5. Second Language Acquisition

The biggest difference between L1 and L2 acquisition…

______________: is not age/maturity/cognitive development, but the existence of a first language; L2 learners have a systematic interlanguage grammar (IL). Existence of a first language has the greatest impact

Interlanguage Grammar

______________: a system of mental representations influenced by both the first and the second language and has features of each

• An intermediate grammar , Contains features of both L1 (ex. an accent) and L2 (target language).

• Evolving, dynamic system of rules and processes (grammar) acquired while a speaker is learning L2

  •When IL stops changing (improving), it is said to have fossilized, or reached a plateau

Transfer

______________: a feature or rule from L1 is carried into the IL grammar (ie. syllable- final obstruent devoicing in German)

Cree Phonological Transfer

______________: Cree children making the /f/ sound, they pronounced them as p

Examples of phonological transfer

______________: An L2 learner’s speech bears resemblance to their L1

The final state of the target language

______________: looks different for different speakers, but in general, the speaker should have some form of proficiency or communicative competence.

Proficiency/Competence

______________: There is more to language learning than phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.

Grammatical Competence

______________: Vocabulary, Syntax, Morphology, Phonology/Graphology

Textual Competence

______________: Cohesion, Rhetorical, the ability to string sentences together

Illocutionary Competence

______________: The ability to convey meaning in a variety of ways, functional abilities (“can you pass the salt”)

Sociolinguistic Competence

______________: The ability to use language in ways appropriate to the situation. Dialect, Cultural references, Register

Common European Framework for Reference for Languages (CEFR)

______________: Most common self-assessment globally

Types of Non-Phonetic/Phonological Errors

____________: Found in the acquisition of English

• Lexical

• Morphological

• Syntactic

Lexical Errors

• Juana is embarrassed. (meaning ‘pregnant,’ from Spanish embarazada ‘pregnant’)

• I live in a two-bedroom department.

Morphological Errors

• I didn’t took the car yesterday. (marking the past tense on both auxiliary and main verbs)

• She get ups late. (agreement marker on preposition instead of verb)

Syntactic Errors

• He drinks frequently tea. (French places the main verb before the adverb.)

• There’s the man that I saw him. (Some languages (e.g., Arabic, Turkish) allow pronouns in this position in a relative clause.)

An Accent

__________: is phonological transfer from L1

• Most L2 learners will have to learn to produce and perceive some   sounds that are not found in their L1

• It’s rare a language has the exact same phonemic inventory

• We ignore things that are unimportant (ex. aspiration)

Difficult Sounds to Acquire

• Unmarked structures: simple and/or common across human languages, acquired first cross-linguistically among children. (/t/)

• Marked Structures: Complex or less common, learned later (/θ/)

• Marked Differential Hypothesis

Markedness Differential Hypothesis

____________: structures that are typologically marked will be more difficult than their unmarked counterparts for second language learners

Acquiring New Features

___________: Features that are absent in the L1 can be acquired in the L2

• Ex. Prosodic Phonology

  • Languages vary on what segments they allow in onset, nucleus, and coda position.

  • English is very permissive, allowing multiple-consonant clusters in onset (spring) and coda (sixths), as well as syllabic consonants in nucleus position (mitten).

  • Many languages, like Hawaiian, have a strict (C)V structure (allowing no coda)

• Language learners must learn to both perceive and produce L2 features absent in their L1 (illusory vowels)

Prosodic Phonology

• ex. most varieties of Arabic do not allow more than one consonant at the beginning of a syllable, so that the longest possible syllable is CVC

Deletion & Epenthesis Strategy

__________: As learners’ proficiency increases, they make more epenthesis repairs than deletion repairs.

• Mandarin Chinese allows only /n/ and /ŋ/ in coda position

Illusory Vowels

__________: Studies done with L2 learners whose L1s do not allow [s]+consonant clusters (such as [st], [sn], [sl]) reveal that perceptual accuracy is low in experimental tasks

• The Japanese, Thai, and Brazilian Portuguese subjects had error rates ranging between 50-72% in perceiving these clusters. They heard an ______________ in these stimulus items. For these subjects, it seems that their non-targetlike production stems from non-targetlike perception. And the non-targetlike perception results from a non-targetlike interlanguage grammar.

• Spanish doesn’t have [sp] at the beginning, they heard the vowel when there wasn’t one.

