, and in much the same
way, whether it is English, Bengali, Korean, Swahili, or any other language in
the world.

2. Children master the basic phonological and grammatical operations in

their L1 by the age of about five or six, as noted above, regardless of what
the language is.

3. Children can understand and create novel utterances; they are not limited
to repeating what they have heard, and indeed the utterances that children
produce are often systematically different from those of the adults around
them.

4. There is a cut-off age for L1 acquisition, beyond which it can never be

complete.

5. Acquisition of L1 is not simply a facet of general intelligence.

B. Key Terminologies in Second Language Acquisition

Input and Intake

S. Pit Corder defines input as the language available from the environment,
and intake as the language that actually makes its way into the learner’s
competence (VanPatten & Benati, 2010).

What is considered as input, to name a few, are the teachers’ instructions,

the materials given by the teacher, and any other forms of language
available or exposed to the students.

The students watching a movie in a target language is a whole lot of input,

but what the students learned after watching the movie is what we call the
intake.

An analogy of poured water from a bucket to a bottle can give us a good way
on understanding input and intake. The amount of water from the bucket is
the input. When it is poured into a bottle, only some of the water gets into
the bottle, leaving the rest poured on the sides of the water. The water that
gets into the bottle is called intake.

Input consists of language that L2 learners are exposed to in a

communicative context. That is, it is language that learners hear or read that
they process for its message or meaning.

Different kinds of input have been discussed over the years, including
comprehensible input, language that learners can readily understand for its
meaning, and modified input, language that is adjusted so that learners can
better comprehend the speakers’ meaning.

Interlanguage

Interlanguage is a term coined in 1972 by Larry Selinker and was intended to

describe the competence of L2 learners and the source of that competence.

The idea was that learners possessed a special competence (or language)
that was independent of the L1 and also independent of the L2, even though
it might show influences from both L1 and L2.
Interlanguage involves both positive and negative transfer from the L1.
Positive Transfer is the use of a feature from the learner’s L1 that is similar to
the L2. Negative Transfer is the use of a feature from the learner’s L1 that is
substantially different from the L2.

Acquisition vs. Learning

Stephen Krashen (1970) made a distinction between learning and

acquisition. For him, learning referred to conscious effort at learning rules
from books and teachers. When learners receive information such as “you
need to add -s to verbs that refer to someone else. This is called third-person
-s,” and then practice this rule, Krashen would consider this learning.
Learning results in a particular kind of knowledge system, an “explicit”
system.

Distinct from learning is acquisition. According to Krashen, acquisition

involves processes by which learners internalize language from exposure to
input, and not because anyone teaches the learner a rule or because he or
she practices it. Unlike learning, acquisition for an L2 learner results in an
implicit (unconscious) linguistic system, just as it would for the L1 learner.

Mistakes vs. Errors

Mistake is an inaccurate statement that, if pointed out, the student can

correct. Often the student will notice the inaccuracy on his/her own and self-
correct. Error is an inaccurate statement that the student does not know is
inaccurate and/or does not know how to correct.

Fossilization

Fossilization is the process in which an interlanguage containing many non-

L2 features stops evolving towards the correct L2 form.

Language Acquisition Device

The language acquisition device (LAD) is an older term coined by Noam

Chomsky in the 1960s to describe an innate or biological endowment for
language and language acquisition. According to Chomsky, children cannot
possibly acquire a first language by mimicking, hypothesis testing, or
generalizing from input data because such strategies would lead them down
the wrong path and cause delays on acquisition. However later, Chomsky has
refined his ideas and no longer speaks of LAD, but instead refers to Universal
Grammar, an innate knowledge source that governs the shape of natural
languages.

LAD refers to an “organ” of the brain that functions as the controlling device
for language acquisition.

This theory was one among concepts developed by Innatist Theory, a theory
that claims languages are inborn, not learned. Language is a hardwired
bioprogram that develops when infants are exposed to it. Acquiring language
is like learning to walk.