THE THEORIES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND THE FACTORS THAT

INFLUENCES LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the paper

1.2 The Objectives of the Paper

1.3 Focus of the Discussion

This Paper focuses on these following problems:
1. How do the children acquire the language?
2. What are the factors that influence language acquisition?
3. How is the process of learning second and foreign language?

CHAPTER II
RELATED THEORIES

The theory Language Learning

Pinker's Tfte Language Instinct (1994), cited in Brown defined that Language is a
complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious
effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is
qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to
process information or behave intelligently (p. 18).

Learning defined as "showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, giving

instructions, guiding in the study of something, providing with knowledge, causing to
know or understand. (Brown)

Language learning is a conscious process, is the product of either formal learning

situation or a self-study programme (Kramina, 2000:27). Hence, language learning is an
integral part of the unity of all language (Robbins, 2007) Cited in Zaščerinska, 2010.

There are some definitions related to learning:

1. Learning is acquisition or "getting."
2. Learning is retention of information or skill.
3. Retention implies storage systems, memory, and cognitive organization.
4. Learning involves active, conscious focus on and acting upon events outside or inside the
organism.
5. Learning is relatively permanent but subject to forgetting.
6. Learning involves some form of practice, perhaps reinforced practice.
7. Learning is a change in behavior.
These concepts can also give way to a number of subfields within the discipline of psychology:
acquisition processes. Perception, memory (storage) systems, short and long term memory,
recall, motivation, conscious and subconscious learning styles and strategies, theories of
forgetting, reinforcement, the role of practice. Very quickly the concept of learning becomes
every bit as complex as
the concept of language. Yet the second language learner brings all these (and more) variables
into play
in the learning of a second language.(Brown)

The theory of language Acquisition

Language acquisition begins from the baby term. Babies are born with the ability to
differentiate speech from other sounds they hear, even though they don’t understand what
it meanings. Then the children reach the school age, they will speak complex sentences or
have conversation and understand most of what they hear, because children’s brains are
designed to help them learn language. (Syafrizal,2014:53)

Language acquisition is based on the neuro psychological processes (Maslo, 2007:41).

Language acquisition is opposed to learningand is a subconscious process similar to that
by which children acquire their first language (Kramina, 2000:27). Cited in Zaščerinska,
2010.

Language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious grammatical rules, and does
not require tedious drill.

Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in

which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they
are conveying and understanding.

comprehensible input' is the crucial and necessary ingredient for the acquisition of language.

The best methods are therefore those that supply 'comprehensible input' in low anxiety situations,
containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early
production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are 'ready',
recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensible input,
and not from forcing and correcting production.

Krashen's theory of second language acquisition consists of five main hypotheses:

  the Acquisition-Learning hypothesis;
 the Monitor hypothesis;
 the Natural Order hypothesis;
 the Input hypothesis;
 and the Affective Filter hypothesis.

The Acquisition-Learning distinction is the most fundamental of all the hypotheses in Krashen's
theory and the most widely known among linguists and language practitioners.

According to Krashen there are two independent systems of second language performance: 'the
acquired system' and 'the learned system'. The 'acquired system' or 'acquisition' is the product of
a subconscious process very similar to the process children undergo when they acquire their first
language. It requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in
which speakers are concentrated not in the form of their utterances, but in the communicative
act.

The "learned system" or "learning" is the product of formal instruction and it comprises a
conscious process which results in conscious knowledge 'about' the language, for example
knowledge of grammar rules. According to Krashen 'learning' is less important than 'acquisition'.

The Monitor hypothesis explains the relationship between acquisition and learning and defines
the influence of the latter on the former. The monitoring function is the practical result of the
learned grammar. According to Krashen, the acquisition system is the utterance initiator, while
the learning system performs the role of the 'monitor' or the 'editor'. The 'monitor' acts in a
planning, editing and correcting function when three specific conditions are met: that is, the
second language learner has sufficient time at his/her disposal, he/she focuses on form or thinks
about correctness, and he/she knows the rule.

It appears that the role of conscious learning is somewhat limited in second language
performance. According to Krashen, the role of the monitor is - or should be - minor, being used
only to correct deviations from "normal" speech and to give speech a more 'polished' appearance.
Krashen also suggests that there is individual variation among language learners with regard to
'monitor' use. He distinguishes those learners that use the 'monitor' all the time (over-users);
those learners who have not learned or who prefer not to use their conscious knowledge (under-
users); and those learners that use the 'monitor' appropriately (optimal users). An evaluation of
the person's psychological profile can help to determine to what group they belong. Usually
extroverts are under-users, while introverts and perfectionists are over-users. Lack of self-
confidence is frequently related to the over-use of the "monitor".

SLA theory and research can be useful in designing quality second language distance education
courses when applied to the three-component model of distance learning interaction supported by
Moore and Kearsley (1996). By reviewing the literature, we can determine implications for
developing distance education courses that are most appropriate for the learning of a second
language.
BAB III
Discussing the related research