Factors Affecting Additional Language Acquisition

• Age

• Individual Differences/Affective Factors

  • Motivation & Degree of motivation

• Sex

• Cognitive Style

• Sensory Preference

• Personality

• Learning Strategies

Age Factor

___________: In general, people who begin learning L2 before the age of 6 can achieve native-like speech and are more successful at acquiring language. The results for people who start learning between the ages of 7 and 14 are much more varied. Some end up with native-like speech, and some do not.

• There is no current evidence of anything biological (like brain lateralization) that prevents adults from acquiring proficiency in a second language.

• Recent research demonstrates that people who start learning their second language as adults are able to reach a final state that is indistinguishable from native speakers.

Are children more successful L2 learners than adults?

_________: The initial rate (the speed at which L2 material is learned early in the L2 learning process): adults have an advantage. Ultimate achievement (the “end” result of L2 study): children are more successful.

• As a result, children may learn better in a naturalistic/informal way, while adults may learn better with formal instruction

Sex Factors

_________: Women outperform men in some verbal fluency tests (finding words that begin with a certain letter)

• Women’s brains may be less asymmetrically organized than men’s for speech

• Women seem to be better at memorizing complex lexical forms, while men are better at computing compositional rules

• Higher androgen levels correlate with better automatized skills, while higher estrogen correlates with better semantic/interpretive skills

• Women report higher levels of articulatory and motor ability when   experiencing high estrogen levels during the menstrual cycle

Verbal Tasks & The Menstrual Cycles

A female advantage for verbal fluency and verbal memory is well documented. Accordingly, the predominant hypothesis for menstrual cycle studies on verbal fluency and memory has thus been that women should perform better at these tasks during time-periods of high estrogen levels, i.e., during the late follicular phase or mid-luteal phase.

The most frequently used tasks include verbal fluency and verbal recall, but tests reflecting semantic retrieval and implicit verbal memory have also been employed. Relatively few studies have documented any significant findings across the menstrual cycle and no consistent pattern, according to the above hypotheses, emerges

Two imaging studies have evaluated verbal tasks across the menstrual cycle. In line with the behavioral results, found no difference in brain activation during verb generation between women examined in the early follicular and late follicular/early luteal phase.

Dietrich, using a similar task, on the other hand reported on increased activation of a number of language related areas (BA 45/46, 6, and 40) during the late follicular phase in comparison with the early follicular phase

Aptitude Factors

_________: The hypothesis that possessing various degrees of certain abilities predicts correlated degrees of success in L2 acquisition.

• L2 success may be gained by _________ in a combination or a single component

• Language learning __________ “is not completely distinct from general cognitive abilities, as represented by intelligence tests, but it is far from the same thing.”

• Carroll (1965) proposed four components underlying the language “talent”: Phonemic coding ability, Inductive language learning, grammatical sensitivity, associative memory capacity.

4 Components of Language “Talent” (Carol)

1. Phonemic coding ability: the capacity to process auditory input into segments that can be stored and retrieved; allows input to become intake (fully processable); the ability to analyze speech into phonemes

2. Inductive language learning ability: the capacity to discover rules, patterns, generalizations, etc. by observing examples

3. Grammatical sensitivity: the ability to recognize the grammatical functions of words within sentences, the awareness of syntactic patterns

4. Associative memory capacity: the ability to learn, store, recall, and use linguistic items, like remembering a name

The Defensive Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB)

__________: is a standardized government test, approximately two hours in length, used to determine the natural ability of armed services members to learn a foreign language.

• difficult to study, as it’s designed to measure language-learning potential, not current knowledge.

• Gibberish language, studying the grammatical rules that apply to each specific section of the test and knowing what to expect, will give you a definite advantage

• Military, linguist, cryptographer, signal intelligence

Cognitive Style Factors

_________: Particular cognitive styles (field independence, focus on form) may lead to greater success. A learner’s preferred way of processing (perceiving, conceptualizing, organizing, recalling information)

• AGE: adults tend to extend existing categories in L1 to L2, while   children notice differences and tend to create new categories   accordingly

  • English vs. Spanish [t]

Perception

Cognitive Factors

__________: Individuals who have difficulty discerning a figure apart from the ground (or field) within which it is embedded are FIELD DEPENDENT. Individuals who have no difficulty with this test are FIELD INDEPENDENT.

