Teaching-Induced Aspects

of Interlanguage Discourse

Gabriele Kasper
University of Aaihus

The paper examines the influence of the formal classroom as a learning environment on the
discourse behaviour of advanced German students of English in conversations with English
native speakers. It is proposed that FL teaching as a causal factor in the formation of
IL-specific rules can operate either directly, in presenting the learner with FL material which
deviates from target norms, or indirectly, by triggering off psycholinguistic processes which
in turn lead to IL-specific rule formation. These are referred to as primary and secondary
teaching induction, respectively. On a more concrete level, the impact of two constituents of
FL teaching on IL discourse is discussed:

(1) the textbook and other teaching materials;

(2) classroom specific discourse norms.
The influence of the first factor type manifests itself primarily in (a) the use of an inappropri-
ately formal register, (b) an inappropriate use of modal verbs. The second factor type is found
to result in (a) rising intonation with non-interrogative function, (b) inappropriate proposi-
tional explicitness of speech act realizations and discourse functions, (c) "complete sentence"
responses, (d) a lack of marking for expressive and relational functions ("speech act mo-
dality").

In conclusion of the data analysis, a classroom specific pidgin will be hypothesized which,
when transferred to non-classroom settings, leads to pragmatically inappropriate com-
municative behaviour.
On a more general level, it will be postulated that second language acquisition hypotheses
should be formulated with reference to specific types of acquisition/learning contexts.

1. Introduction
One of the many issues which interlanguage (IL) researchers disagree about is the
extent to which the development and properties of ILs depend on particular acqui-
sition contexts1. Quite a few researchers subscribing to the identity hypothesis of
L2 acquisition—i.e. to the assumption that all language acquisition is guided by the
same (linguo-) cognitive2 principles—have in their search for such processes ig-
nored the potential influence of the acquisition environment (see in particular
Dulay and Burt's studies on morpheme acquisition orders, summarized in Dulay
and Burt 1980). Others compared the acquisition of particular L2 phenomena—
again English morphemes—in informal acquisition contexts and in the L2 class-
room and found no significant differences in acquisition order, from which they
concluded that the contextual variable has no decisive impact on L2 acquisition
(e.g., Fathman 1975, 1977; Larsen-Freeman 1976; Perkins and Larsen-Freeman
1975). It seems rather questionable, however, that findings on certain highly

99
100 Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 4, No. 2, 1982

redundant formal properties of a specific language should allow for generalization

about the L2 acquisition process (see e.g. Kennedy and Holmes 1976; Hatch 1978
for the same criticism).

A third group of researchers in the "identity tradition" adopts the view that while
all language acquisition is based on the same acquisition system, the activation of
this system is modified by different acquisition contexts. An exponent of this
assumption is the Kiel project which compares the acquisition of some formal
aspects of English and German by children under various contextual conditions
(see in particular Wode 1981).

Assuming one language acquisition system, to be understood as a construct con-

taining psycholinguistic acquisition processes and procedures which are matched
by neurophysiological correlates largely unknown to date, seems both theoreti-
cally attractive and empirically plausible, as argued by Wode (1981:17 f). However,
such an assumption does not necessarily imply that hypotheses on L2 acquisition
should be based on the properties of this system exclusively. On the contrary, if
these hypotheses are to have any explanatory and predictive power, then they
should be formulated with regard to specific acquisition contexts; this will be the
only safeguard against prematurely identified "universals". Rather, such an ap-
proach will enable us to detect context-independent and context-dependent prop-
erties, to describe how the latter are modified by the former, and to determine their
relative effect on the development, structure and use of IIA Furthermore, findings
based on this research conception are more likely to have a practical impact on the
area of L2 acquisition which according to widely shared beliefs (but see e.g. Corder
1967 for a different point of view) can be deliberately organized to some extent, viz.
the SL/FL classroom.

Likewise, one should be careful not to generalize too quickly from acquisition
regularities observed in One particular L2 subsystem as to how L2 as "(a subset of) a
language" is acquired. As was mentioned in connection with the morpheme
studies above, the acquisition procedures applied to formal systems like phonology
and morphology might well differ from those activated in the acquisition of func-
tional aspects like speech act and discourse rules. Again, the integration of the
regularities observed in the acquisition of different L2 components into a com-
prehensive theory of L2 acquisition presupposes the analytical step of describing
these components as acquisition objects in their own right.

The above remarks are intended to indicate the general presuppositions which
underlie the more specific purpose of this article, viz. to show how certain features
observable in IL discourse can be traced back to a particular learning environment,
i.e. the PL classroom. As this study is part of a larger investigation into pragmatic
aspects of IL use (Kasper 1981), it will only report on learner-specific behaviour at
the pragmatic level. Morphological, syntactic, and lexical IL features which are
likely to be brought about through teaching have been well documented in the
literature (e.g. George 1972, Selinker 1972; Corder 1973: 291f; Jain 1974:199;
Richards 1974a; Stenson 1975; Swain 1977; Holmes 1978; Raabe 1979: 82f;
Schmidt and Richards 1980). Such aspects will only be included here if they are of
pragmatic relevance.
Teaching-Induced Aspects of Interlanguage Discourse 101

2. Data
The data on which this study is based was collected in a project on communicative
competence in FL teaching, conducted at Ruhr—Universitat Bochum, Federal
Republic of Germany, from 1976 to 1980 (for descriptions of the project, see
Edmondson, House, Kasper and McKeown 1979; Edmondson, House, Kasper and
Stemmer 1980,1982). It comprises three batteries of 48 face-to-face dialogues each:
dialogues between pairs of native speakers of English and German first-year stu-
dents of English, between native speakers of English, and between native speakers
of German. The dialogues were all elicited through role play and were audiotaped.

