TEMA 2

GENERAL THEORIES ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND

ACQUISITION
INTERLANGUAGE
THE TREATMENT OF ERROR

OUTLINE

1. Introduction
2. General theories on foreign language learning and acquisition
1.1. Key issues
1.2. Environmentalist theories
1.3. Nativist theories
1.4. Interactional theories
3. Interlanguage
4. Treatment of error
5. Conclusion
6. Bibliography

1. INTRODUCTION

Learning languages is nowadays one of the most important subjects in all school curricula as it enables
communication with people of different nationalities and provides a competitive edge in career choices.
However, up to the 20th century there was not a great interest in learning a foreign language. It was not
until the end of the Second World War that, due to political and economic changes, the first theories
started being developed.

There are many theories on the subject, but little is known about the processes by which a language is
acquired. It is not a chemical for which we can test, or a distance that we can measure. Nevertheless,
some theories made significant progress on the study of language learning or have been applied to later
ones, which will be broadly examined in this paper.

In this way, we will use a historical background which will give us a framework for general theories on
learning from its origins to present-day trends, in an attempt to take into account the major and minor
approaches and theories in language learning and language acquisition. At this point, key issues will be
essential to review so as to clarify the nuances between some concepts such as acquisition and learning,
or terms such as mother, second, and foreign language within the theory of learning. The same
approach is going to be used to set the link between a language learning theory and the concept of
interlanguage. Furthermore, the treatment of error will be described from its roots to the trends used
nowadays within a positive framework.

2. GENERAL THEORIES ABOUT LANGUAGE LEARNING AND ACQUISITION

Many theories about the learning and teaching of languages have been proposed from a historical
perspective, and have been influenced by developments in the fields of linguistics, psychology,
anthropology and sociology. The study of these theories and how they influence language teaching
today is called applied linguistics. Many of our modern practices find their roots, or at least are
inspired, in the practices of our predecessors.

The extent and importance of the teaching of English as a foreign language, and therefore, the
development of language learning theories, make it reasonable to define some key concepts within this
issue before introducing the different theories developed throughout history.

2.1. KEY ISSUES

 Learning and acquisition

These two concepts underlie a theory of learning, and are one of the main tenets of Krashen’s theory of
second language acquisition. Acquisition refers to the natural way of picking up a language by using it in
natural, communicative situations. The term learning, by contrast, means having a conscious knowledge
about grammar, and conscious rules about a language are developed. In this context, formal teaching
and correction of errors are necessary for learning to occur.

 Mother tongue, second language, foreign language

Mother tongue is considered as the first language one learns as a child whereas second language is
acquired under the need of learning the language of another country. On the other hand, when
languages are acquired in school, it is considered as a foreign language. The acronyms ESL and EFL
stand for the learning of English as a Second Language and English as a Foreign Language.

 Competence and performance

According to Chomsky, competence consists of the mental representation of linguistic rules which
constitute the speaker’s internalized grammar whereas performance is consists of the comprehension
and production of language.
 2.2. ENVIRLONMENTALIST THEORIES OF SLA

Environmentalist theories of learning hold that an organism’s experience is of more importance to

development than its innate contributions. They deny that innate contributions play any other role than
providing the animal with the internal structure which environmental factor can proceed to shape. The
best known examples are those of the behaviourist’s Stimulus-Response learning theories.

We all know Pavlov’s experiment with dogs, with which he tried to make them associate the sound of a
bell with food based on the stimulus-response sequence. Skinner added the concept of reinforcement,
which is defined as the reward to strengthen the probability of a response to a given stimulus. This
theory was adapted by language learners and was very popular in the 1950s, especially through the
audio-lingual method. When children learn their mother tongue, they are either rewarded or corrected.
The theory stated that L2 has to be learnt in the same way as L1, through imitation and reinforcement,
imitating the sounds and utterances directly from the mother tongue using memorising drills.