• Learners who can easily disassemble or restructure visual stimuli and rely on internal vs. external referents (FD) are considered more global and holistic in processing new information; individuals who are FI are more particularistic and analytic, maybe better at learning language

Focus on Form

_________: Talented L2 learners may have the ability to focus more on ____ than on meaning

Form

• Attention to ling. features of the language

• Grammatical rules and constructs

• Analyze a text in terms of how it represents the rules of the language

Meaning

• No attention to formal elements of the language

• Understanding the message

• Focus on the text’s message

Sensory Preference

________: No means has an inherent advantage over the others, but learners feel more comfortable when the instructional strategies are congruent with their preference.

• Visual: Learn through seeing

• Auditory: Learn through listening

• Kinesthetic (movement-oriented),

• Tactical (touch-oriented)

Personality Factors

_________: Higher anxiety correlates negatively with measures of L2 proficiency, while lower anxiety correlates with self-confidence and risk-taking/adventurous traits

• Successful language learners might feel less anxious in L2 situations, and thus be more self-confident

• Instructional context or task influences anxiety levels (e.g. exams vs. writing exercises, whole-class vs. small group activities)

• Cultural differences may influence anxiety level (e.g. oral performance may cause more anxiety in cultures like Korean which place a high value on “face” or projecting a positive self-image)

• Low anxiety and high self-confidence increase motivation and social interaction, which have a positive impact on L2 learning

Learning Strategy Factors

____________: Some learning strategies (e.g., metacognition) are more effective than others, linked to motivation, cognitive style, personality, cultural-specific socialization

• Metacognitive, Cognitive, Social/Affective

Good learners have the following major traits:

• Concern for language form (but also attention to meaning)

• Concern for communication

• Active task approach (engaged in the learning process)

• Awareness of the learning process (metacognition)

• Capacity to use strategies flexibly in accordance with task   requirements

Complexity Theory

___________: views L2 learning as a complex, interconnected and changing system that integrates linguistic, social, and psychological factors

Metacognitive Learning Style

____________: regulate language learning by planning and monitoring;

• e.g. previewing a concept or principle in anticipation of a learning activity; deciding to advance to attend to specific aspects of input; rehearsing linguistic components which will be required for an upcoming language task; self- monitoring of progress and knowledge states

Cognitive Learning Style

____________: make use of direct analysis or synthesis of linguistic material;

• e.g. repeating after a language model; translating from L1; remembering a new word in L2 by relating it to one that sounds the same in L1, or by creating vivid images; guessing meanings of new material through inferencing

Social/Affective Learning Style

____________: involves interaction with others;

• e.g. seeking opportunities to interact with native speakers; working cooperatively with peer to obtain feedback or pool information; asking questions to obtain clarification; requesting repetition, explanation, examples

Individual Differences/Affective Factors

E.g. motivation largely determines level of effort, which learners expend at various stages in their L2 development, often a key to ultimate level of proficiency.

• Instrumental or Integrative

The degree of motivation (rather than the type) correlates with the degree of success.

• Significant goal or need

• Desire to attain the goal

• Perception that learning L2 is relevant to fulfilling the goal or meeting the need

• Belief in the likely success or failure of learning L2

• Value of potential outcomes/rewards

Integrative Motivation

_________: Interest because of a desire to learn about or associate with the people who use it (e.g. for romantic reasons), learning about a particular culture or fitting in

• Intention to participate or integrate in the L2-using speech community

• Emotional or affective factors are dominant

Instrumental Motivation

__________: wanting to learn the L2 for a specific goal or reason (pass a language requirement, get a job). Purely practical value in learning L2.

• increasing occupational or business opportunities, enhancing prestige and power, accessing scientific and technical information, or just passing a course in school

Fossilization

_______________: when the interlanguage grammar “freezes” or plateaus. Tends to happen when a certain level of linguistic competency is achieved: the speaker “fluent enough” with their current knowledge, so there is not further need to perfect/correct pronunciation, form, or structure.

• Reasons for it:

  • Motivation (complacency/desire)

  • Lack of opportunity/exposure

  • Personality, cognitive style, age, etc.

Second Language

____________: typically, an official or societally dominant language needed for education, employment, and other basic purposes

• Often acquired by minority group members or immigrants who speak another language natively

Foreign Language

____________: one not widely used in the learners’ immediate social context which might be used for future travel or other cross-cultural communication situations, or studied as a curricular requirement or elective for school, but with no immediate or necessary practical application

Library Language

____________: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 learners’ native tongue

Auxiliary Language

____________: One which learners need to know for some official functions in their immediate political setting, or will need for purposes of wider communication

• First language serves most other needs in their lives