Topic 2. General Theories on Second Language Acquisition and Learning.

The Concept
of Interlanguage. The Treatment of Error

Outline:

1. Introduction
2. General Theories on Second Language Acquisition and Learning
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Environmentalist Theories of Second Language Acquisition
2.2.1. General Characteristics
2.2.2. The Acculturation Model
2.3. Nativist Theories of Second Language Acquisition
2.3.1. General Characteristics
2.3.2. Chomsky’s Universal Grammar and Second Language Acquisition
2.3.3. Krashen Monitor’s Theory
2.4. Interactional Theories of Second Language Acquisition
2.4.1. General Characteristics
2.4.2. Givon’s Functional-Typological Theory and Second Language Acquisition
2.4.3. The Zisa Group’s Multidimensional Model
3. The Concept of Interlanguage
3.1. Definitions of Interlanguage
3.2. Acquisition Orders and Developmental Sequence
3.3. The Influence of the Mother Tongue
4. The Treatment of Error
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Types of Error
4.3. Hierarchy of Difficulty
4.4. Correction
4.4.1. Showing Incorrectness
4.4.2. Using Correction Techniques
5. Conclusion
6. Bibliography and Webliography

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 1. Introduction

Language acquisition is one of the most impressive and fascinating aspects of human
development.

Indeed, learning a language is an amazing feat, one which has attracted the attention of
linguists and psychologists for generations. How do children accomplish this? On the other
hand, how do adults acquire a second or foreign language? The answer to these questions
helps to solve each other and they will be the subject of the main part of this paper.

2. General Theories of Second Language Learning and Acquisition

2.1. Introduction

Theories of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) range a continuum from nativist

through interactionist to environmentalist. They differ in the relative importance they attach to
innate mechanisms and knowledge, to interactions among innate abilities, learnt abilities
and environmental factors.

2.2 Environmentalist Theories of SLA

2.2.1. General Characteristics

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

importance to development than its innate contributions.

The best known examples are those behaviourist’s Stimulus-Response learning

theories which enhance the position of an innate knowledge which is conveniently adapted
and shaped according to the stimuli that it receives from the environment.

Of particular interest for language learning theory is the work of McClelland et al. of
1986 on Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP). PDP is a theory of cognition which assumes no
innate endowment. They say that the learning is based on processing of input, but do not
believe that the input processing results in the accrual of rules, but something much more
spontaneous.

2.2.2. The Acculturation Model

Schumann holds that the degree of elaboration observed in later stages of

interlanguage (IL) development is a function of social and psychological variables that initially
produces pidginization, which is a mixture of two languages. And collectively he makes up a
large causal factor in SLA, acculturation, roughly translatable as “the process of becoming
adapted to a new culture”.

He mentions Social Distance as a group-level phenomenon consisting of eight factors

whose values seem negative:

1. Social Dominance: the fact that a learner is member of a social group which is
subordinate to the TL group interferes his/her assimilation in it.

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 2. Integration pattern: in case in which the learner is reluctant to adapt his own
cultural identity.
3. Enclosure: when the learner belong to a higher enclosure group.
4. Cohesiveness: if a learner belongs to a fairly cohesive group, this tends to mitigate
contact with the TL group.
5. Size: Being a member of a fairly large group tends to facilitate intra-group contact,
rather than inter-group contact.
6. Cultural Congruence: if the learner belongs to a group which is not congruent with
TL group.
7. Attitude: inter-group attitudes can shift from neutral to hostile.
8. Intended length of residence : The shorter the stay, the less likely it is for extensive
contacts with the TL group to be developed.

Schumann differentiates among two types of acculturation:

 In Type One acculturation, learners are psychologically open to the TL. The first factor
means that they have enough contacts with speakers for them to acquire the second
language.
 In Type Two acculturation, learners are socially integrated and psychologically open,
but also consciously or unconsciously wish to adopt the lifestyle and values of the TL
group. Either type of acculturation is sufficient to ensure SLA.

Now we will see a different approach to SLA through the Nativist Theories which have
been developed being Chomsky the most important name to be regarded within these
theories.

2.3. Nativist Theories of SLA.

2.3.1. General Characteristics

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

Chomsky (1965), for example, posits innate knowledge of substantive universals such
as syntactic categories (subject, object, noun, and verb) and distinctive phonological features,
and formal universals.

Chomsky´s various theories of child language development (1965, 1980, 1981) are the
best known nativist claims, and some of his ideas have been invoked (often critically) in SLA
theory construction as well.

2.3.2. Chomsky’s Universal Grammar and SLA

Chomsky as noted above claims the idea that humans are innately endowed with
universal language-specific knowledge, that is called by him Universal Grammar (UG).