3.1 The way of children acquiring language

Children are the earlier stage of language acquisition. They acquire language without
formal teaching. It happens automatically, children do babble and coo and cry and vocally or no
vocally send. They send the message for the interaction, for example, a child who regularly hears
language on the TV or radio but nowhere else will not learn to talk. Children acquire language
through interaction not only with their parents and other adults, but also with other children. All
normal children who grow up in nor- mal households, surrounded by conversation, will acquire
the language that is being used around them. And it is just as easy for a child to acquire two or
more languages at the same time, as long as they are regularly interacting with speakers of those
languages. The special way in which many adults speak to small children also helps them to
acquire language. Studies show that the 'baby talk' that adults naturally use with infants and
toddlers tends to always is just a bit ahead of the level of the child's own language development,
as though pulling the child along. This 'baby talk' has simpler vocabulary and sentence structure
than adult language, exaggerated intonation and sounds, and lots of repetition and questions. All
of these features help the child to sort out the meanings, sounds, and sentence patterns of his or
her language.
In the research of Johnston about Factors that Influence Language Development, She
claims that most children begin speaking during their second year and by age two are likely to
know at least 50 words and to be combining them in short phrases. Once vocabulary size reaches
about 200 words, the rate of word learning increases dramatically and grammatical function
words such as articles and prepositions begin to appear with some consistency. During the
preschool years, sentence patterns become increasingly complex and vocabulary diversifies to
include relational terms that express notions of size, location, quantity and time. By the age of
four to six or so, most children have acquired the basic grammar of the sentence. From that point
onward, children learn to use language more efficiently and more effectively. They also learn
how to create, and maintain, larger language units such as conversation or narrative. Although
there are individual differences in rate of development, the sequence in which various forms
appear is highly predictable both within and across stages.

3.2 The factors that influence language acquisition

 Internal factors

The internal factors are that the individual language learner brings with him or her to
the particular learning situation.

 Age: Second language acquisition is influenced by the age of the learner. Children, who
already have solid literacy skills in their own language, seem to be in the best position to
acquire a new language efficiently. Motivated, older learners can be very successful too,
but usually struggle to achieve native-speaker-equivalent pronunciation and intonation.
 Personality: Introverted or anxious learners usually make slower progress, particularly in
the development of oral skills. They are less likely to take advantage of opportunities to
speak, or to seek out such opportunities. More outgoing students will not worry about the
inevitability of making mistakes. They will take risks, and thus will give themselves
much more practice.
 Motivation (intrinsic): Intrinsic motivation has been found to correlate strongly with
educational achievement. Clearly, students who enjoy language learning and take pride in
their progress will do better than those who don't.
Extrinsic motivation is also a significant factor. ESL students, for example, who need to
learn English in order to take a place at an American university or to communicate with a
new English boy/girlfriend are likely to make greater efforts and thus greater progress.
 Experiences: Learners who have acquired general knowledge and experience are in a
stronger position to develop a new language than those who haven't. The student, for
example, who has already lived in 3 different countries and been exposed to various
 languages and cultures has a stronger base for learning a further language than the student
who hasn't had such experiences.
 Cognition: In general, it seems that students with greater cognitive abilities (intelligence)
will make the faster progress. Some linguists believe that there is a specific, innate
language learning ability that is stronger in some students than in others.
 Native language: Students who are learning a second language which is from the same
language family as their first language have, in general, a much easier task than those
who aren't. So, for example, a Dutch child will learn English more quickly than a
Japanese child.

 External factors

Are those that characterize the particular language learning situation:

 Curriculum: For ESL students in particular it is important that the totality of their
educational experience is appropriate for their needs. Language learning is less likely to
place if students are fully submersed into the mainstream program without any extra
assistance or, conversely, not allowed to be part of the mainstream until they have
reached a certain level of language proficiency.
 Instruction: Clearly, some language teachers are better than others at providing
appropriate and effective learning experiences for the students in their classrooms. These
students will make faster progress.

The same applies to mainstream teachers in second language situations. The science
teacher, for example, who is aware that she too is responsible for the students' English
language development, and makes certain accommodations, will contribute to their
linguistic development.

 Culture and status: There is some evidence that students in situations where their own
culture has a lower status than that of the culture in which they are learning the language
make slower progress.
 Motivation (extrinsic): Students who are given continuing, appropriate encouragment to
learn by their teachers and parents will generally fare better than those who aren't. For
 example, students from families that place little importance on language learning are
likely to progress less quickly.
 Access to native speakers: The opportunity to interact with native speakers both within
and outside of the classroom is a significant advantage. Native speakers are linguistic
models and can provide appropriate feedback. Clearly, second-language learners who
have no extensive access to native speakers are likely to make slower progress,
particularly in the oral/aural aspects of language acquisition.

3.3 The process of learning second and foreign language

While some applied linguists have attempted to use the tools of psycholinguistics to investigate
second language learning, the results achieved have been far from providing a unified picture.
Part of this work has explored the hypothesis that second language learning is basically similar to
first language acquisition. One set of articles broadly confirms this hypothesis; Dulay and Burt
(1972) found that mistakes made by children in learning a second language could be explained
more readily in terms of first language acquisition than in terms of interference from the mother
language; Natalico and Natalico (1971) showed that the acquisition of plural inflections by
children in a second language followed the same sequence as in first language acquisition; Cook
(1973) claimed that foreign adults repeated sentences in similar ways to native children and that
they followed the same stages in learning the comprehension of certain 'deep' structures as native
children; Kessler (1971) found that bilingual children learnt both languages by progressing from
linguistically simple to linguistically complex structures. A second set of articles, sometimes by
the same authors, does not confirm the hypothesis: Dulay and Burt (1974) found that children
acquired "functors" in a different order when they were learning English as a second language
and as a first language; Bailey et al (1974) continued this line of research by establishing that the
order of acquisition of functors was the same in foreign children and foreign adults; Politzer
(1974) used a developmental scoring test to show that the syntactic structures of foreign children
did not develop in the same way as those of native children; Boyd (1975) found general
similarities between native children acquiring Spanish and foreign children but certain specific
grammatical differences. All in all, these results can be said to establish that first language
acquisition and second language learning are similar processes, but differ in specific content and
order of acquisition; baking a cake and baking a loaf of bread may utilise the same process but
require different ingredients, oven temperature and cooking time.