However, Skinner’s account was soon heavily criticized by Noam Chomsky, the world’s most famous
linguist up to date. He argued that children would never acquire the tools needed for processing an
infinite number of sentences if the language acquisition mechanism was dependent on language input
alone. As he stated, “language is not a habit structure”.

Among the strongest theories we can also find Schumann’s Acculturation Model. He refers to
“acculturation” as the process of being adapted to a new culture, language being one of the most
observable expressions of culture. The acquisition of a new language is seen as tied to the way in which
a learner’s community and the target language community view each other.

2.3. NATIVIST THEORIES

Nativist theories are those which purport to explain acquisition by positing an innate biological
endowment that makes learning possible.

Contrary to the postulates of Behaviourism, Chomsky (1976) developed the concept of Universal
Grammar in which human beings are equipped with the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). This
biological faculty is responsible for the development of the language in its initial stages. According to
this, learners of a language do not just repeat mechanically the structures of the language that they are
exposed to, but they also process these structures.

Krashen developed the Monitor Theory, one of the most influential in second language teaching at
present. It consists of five hypotheses and is based on the natural approach.
  Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis:

Acquisition and learning are two ways of developing competence in a second language.

Acquisition means the subconscious use of a language for real communication. We have an implicit
knowledge of the language that is not had by formal or traditional teaching. We are not aware of the
rules, but we know that an error has been made or that something is correct.

Learning is the formal conscious knowledge of a language. It refers to an explicit knowledge of rules,
being aware of those rules.

 Natural Order Hypothesis:

Grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order. For example British children acquire the
following grammar pieces in this order:

-ing, plural, to be  Progressive auxiliary, articles  Irregular Past  Regular Past, 3rd person –s,
possessive

 Monitor Hypothesis:

Conscious learning has a very limited function in the second language performance. It is not the first
step towards production, but rather an element to be taken into account when making learning
creative. This conscious learning (the system of rules or grammar structures) is only used as a monitor.

 Input Hypothesis:

We acquire language by understanding input that is slightly beyond our level of knowledge through
context and visual aids. This way, students will understand what is being said although they have not
acquired that input yet.

 Affective Hypothesis:

There are some attitudinal variables that affect the acquisition of a language, so a situation to promote a
low affective filter must be sought in the classroom. Some of these aspects are prejudices against the
target language culture or people or the motivation that our students may have or lack.

2.4. INTERACTIONAL THEORIES

The interaction theory of language development is a compromise between the nativist theory and the
behaviorist theory of language development. The interaction theory recognizes that both environmental
and biological factors are important in language development [2]. Within this theory of compromise are
theorists who are closer to one end of the extreme than the other. However, all interactionists believe
that language acquisition occurs as a result of the natural interaction between children and their
environment, more specifically, their parents or caregivers.

Givon’s functional-typological syntactic analysis (FTSA) is functionalist in its view that syntax emanates
from properties of human discourse; that is, syntax has not been issued separate from language use, it is
one of the features of language that makes it to be understood; and typological in its consideration of a
diverse body of languages, not simply a single language of language family.

3. INTERLANGUAGE

In 1972, Selinker was the precursor of this concept. An interlanguage, is an emerging linguistic system
that has been developed by a learner of a second language, who has not become fully proficient yet, but,
is approximating the target language;  preserving some features of their first language or generalizing
target language rules.

Generally speaking, Interlanguage means the learner’s system at a single point in time. It is also
considered as a set of styles, which depend on the context of use. Learners’ utterances can vary at least
in two ways: Learners’ phonological and syntactical structures may differ because of the linguistic
context. The production of such structures may vary due to the task used for eliciting data from
learners, and it can be added a sociolinguistic dimension.

He suggested that five principal processes operated in interlanguage. These were:

1. Language transfer
2. Overgeneralization of the target language rules
3. Transfer of training
4. Strategies of L2 learning
5. Strategies of L2 communication

According to him, we must say that sometimes a foreign learner does not reach L2 competence, which
means that he/she has not been able to reach the end of the interlanguage process. This is called
fossilisation, and it is the result of the lack of hypothesis testing beyond a certain level.