Chomskyan view of the input is deficient or “poor” in two ways:

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  It is claimed to be “degenerate” in the sense that it is marred by performance
features, such as false starts, slips, fragments, and bad grammar resulting from these
and other pressures inherent in real time communication which constitute inadequate
data base for language learning.
 Some other senses have been considered to regard input degenerate, for example
when regarding first language acquisition children´s utterances are full of mistakes
and they rarely are grammatically corrected. The same happens with second language
acquisition when native speakers do not monitor learners of that second language
when using language inappropriately in conversation.

2.3.3. Krashen Monitor´s Theory

One of the best known and most influential theories of SLA in the early 1970s and early
1980s was Krashen´s Monitor Theory (MT).

Krashen stated that two separate knowledge systems underlay SL performance. The
acquired system which is a subconscious knowledge that native speakers have of their own
language that little by little becomes adapted to SL, and the learned system which is the
product of formal instruction (typically classroom language teaching) and comprises conscious
knowledge of “easy” SL grammatical rules, such as those for subject verb agreement,
pluralizing NPs, etc. The two systems like the processes that produced them, acquisition and
learning, operated separately. It became a “theory”, Monitor Theory (MT), of (child and adult,
naturalistic and instructed) SLA.

There were as many as ten “hypotheses” in the early 1980s, reduced to five major claims
in more recent formulations:

1) The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis: “Acquisition” refers to the subconscious

process used by children developing their first language; so SLA is similar to L1
acquisition. Errors are accepted. “Learning” is a conscious process, it is not responsible
for our fluency, but for editing or monitoring our linguistic performance.
2) The Natural Order Hypothesis: SL rules are acquired in a predictable order.
3) The Monitor Hypothesis: SL learners can be successful if monitoring is used for
grammar tests and writing; overusers, however, may have difficulty in acquiring
fluency.
4) The Input Hypotheses: SL is acquired through processing comprehensible input (CI),
that is, language that is heard or read and understood. Language which is not
understood does not help. That is called I+1, that is, structures which are one step
beyond to the current stage of the speaker.
5) The Affective Filter Hypothesis: Krashen states that people acquire second languages
only if they obtain comprehensible input and if their affective filters are low enough to
allow the input “in”.

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2.4. Interactional Theories of SLA

2.4.1. General Characteristics

Interactional theories are the most powerful ones since they invoke both innate and
environmental factors.

Interactionist theories of SLA differ greatly from one another. Some, such as Givon´s
Functional-Typological Theory, originate in functional-typological syntax and diachronic
language change. Others are partly inspired by experimental psycholinguistics and cognitive
psychology. Still others draw on social, cognitive and linguistic theory and on findings from the
discourse analyses of first and second language acquisition to study and explain SLA.

2.4.2. Givon´s Functional-Typological Theory and SLA

Givon´s functional-typological syntactic analysis (FTSA) is functionalist in its view that

syntax emanates from properties of human discourse; 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.

Givon claims speakers and linguistic systems move from a discourse-based, pragmatic
mode of communication to a more syntactic mode. This process of syntacticization operates
over a number of features which are contrasted across the pragmatic and syntactic modes of
communication.

2.4.3. The Zisa Group´s Multidimensional Model

The Zisa´s project, one of the most important bodies of SLA research, was carried out
in the University of Hamburg in the late 1970s by using interview data to study the naturalistic
acquisition of German as a SL (GSL) by speakers of Spanish and Italian. It regards several
stages. After an initial period during which learner production consisted of isolated words and
formulae they were adhered to a developmental sequence stage. Learners did not abandon
one IL rule for the next as they traversed the sequence, but they accumulated rules, adding
new ones and retaining the old.

The stages are by definition statements about what a learner can be taught at a given
step of development.

3. The Concept of Interlanguage

3.1. Definitions of Interlanguage

The concept of interlanguage is used in Second Language Acquisition research to refer

to the systematic knowledge of a language which is different from both the learner´s L1 and
the L2 system he is trying to learn.

The term interlanguage was first used by Selinker (1972). First interlanguage refers to
the structured system which the learner constructs at any given stage in his development.

The assumptions underlying interlanguage theory were stated clearly by Nemser (1971).

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  At any given time the approximative system is distinct from L1 and L2.
 The approximate systems form an evolving series.
 That in a given contact situation, the approximative systems of learners at the same
stage of proficiency roughly coincide.

The concept of “hypothesis-testing” was created by Corder (1967). He suggested that both
L1 and L2 learners make errors in order to test out certain hypotheses about the nature of the
language they are learning. Corder saw the making of errors as a strategy, evidence of learner-
internal processing. “Hypothesis-testing” was a mentalist notion and had no place in
behaviourist accounts of learning, where imitation and repetition where the key to learning.