A partial explanation for these apparent differences between first language acquisition and
second language learning can be found in the features of the situation. Native children and
foreign learners usually find themselves in vastly different situations. Native children for
example acquire their first language 'informally' - they pick it up without specifically being
taught it. Most foreign learners acquire a second language 'formally' in a structured teaching
situation (Ingram, 1975). Any differences that emerge could equally well be caused by
differences in the situation as differences in the learning process; they may be 'accidental'
products of the situation. A fair comparison of first language acquisition with second language
learning would have to control this variable and cancel out the situational differences in one way
or another by, say, comparing something that is learnt informally by the native child with
something that is learnt informally by the foreign learner. It is interesting to note that in the
research where the situational factor is kept constant, the usually accepted advantage of children
over adults in second language learning is not only cancelled but reversed: Asher and Price
(1967) found that adults were superior to 10 and 14 year-olds who were in turn superior to 8
year-olds when they were taught Russian by the same teaching technique of the total physical
response; Olson and Samuels (1973) found that older children and adults were better at learning
German phonemes than younger children when they were taught by the same drill method. To
study second language learning, these situational features must be discounted.

A further explanation for this disparity goes back to the distinction between learning language
and learning a language. The child acquiring his first language has to find out what language
itself is - that it uses symbolic representation, that it has grammatical and phonological structure,
and so on. To quote Halliday (1975) 'A child who is learning his mother tongue is learning how
to mean.' In a second language this is presumably unnecessary: the learner already knows the
potential of language and can go straight on to discovering how that potential is realised in the
second language. Partly this gives the second language learner an advantage since he is already
aware of what language is. Partly, however, it puts him at a disadvantage since he may not be
aware which parts of his knowledge are about 'language' and which are about 'a language'. He
may assume, not just that languages are all the same in general terms, but that they are the same
in specific details. Hence the problem of interference. One can speculate that this separation of
'language' from 'a language' required for second language learning will facilitate the learning of
third and subsequent languages; the learner does not have the same problem of realising that his
own language is not the sole system through which linguistic meaning can be communicated
after he has learnt his first foreign language. A third explanation for these differences is that they
are not caused by language but by other psychological attributes of the second language learner
that are necessarily different from those of the native child. Such attributes might be the second
language learner's greater memory capacity, his more advanced stage of conceptual
development, the larger range of communicative functions for which he employs language, and
so on, all of which undoubtedly have some effect on his learning and performance in a second
language. This explanation is, however, inadequate when these attributes are left poorly defined
and are not themselves investigated. The present article tries to remedy this deficiency by
looking more closely at how these 'other' mental attributes are involved in second language
learning. However, since the applications of this area of psychological research to second
language learning are comparatively new, many theoretical and methodological aspects are
unresolved and the results and discussion must be considered highly tentative. In general the
methodology adopted consists of taking experimental paradigms well-tested with native children
and applying them to foreign adults. This answers the question 'Are foreign adults similar to
native children?' but, in the case of a negative answer to this question, does not necessarily go
very far towards answering the question 'In what ways are they different?' [FN1]

Speech processing memory

Let us first look at the kind of memory process used in the production and comprehension of
speech, which can be conveniently labelled speech processing memory. [FN2]. In spoken
language we cannot perceive the whole sentence or utterance simultaneously; instead we have to
store part of it while we are processing the rest. Linguists who have looked at this area have
mostly felt that the outstanding characteristic of speech processing memory is its limited capacity
for syntax: when we find a grammatical sentence difficult to understand it is likely to be because
our speech processing memory is overloaded. Yngve (1960) for instance claimed that "his
mother's brother's son's daughter's hat" is more difficult to produce than "the hat of the daughter
of the son of the brother of his mother"; this was due to its greater syntactic 'depth' in terms of
Yngve's model and to the greater load it consequently put on the memory. Savin and Perchonock
(1965) found that the more 'transformations' in a sentence the more memory capacity it took up.
Kimball (1973) described a parsing system for speech involving a short term memory whose
chief characteristic is its limited capacity for syntax. It seems likely that speech processing
memory in the adult will be dependent upon syntax whichever language he speaks: syntactic
complexity will lead to loss of comprehension whether the sentence is spoken in Japanese or in
English. It is, however, open to doubt whether syntactic complexity can be defined in a universal
sense, whether in other words the type of complexity that proves difficult for the native speaker
of Japanese in his own language will be difficult for the native speaker of English in his own
language. Research by Just and Carpenter (1975) shows indeed that the difficulty of verifying
sentences involving negation is approximately the same in Chinese, Norwegian and English,
though this is not a straightforward matter of the processing of surface syntax. The following
experiment was constructed to see whether the syntactic features of an English sentence that
strain the memory of the foreign learner are different from those that strain the memory of the
native adult or the native child.

Experiment I.