Another outstanding figure in the development of this term is Noam Chomsky with his Universal
Grammar, which consists of a set of innate linguistic principles which help to control the formation of
different utterances.

Another interesting point in the analysis of interlanguage theory is the role of L1. We can see that in
spite of its regularity, interlanguage varies. Looking at the L1 means examining between-subject
variability and how the L1 infl uences the interlanguage. Studies involving children with L1’s belonging
to different linguistic families have brought evidence that all the children acquired the English
interrogative in the same way, but that it took longer time for one of them because of a lack of
correspondence between L1 and L2 structures. Thus, although the result –product– is the same,
differences in L1 imply differences of process.

4. THE TREATMENT OF ERROR

The first thing we must do under this epigraph is distinguish between error and mistake. Error can be
defined as the faulty internalisation of a rule. Mistake, on the other hand, is a slip on the performance
and it is the upshot of tiredness, stress or complexity of the task. Throughout this epigraph we will have
to bear this difference in mind since we are going to see how two main theories of language learning
have treated errors, not mistakes.

Earlier records on error treatment trace back to the early seventeenth century, when universities of
most European countries started to exchange and spread their scientific and cultural knowledge.
Children entering “grammar schools” were given a rigorous introduction to Latin grammar and errors
were often met with brutal punishment.

In the first part of the 20th century, behaviourists approached the concept of error as a sign of non-
learning, as they were thought to interfere with the acquisition of second language habits. Their
prevention was more important than mere identification.

It was not until the late 1960s that there was a resurgence of interest in Error Analysis. It involves
collecting samples of the learner language, identifying the errors in the sample, describing and
classifying them according to their causes, and evaluating their seriousness.

Error Analysis has two functions:

 Theoretical function: to find out the learning processes and why the errors have been made.
The most typical explanation is interference between L1 and L2, although there are others such
us overgeneralization. “My father goed shopping” is an overgeneralization of the regular past
simple form.
 Practical function: to provide for remedial teaching. We must take the learners’ aims and
needs into account, which mean that we have to ask ourselves where the error comes from and
how important it is in relation to the communicative purposes.
 5. CONCLUSION

Finding a solid answer to the problem of language acquisition is far from being over. Our current
understanding of the developmental process is still immature. Investigators of Universal Grammar are
still trying to convince that language is a task too demanding to acquire without specific innate
equipment, whereas the constructivist researchers are fiercely arguing for the importance of linguistic
input.

The biggest questions, however, are yet unanswered. Over the centuries, many changes have taken
place in language learning theory with the same specific goal, the search of a language teaching method
or approach that proves to be highly effective at all levels. In the preceding sections, we have examined
the main features of language learning proposals in terms of approach and theories from the most
traditional approaches to the present-day trends.

Society, especially students, perceive the need for a change; that's the reason to take into account the
perspectives for whom this scheme has been designed, that is students. They feel that new skills are
needed in a new and changing world, mainly competences related to communication. It’s also a proved
fact that traditional language learning methodologies have not given the expected results.

Scientific research on language learning also supports these changes and studies state that successful
language teaching can be achieved at any age when people have the opportunity to receive instruction
and at the same time experience real life situations in which they can acquire the language.

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Biggs, J.B. and Moore, P.J., The Process of Learning, 3rd edition, Sysney: Prentince Hall, 1993
 Corder, S.P., Error Analysis and Interlanguage, Oxford: OUP, 1981
 Ellis, R., Understanding Second Language Acquisition, Oxford: OUP, 1985
 Harmer, J., The Practice of English Language Teaching, London: Longman, 1983
 Krashen, S.D., Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition, Oxford: Pergamon Press,
1982
 Littlewoord, W., Foreign and Second Language Learning, Cambridge: CUP, 1982