Selinker (1972) 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

Selinker also noted that many L2 learners fail to reach target language competence.
They stop learning when their interlanguage contains at least some rules different from those
of the target language system which are apprehended as patterns. He referred to this as
fossilization. Fossilization come to occur when the learner thinks that he does not need his
interlanguage any further in order to communicate effectively whatever he wants to.

3.2. Acquisition Orders and Developmental Sequence

Interlanguages are variable, they are also systematic. Krashen postulated a “natural
order” for ESL (English as a Second Language). An acquisition order, therefore, is the order in
which linguistics forms, rules, and items are acquired in the first-or second-language learning.

All these concerns define the existence of a developmental sequence which consists of a
succession of phases in acquiring new linguistic forms.

3.3. The Influence of the Mother Tongue

The widely held belief in the 1950s and 1960s was that the L1 played a decisive
negative role in SLA, termed interference, and that this interference could be predicted by
systematically comparing and contrasting the learner´s L1 and L2. Transfer would be then a
strategy available to compensate lack of L2 knowledge, being this lack supplied by terms
adopted from L1.

It can lead to errors, overproduction and constraints on hypotheses; besides

similarities between native and target languages tend to cause many problems, namely false
friends etc.

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4. The Treatment of Error

4.1. Introduction

Before introducing the concept of error, we have to regard that contrastive analyses
have been used for the study of SLA. They were motivated by the prospect of being able to
identify points of similarity and difference between particular native languages (NLs) and
target languages (TLs).

A linguist called Lado justified the usage of the contrastive analysis in his work of 1957,
he stated that individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings and the distribution of
forms and meanings of their native language culture to the foreign culture when attempting to
speak the language and to act in the target culture.

4.2. Types of Errors

Corder (1967) made a very interesting distinction between mistakes and errors.
Whereas a mistake is a random performance slip caused by fatigue, excitement, etc., and
therefore can be readily self-corrected, an error is a systematic deviation made by learners
who have not yet mastered the rules of the L2.

4.3. Hierarchy of Difficulty

Stockwell´s et al. (1965) established a hierarchy of difficulty according to acquisition of

English by Spanish speakers regarding all those concepts that could be graded according to the
difficulty they present.

4.4. Correction

During the stage when students are asked to repeat and practise a certain number of
models, there are two basic correction stages: showing incorrectness (indicating to the student
that something is wrong) and using correction techniques.

4.4.1 Showing Incorrectness

This means that we will indicate to the student that a mistake has been made. If the
student understands this feedback, he or she will be able to correct the mistake and this self-
correction will be helpful as part of the learning process. There are a number of techniques to
show incorrectness:

1) Repeating: We simply ask the student to repeat what she or he has just said by using
the word “again” with a questioning intonation, it indicates that the answer has been
unsatisfactory although it could be misunderstood as only indicating that the teacher
has not heard the student´s response.
2) Echoing: Sometimes we can echo the complete student response, probably stressing
the part of the utterance that was incorrect. Another possibility is to echo the student
´s response, but only up to the point where the mistake was made. Echoing in this way
is probably the most efficient way of showing incorrectness.

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 3) Denial: We can simply tell the student that the response was unsatisfactory and ask
for it to be repeated. It may be a bit more discouraging.
4) Questioning: We can say: “Is that correct?” asking any student in the class to answer
our question. This has the advantage of focusing everybody´s mind on the problem,
though it may make the student who made the mistake seemed somewhat exposed.
5) Expression: Many teachers indicate that a response was incorrect by their expression
or by some gesture. Economical and also funny but can be dangerous if the student
thinks that it is a form of mockery.

For showing incorrectness, tact and consideration are two features to be carefully taken
into account.

4.4.2. Using Correction Techniques

If students are unable to correct themselves, we can resort to one of these techniques:

1) Student corrects student: We can ask if anyone else can give the correct response. We
can ask if anyone can “help” the student who has made the mistake. If another
student can supply the correct information, it will be good for that student´s self-
esteem. However, the student who originally made the mistake may feel humiliated if
this technique is used insensitively.
2) Teacher corrects student(s): Sometimes we may feel that we should take the charge
of correction because the students are extremely mixed-up about what the correct
response should be. In that case we can re-explain the item of language which is
causing the trouble.

5. Conclusion

Learning a foreign language is necessary nowadays. As the mother tongue is learned

instinctively, in the field foreign language is where teachers should make the most to
guarantee a good level of language.

The first stages are the most recommended to start the learning of a L2, and providing
a good base is essential for the further development the learner will do of the language.

We should encourage the students when dealing with errors and mistakes, which is
something that will be present every day. They are necessary to achieve a good competence
because from errors you learn.

6. Bibliography and Webliography

- Biber, D. et alii. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London:
Longman
- Halliday, M.A.K. 1985. Spoken and Written Language.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica http://www.britannica.com