This experiment has been fully described elsewhere (Cook, 1975). Briefly the hypothesis was
advanced that comprehension errors are caused by perceptual strategies that are resorted to when
the normal capacity of speech processing memory is exceeded. This was tested by comparing the
comprehension of English relative clauses by three groups - native children, native adults, and
foreign adults. It was found that, when the load on the memory was too great, all three groups
tended to use the strategy that the first Noun Phrase in the sentence was the Subject and the first
Noun Phrase after the verb the Object. This overload was created in most foreign adults and
native children, and in some native adults, by sentences such as "The cat the dog bites likes the
horse" where the strategy led to the subjects saying that the cat was biting the horse; in most
native adults this overload was created by sentences with the same syntactic structure but with
two centre embedded relative clauses rather than one, as in "The cat the dog the man sees bites
likes the horse." The syntactic complexity involved was that the relative clause was qualifying
the Subject rather than the Object and that the same Noun Phrase had two distinct functions in
the sentence: "the cat" in these two sentences is at the same time Subject of "likes" and Object of
"bites"; this point has been made in more general terms by Bever (1970) who sees it as reflecting
a general constraint on perception that an object can only with difficulty be perceived in two
ways simultaneously. This experiment therefore makes it clear that the same syntactic point
gives trouble to all people processing English; the difference between native adults and foreign
adults or between native children and native adults is one of degree rather than of kind; as one's
speech processing memory expands so one finds certain syntactic complexity easier to
understand, as is shown by the native children's gradual improvement on this structure compared
to the more clear-cut stages of acquisition found for other structures. It seems then that speech
processing memory works in the same way in all speakers of English and that, at least with
respect to this syntactic point, the foreign learner's behaviour is similar to that of a native child
because he has a more limited capacity for syntax in speech processing than the native adult.

Primary memory

A second type of memory process is called primary memory, a survey of which can be found in
Craik (1971). Primary memory processes information for only short periods of time measured in
seconds; if information is to be stored for longer periods secondary memory processes take over.
One important characteristic of primary memory is that it processes information in terms of
'sounds'; visual information is recoded into sounds and semantic information is largely absent. A
second characteristic is that it is extremely limited in capacity and can process only 3 to 4 'units'
of information at a time [FN3]. So far as child development is concerned, little is yet certain
about how primary memory develops; capacity as measured in digits has, however, formed part
of the classic tests of I.Q. (Binet and Simon, 1913) and shows an increase according to the
mental age of the child; it has been established that up to the age of 5 children do not use 'sounds'
in primary memory (Conrad, 1971) but some type of visual coding (Conrad, 1972). We can ask
whether the second language learner's primary memory capacity is substantially reduced in the
second language, in what way this capacity is linked to his level of knowledge of the second
language, and whether from the beginning the second language learner tends to use sound
recoding, like native adults, or some other form of coding, like native children. Some answers to
the first two questions are suggested by Robert Lado (1965) and Daniel Glicksberg (1963) who
report a series of experiments in which various aspects of what is called here primary memory
were investigated in native adults and adult foreign learners. Among Lado's conclusions were
that 'Memory span is shorter in a foreign language than in the native language' and that 'Memory
span increases with mastery of the language.' In order to investigate the question posed about the
form of coding it was necessary to confirm Glicksberg's results and accordingly the following
experiment was carried out.

Experiment II.

The people who were tested numbered 54 and were adult foreign learners of English as a Foreign
Language at technical colleges in the London area [FN4]. They divided into two equal groups:
'beginners', drawn from Stages 1 und 2 at Ealing Technical College, and 'advanced', drawn from
classes for the Certificate of Proficiency of Cambridge at Waltham Forest Technical College and
Ealing Technical College. They spoke 14 different languages. The 'beginners' had been in
England an average of 11 months and had studied English an average of 8 months; the 'advanced'
had been in England an average of 1 year 4 months and had studied English for 6 years 3
months. Each student was tested individually and was given a battery of tests, the first of which
formed Experiment II. In this test the students were asked to repeat strings of randomised digits,
starting with a length of 4. If the student repeated the string correctly he went on to a string that
was one digit longer, and so on till he made a mistake. Since his mistake might have been
accidental, he was given one or two further strings of the same length. If he repeated 2 out of 3
correctly he went on to a longer string; if he was unsuccessful for 2 out of 3 the test finished. The
intention was to establish the maximum number of digits that the student could repeat in English
and this maximum was defined as the last length at which the student had more than 1 out of 3
correct. The strings consisted of numbers from 1 to 9, randomly jumbled with no number
occurring more than once in a given string.

The results of the experiment were that the beginners had an average maximum capacity for
digits of 5.9, the advanced group of 6.7 (t.test, p<.05); the average difference between beginners
and advanced was therefore 0.8 digits. These results and those of later experiments are shown in
Table 1. These figures are close to those for Glicksberg's students which were 6.4 for students
near the beginning of an eight week course in English and 6.7 near the end. The normal digit
span is about the magical figure 7 for native speakers and was found by Glicksberg to be 7.1 for
American graduate students. The results for both sets of

Table 1. Maximum average capacity for different strings (Experiment II and III)

Digits Non-Homophones (NH) Homophones (H)

Beginners 5.9 4.5 3.5
Advanced 6.7 5.0 3.7
Difference 0.8 0.5 0.2

experiments suggest that capacity for digits is not greatly impaired in a second language.
Assuming a span of 7.0 in the native language, a foreign adult beginner is only reduced by 1.1 in
the present experiment; Glicksberg explicitly compared the span in the native and second
languages and found an initial deficit of 0.8 digits. It may be that students who were closer to
being absolute beginners than those tested here might have had further reduction in span;
however, they would probably at that level not have understood the test instructions or even have
known the words for numbers in English.

Thus so far as digit span is concerned it can be seen that the adult foreign learner behaves like an
adult not like a native child. His capacity is not limited to the same extent as the child's. A native
child of three for instance, who has already mastered a good deal of English syntax, has a digit
span of about 2 and an eight-year old has a span of 5 (Binet and Simon, 1913); the foreign adult
beginner who knows little of English syntax has a capacity of about 5.9. The difference between
these results and those for Experiment I provides one reason for distinguishing between speech
processing memory and primary memory in second language learning: where the memory
process depends on features of syntax the foreign adult is subject to the same type of restrictions
as the child; where the memory process is minimally dependent on language the adult can
transfer his memory capacity to the task substantially unimpaired; in the case of digit span he
simply has to remember the vocabulary items in the new language without any further language
coding.

Having established a base-line for digit span in Experiment II, an attempt can be made to see
what form of coding is used by foreign adults in primary memory.

Experiment III

This experiment was designed to establish the maximum span for strings of words of different
types. It has been shown in Conrad (1964) that native adults use phonological coding in primary
memory because they are more likely to confuse letters with similar sounds than letters with
similar shapes, regardless of whether the letters are presented orally or visually; Conrad (1971)
also showed that children develop phonological coding about the age of 5. However, the design
of both these experiments rendered them impossible to duplicate with foreign adults for the
reason that they did not directly require a language response from the subjects; the fact that they
were using language for memory purposes was inferred from the confusions in their memory.
Foreign adults, however, have a second language available for their memory processes; it would
be almost impossible to tell whether they were using visual coding, phonological coding in
English, or phonological coding in their native language without an exceedingly complicated
experimental design. Indeed, a pilot attempt to use the card-matching method of Conrad (1971)
with foreign adults showed that, while they initially made many mistakes, their results would
suddenly shoot up to a high level of accuracy; the obvious explanation was that they realised the
test, did not call for a response in English and switched over to their native language for memory
coding. Experiment III then, though based on the work by Conrad, does not directly tackle the
same point of phonological versus visual coding but rather tries to establish whether primary
memory capacity in the foreign adult is affected by phonological and lexical coding.

The same students and method were used as in Experiment II. However, the strings that were
used consisted not of digits but of nouns taken from Conrad (1971). These nouns formed two
groups: homophones (H) and non-homophones (NH). The H Group were eight similar sounding
nouns: "cat, bat, mat, bag, man, hat, rat, tap". The NH group were dissimilar sounding nouns:
"bus, spoon, fish, clock, horse, train, girl, hand." Randomised strings were constructed from
these two sets, ranging in length from 3 to 8 and the identical method was used to arrive at the
maximum memory capacity in each subject for H words and for NH words as was used to
establish digit span.

The results of this experiment are combined with those for Experiment II in Table 1. The average
capacity for NH words in beginners was 4.5, in advanced 5.0: both beginners and advanced
remembered less NH words than digits (t test, p. < .05). The average capacity for H words was
3.5 in beginners and 3.7 in advanced; both beginners and advanced remembered less H words
than NH words (t test, p. < .05). The difference between beginners and advanced was therefore
0.8 for digits, 0.5 for NH words, and 0.2 for NH words: while the first of these differences is
statistically significant, the latter two are not. Primary memory capacity then varies according to
the type of item involved: capacity for digits is greatest; capacity for NH words is second
greatest; capacity for H words is least. This tends to support the assertion that foreign adults,
even beginners, used more phonological coding in primary memory (and hence had more
mistakes) than young native children, though this result may be biassed by the repetition task
used compared with the cardmatching task used in Conrad (1971).

Secondary memory and language memory

The mind also has to store information for longer periods of time than a few seconds. The
memory processes that store this kind of information have usually been termed secondary
memory and are believed to work in terms of semantic networks and meanings (Kintsch, 1970).
One form of information that requires long-term storage is the speaker's knowledge of the
language, his linguistic competence: we have to remember the grammatical rules, the
phonological rules, the lexical items, and the other types of information that make up the
language. Therefore we need a memory that can store a variety of linguistic information: this can
be called language memory. Now there is an important distinction to be made between language
memory and other secondary memory processes: language memory stores the system of the
language, the rules that make up the language; it does not store individual examples of the
language, which are rather stored in a process that can be called sentence memory. This
distinction is similar to that made in Piaget (1973) between the conservation of schema and the
memory for instances; Piaget insists that the conservation of the schema means that the schema
can be used when necessary, not that a particular instance of its use is brought to mind. So far as
language is concerned we store the grammatical rule for, say, comparatives in English so that we
can produce and understand comparative sentences; we do not necessarily have to store any
particular comparative sentence. In language learning there are therefore two different areas that
could be studied; one is the long-term storage of the language itself; the other the long-term
storage of individual instances of the language, i.e. sentences. Here we will look further at the
question of language memory rather than sentence memory. The language memory of the second
language learner has to cope with storing the information about a second language and this leads
to two immediate questions: what is the ultimate relationship between these two sets of language
memories; how does language memory for a second language develop in the learner? The answer
to the first question raises the issue of the different types of bilingualism and will not be pursued
further here [FN5] The answer to the second question can be looked at more closely within the
framework employed in this article.

Let us look at a part of language memory in greater depth - the organisation of lexical items. A
word is not stored as an isolated item but as part of a network of meanings: it contrasts with other
words ("good" v. "bad"); it collocates with certain items rather than with others ("hot jazz" but
not *"hot waltz"); it includes the meaning of other items ("animal" includes "dog", "kangaroo",
"whale", and so on). The dictionary definition of the word is a small part of its meaning in terms
of the meaning network of the language; this approach has been confirmed by much
psychological work in secondary memory (Kintsch, 1970; Rumelhart, Lindsay and Norman,
1972; Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968). Looked at in terms of acquisition some fairly consistent
trends emerge: while children have 'syntagmatic' word associations linking, say, "blue" and
"sky", adults have 'paradigmatic' associations linking "blue" and "red" (Ervin, 1961); the older
children get the more they use verbal rehearsal for memory (Daehler, Horowitz, Wynns &
Flavell, 1969); the adult differs from the child in the amount of 'clustering' he gives to words and
also in the form of clustering employed (Rossi, 1964; Denney and Ziobrowski, 1972). In
particular it has been claimed that the development of memory in the child reflects, not the
acquisition of new processes, but learning which process to use (Hagen, 1971); even young
children can use verbal rehearsal if they choose to but do not make the choice unless they are
guided to it (Bernbach, 1967). It is then particularly interesting to see how language memory
develops in the second language learner as he will already be able to choose among alternative
memory strategies with greater ease than the native child.

Some relevant research has already been carried out that has a bearing on this question.
Experiments described in Stolz and Tiffany (1972) show that the shift from syntagmatic to
paradigmatic associations may be a function of the frequency of occurrence of the items: adults
tend to have syntagmatic associations to rare words compared to familiar words. Thus second
language learners may behave similarly because the words are relatively unknown to them.
Henning (1973) explored the parallels between first language acquisition and second language
learning by comparing the development of vocabulary; starting from the premise that native
children progress from predominantly acoustic storage of words in secondary memory to
predominantly semantic storage, experiments with foreign adults showed a similar development,
the beginners having a greater proportion of acoustic errors, the advanced learners of semantic
errors. While his experiment tested the development of the form of coding in memory for
vocabulary, it did not directly examine the development of clustering behaviour and accordingly
the following experiment was designed to see whether foreign adults tended to cluster items
more as they increased their knowledge of a second language.

Experiment IV

The same 54 students were tested as in Experiment II and III, who took it as the last part of their
battery. Two lists of 20 words were prepared; one list was taken from Rossi (1964) with minor
adaptations and consisted of 5 words for parts of the body ("head, mouth, nose, leg, hand"), 5
words for animals ("bear, cat, pig, horse, sheep"), 5 words for clothing ("dress, shoe, coat, hat,
tie"), and 5 words for food ("milk, cake, soup, bread, meat"); a second list using equivalent
words was constructed for the present experiment and consisted of 5 more words from each
group ("ear, foot, hair, arm, eye; bird, mouse, dog, lion, deer; sock, boot, suit, cap, shirt; beer,
tea, jam, wine, cheese"). Each list was jumbled so that a word was never adjacent to a word from
the same group. The two lists were read to the students individually using an intonation pattern
consisting of a fall on each item and a pause between items. Then after each list they were asked
to write down as many items as they could remember and were given as much time as they liked
in which to do so. Finally they were shown the two lists and asked if any of the words were
unfamiliar to them.

The results from this experiment are shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Memory for word lists (Experiment IV)

The results refer to each wordlist of 20 words:
Beginners Advanced
1.Average words remembered correctly 5.27 7.05
2.Clustering ratio for correct words 0.246 0.302
3.Average guesses written down 7.8 9.8
4.Clustering ratio for all guesses (= RRJ) 0.261 0.207

Beginners remembered less words than advanced students, whether in terms of correct words
only or guesses, i.e. all words written down; the results for correct words are statistically
significant (Kruskal-Wallis, p < .01). The amount of clustering was calculated by counting every
word that was written down adjacent to a word from the same group. Then two clustering ratios
could be established: a clustering ratio consists of the proportion of total words recalled to the
total of clustered words. So far as all guesses were concerned there was slightly more clustering
by the beginners; so far as correct words were concerned, there was little difference between the
groups. To sum up the results for this test: beginners remember fewer words than advanced
students correctly; in clustering behaviour they do not differ significantly from advanced
students. A comparison is possible with the results of Bousfield et al. (1956) where a measure
was used called the RRm (no. of repetitions based on meaning) which is the same as the
clustering ratio for all guesses used here. The RRm for 9 year-old children was 0.253, close to
the figures of 0.261 and 0.207 found for foreign adults here while the comparable figure for
adults was 0.421. However, as different experimental techniques were employed and the results
for all guesses were not significant here, too much trust should not be placed in this comparison.
What the present experiment does show is that clustering of vocabulary is not well-established
even in advanced learners of English; further research would have to show whether in the near or
complete bilingual clustering behaviour would approximate to that of a native speaker. Henning's
results show that second language learning may be accompanied by the same kind of shift in the
form of coding as first language acquisition: the present experiment suggests that organisation in
terms of clustering does not increase in a straight line in second language learners and that in this
respect they differ from children acquiring their first language.

Language and Cognition

Perhaps the most important attribute of the second language learner that necessarily distinguishes
him from the native child is that almost without exception he is at a later stage of cognitive
development than the native child. In the extreme case of the foreign adult learner, he has passed
through the normal stages of conceptual development and thinks in ways that are quite different
from those of the child: it has indeed been suggested by Rosansky (1975) that the attainment of
the Piagetan stage of Formal Operations is a more valid explanation for the critical period theory
of language acquisition than the usual physiological explanation in terms of hemispheric
lateralisation (Lenneberg, 1967). Even in the less extreme case of the foreign child learner, he is
usually in the situation where his conceptual development has progressed further than his
language development in the second language. The question is what difference this cognitive
advantage makes to second language learning; before this can be tackled some account must be
taken of how conceptual development relates to first language acquisition.

R. Cromer (1974) in a survey of current research concluded that the evidence suggests that
cognition precedes language in development: in other words the child learns the operation of
'seriation' before he learns the language of 'comparison'; teaching him the appropriate language
has only a marginal effect on his knowledge of seriation (Sinclair-de-Zwart, 1969; Cook, 1971).
The child also has to be able to abstract the relevant perceptual and functional aspects of physical
objects before he can correctly describe relationships between them; he may be able to put things
"in" a cup when the cup is presented to him in its normal position but be unable to cope when it
is presented on its side or upside down (Sinha and Walkerdine, 1974). Nevertheless the fact that
cognition precedes language in development only applies when there is a relationship between
the two; not all language is determined by cognition; parts of it may be independent and follow a
purely linguistic development. This claim that some language, if not all, depends on non-
linguistic processes is by now a common-place (Bruner, 1975; Halliday, 1974) and it may
provide a useful starting point for looking at second language learning, even if there exist some
as yet unexplained contrary results (Kelly, Tenezakis & Huntsman, 1974).

Let us therefore take an instance where conceptual development has to precede language
acquisition and look at the way that the concept of time develops in relationship to sentence
structure in first language acquisition. In English the child has to learn that the sequence of
events in real life does not necessarily correspond to the sequence of events in the sentence. If
the child hears the two sentences

(1) Before Bill dances, Bob reads.

(2) After Linda wrote, Susan phoned.

at an early age he will treat (1) as a sequence of Bill dancing followed by Bob reading and (2) as
a sequence of Linda writing and Susan phoning: in other words he adopts a strategy in which the
order of mention of events in the sentence corresponds to the order of events in the world. This
order of mention strategy also applies to sentences where the time clause comes second in the
sentence such as

(3) Mary talks before Susan shouts.

(4) Caroline sings after Sally dances.

Cromer (1968) and Clark (1970) suggest that this strategy is dominant in the child up to the age
of about 4. Clark (1971) established the further point that, leaving aside order of mention,
children understand "before" before they understand "after"; she explains this in terms of a
model of language acquisition in which the child acquires semantic components of meaning one
at a time: "after" has more components than "before" and is therefore learnt later. Clark (1970)
also found that children learn coordinate structures such as

(5) George smoked and Bob drank.

before they learn sentences with a time clause. To make the following discussion easier to
follow, sentences 1-4 will be labelled with the terms given in Clark (1971), namely "before"1
(sentence 1), "after"1 (sentence 2), "before"2 (sentence 3) and "after"2 (sentence 4). To sum up:
children learn "after"1, and "before"2 before they learn "after"2 and "before"1 (order of mention
strategy); they learn co-ordinate structures before they learn "before" and "after" clauses; they
learn "before" before they learn "after". So far as second language learning is concerned we can
investigate whether this sequence of acquisition occurs or whether the second language learner's
more mature conceptual grasp of time leads him to a different sequence.

Experiment V

36 foreign adult students of English who were near beginners were given the following test in
groups. They had studied English on average for 1 year 11 months and had been in England for
8'/2 >months. Though the students were attending classes at Waltham Forest Technical College
these were not the same students that took part in experiments II—IV. The materials consisted of
24 sentences, 4 each of identical construction to each of sentences 1-5 above and 4 of identical
construction to the following sentence

(6) Bill dances. Bob reads.

where the co-ordination was implied solely by intonation. The students were first shown the
sentence "The man fell down and broke his leg" and were told that they had to place "1" against
whichever of the two events happened first: if the two events happened simultaneously they were
instructed to place "1" against both of them. On the answer sheet the two parts of each sentence
(without "before" or "after") were presented one above the other, the two parts being in a random
order. The sentence were jumbled in blocks of six. They were all read with an intonation pattern
consisting of a low rise on the first clause and a high fall on the second clause.

The results of this experiment are given in Table 3 and are statistically significant (x2, p < .01).
The results show that the students did not find "after".

Table 3. Results of Experiment V.

Correct answers (max. 144)
"before," (Sentence 1) 101
"after," (Sentence 2) 93
"before2" (Sentence 3) 104
"after2" (Sentence 4) 66
Co-ordinate "and" (Sentence 5) 98
Co-ordinate intonation (Sentence 6) 94

and "before"2 easier than "after"2 and "before",: they did not simply follow an order of mention
strategy. Also they did not find the co-ordinate sentences easier than the sentences with time
clauses. However, they do appear to find "before" easier to understand than "after", 205 correct
answers compared with 159, and this difference is mostly due to "after"2 which had only 66
correct answers compared to 93 for "after", (x2, p. < .01). Clark (1971) found the following
stages of development:

A. Order of mention strategy

Bl. Correct on "before" and "after," but wrong on "after2"
B2. Correct on "before" but wrong on both forms of "after"
C. Correct on all forms.

The difference between stages Bl and B2 is that Bl are using an order of mention strategy on
"after" and B2 are interpreting "after" as if it were "before". In terms of these stages the adult
foreigners are mostly at the B1 stage where they are using an order of mention strategy only with
"after2". Two explanations are possible. One is that the difference between "before" and "after"
is part of English, not part of 'language': the students have not learnt the extra semantic
components that distinguish between them. The alternative explanation is that the students were
behaving like English children and happen to have been tested at the moment when they were at
stage Bl of the normal progression of the native child.

General discussion

To bring together the threads of the argument, mostly the research has confirmed the hypothesis
that second language learning is like first language acquisition to the extent that other attributes
of the mind are not involved and has given more precision to the nature of some of these
attributes. Each area that was tested provided some support for the hypothesis: speech processing
memory, which depends on syntax, showed the same type of constraint operating in foreign
adults, native adults, and native children; primary memory capacity was most impaired in foreign
adults with near-homophones and least impaired with digits; language memory for vocabulary
showed the relative lack of clustering of the child rather than the clustering of the adult; the test
of the relationship between the concept of time and the sequence of clauses in the sentence
produced a more ambiguous result which does not disconfirm the hypothesis. Two further
conclusions from Lado (1964) were that 'The difference between the native and the foreign
language memory span is greater when the material contains the pronunciation and the
grammatical contrasts between the languages' and 'The relationship of memory span to foreign
language learning is greater for contextual material than for digits.' The present experiments have
reinforced this conclusion and extended it to other attributes of the second language learner's
mind in greater depth. This conclusion does of course rest on the assumption that, in spite of the
links between language learning and other mental processes, language learning has unique
properties of its own, an assumption that is probably still shared by many researchers.

What we are left with, however, is an extremely complex multiprocess model of second language
learning and one which even then does not take into account other attributes that are possibly
crucial. One of these is the question of language functions; several linguists have now described
how language functions develop, (Brown, 1973; Halliday, 1975); the question has to be resolved
whether the second language learner starts off with a relatively mature set of language functions
or whether he has in some way to retrace the steps he has taken in his first language. A further
problem is the question of whether there is a memory process for language acquisition distinct
from the processes that have been described here; if the necessity for such a memory becomes
recognised, this, too, will have to be taken into account. Compared to this multi-process model of
second language learning, models such as 'interlanguage' (Selinker, 1972) seem to lack sufficient
dimensions: as well as the learner progressing from native to foreign language in one dimension,
he also changes in memory processes and verbal organisation in others and is subject to his
previous conceptual apparatus in yet others, all of them interacting to a greater or lesser extent
with language learning per se. The difficulty with the multi-process model is deciding the extent
to which each process is concerned with language and how it affects language learning. The
present experiments go a small way towards showing this but a great deal of work remains to be
done to establish the relationship of each process to the others. It would be very convenient if the
borderlines were clearly marked. It is unfortunately wellnigh impossible to assess the
contribution of all the processes in any given case without extensive investigation. The
development of the second language learner reflects not just the differences between the first and
second languages or the progression of the native child, but also the complex interaction between
language learning and mental processes.

Because of this complex interaction it is dangerous and premature to apply this area of research
directly to language teaching; a long chain of argument and research has to be connected before
anything but the broadest of guidelines can be offered to the language teacher. In particular the
discussion of language learning and cognitive development points to a danger in attempts to
organise language teaching in terms of a set of 'concepts' or 'notions' as they are termed in
Wilkins (1973). Wilkins provides an outline of the notional categories 'that the European learner
will expect to be able to express through the target language.' One example is the 'semantico-
grammatical category' of "Time" which he divides into "Point of time", "Duration", "Time
relations", "Frequency", "Sequence" and "Age". At one level these notional categories can be
taken simply as a pragmatic guide for language teaching which is justified by its results in the
teaching situation, and this is, broadly speaking, the attitude taken by Wilkins. At another level,
however, these categories can be taken as attempts to draw a conceptual map of the speaker of a
European language similar to Whorf's map of the Standard Average European speaker (Whorf,
1956); in this case the notional categories refer to conceptual knowledge and the application to
language teaching assumes that there is a set of 'ideas' common to all speakers that can be
expressed through the appropriate linguistic form in each language. Now there may well be
universal concepts, or indeed concepts shared by the speakers of one language family, and one of
the central goals of transformational grammar has been to establish them (Sampson, 1975); many
linguists and psychologists would nevertheless feel that this goal had been far from achieved and
that those universals that seem plausible are in terms of high abstraction, such as Piagetan
operations. Such a concept as "Time" is too imprecise to be useful even when broken down into
6 subdivisions; if European speakers have a common concept of time that they express through
language for example why do all foreign students have difficulty with the concept of 'present
relevance' as used in the English present perfect? Any analysis of concepts on a theoretical level
implies distinguishing those concepts that have nothing to do with language from those that are
linked to language in general from those that are linked to a particular language. Until this is
done - and at the moment we can barely conceive how it could be done - notional categories are
a convenient system for organising teaching in a practical way without any greater significance,
a rule of thumb rather than a scientific theory.

Despite the dangers of applying this research directly to language teaching, the main conclusion
that has been reached is nevertheless important to the language teacher: second language
learning is like first language acquisition to the extent that mental processes other than those
involving language are not concerned. In other words the more learning depends on general
psychological processes, the less similar first and second language learning will be. This
conclusion should result in a re-examination of our everyday teaching practices to see the extent
to which each of them involves language processes rather than other cognitive processes. Take
the example of structure drills. We should at least be aware whether a particular drill strains the
language learner's speech processing memory, which is constrained like the native child's;
whether it utilises primary memory, which will be less limited in the second language learner; or
whether it employs a 'concept' that is independent of any language, and hence part of the learner's
conceptual apparatus, or one that is part of the language being taught and new to the learner. The
teacher and coursewriter must in principle be able to assess the contribution of language and
non-language processes to any learning activity in the classroom and to adapt the teaching
methods and materials accordingly to the proportion of language processes involved. More
detailed conclusions must await more detailed research.

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Footnotes

1. I am grateful to Paul Meara and Carl James for helpful criticism of an earlier draft of this
article.

2. Throughout the discussion, the distinctions between types of memory are seen in terms of
depth of processing rather than as discrete stores, as argued in Craik and Lockhart (1972).

3. The contradiction between this figure and the well-known 'magical' number of 7 given by
Miller (1956) is explained in Waugh and Norman (1965).
4. I would like to thank Mrs. Norma Brewer and her staff at Waltham Forest Technical College
and Brian Abbs and his staff at Ealing Technical College for putting up with the disruptions that
these tests caused to their classes.

5. See Macnamara (1970) for an appropriate discussion.