As the learners had already left school when they participated in the project, direct
observation of their FL classroom activities was not possible. In order to compen-
sate for this information gap to some extent, the syllabus according to which they
had been taught and the course materials they had used were analyzed. Information
on their FL training and experiences in using English outside the classroom was
obtained by questionnaire. Informal interviews, which were conducted with each
learner after the role playing exercise in order to obtain "authoritative interpreta-
tions" (Corder 1972) by the learners of ambiguous or incomprehensible utterances,
also frequently shed light on the learning process. Furthermore, video recordings of
various English lessons at German secondary schools were analyzed (see Kasper
1981 for a detailed account).

3. Analysis
Pragmatic errors and appropriate but learner-specific IL features were identified by
native speakers of British English, by comparison of the learners' performance with
the English native speaker dialogues and by reference to available linguistic de-
scriptions. A pragmatic error was defined as a pragmatic or discourse feature which
is neither used in the given context nor accepted as appropriate by native speakers.

3.1 Two types of teaching induction

In one-third of the errors thus identified and described in pragmalinguistic terms,
the FL classroom is likely to be a causal factor. This does not necessarily imply,
however, that it is the only causal factor present; in the majority of errors consid-
ered in the present study, the FL classroom as the learning environment seems to be
an error source additional rather than alternative to psycholinguistic sources such
as transfer, generalization, reduction, and the like4. Allowing for such a possibility
presupposes that IL products (whether "erroneous" or "correct" in terms of the
target norm) can be brought about by different causal factors operating simultane-
ously or consecutively. Suchpluricausal explanations certainly capture psycholin-
guistic processing more adequately thanmonocausai ones whenever the learner, in
learning or using a particular L2 rule, draws on various knowledge sources at the
same time (see also Raabe 1979). Thus LI transfer and IL generalization need not be
mutually exclusive, as is assumed by much of the discussion about LI influence on
L2 acquisition (e.g. Dulay and Burt 1974). Similarly, the possibility for causal
explanations involving both the learning environment and psycholinguistic proc-
esses should be taken into consideration. It seems therefore misleading to classify
102 Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 4, No. 2, 1982

errors a priori into either "interlingual", "intralingual" or "teaching induced" (e.g.

Corder 1975; Glahn 1977).

My suggestion is to distinguish two levels on which FL teaching can result in

learner-specific IL features. These will be referred to as primary and secondary
teaching induction. Primary teaching induction presupposes linguistic input
which is deviant from L2 norms. In this case, the learner is presented with deviant
rules which he directly incorporates into his IL system. Such deviant rules can
either be explicitly stated, like the following rule formulation on tense sequence in
indirect speech: "Introductory clause: past tense—Indirect speech: Only a tense of
the past group is possible" (Essentials of English Grammar 1976:26). Or they can be
implicit in the FL use of teacher and teaching materials, as is the case in the use of
have in this pattern drill: "Have you any coffee? -Yes, I have some" (Learning
English Al: 11 a). Secondary teaching induction, by contrast, involves correct FL
use and rule formulation. However, the organization of FL rules and elements in
course materials and the ways in which they are practiced in the classroom trigger
psycholinguistic processes resulting in IL specific rule formation and hence inap-
propriate conversational behaviour. A well-known example from "grammar teach-
ing" is the durative aspect marker, which is often heavily emphasized in the
teaching of English to learners whose LI does not have a formally equivalent
category. This might lead learners to generalize this grammatical function to
contexts which require the simple form, even though they had practiced it in
appropriate contexts in class (see the data provided by Jain 1974; Richards 1974a;
and in particular the thorough investigations by Zydatiss 1976).

3.2. Factors in teaching induction

In looking more closely at the learning/teaching situation of the FL classroom, one
can distinguish a great variety of factors which all have a more or less direct impact
on how the FL is learned and used (see Borner and Vogel 1976; Hullen 1976: 53f;
Yorio 1976; Swain 1977; Grotjahn and Kasper 1979; Rauch 1979; Engel, Krumm,
Wierlacher 1981). Of these I shall only consider two in this paper:

(1) the course materials used in our subjects' English lessons;

(2) properties of classroom interaction as a specific discourse type.

The suggested distinction between primary and secondary teaching induction is

not normally observed in the literature (see the references p. 100 above). However,
Stenson indicates in her article on "induced errors" (1975) that teaching procedures
might trigger learning processes which in turn result in IL specific rule formation,
thus describing secondary teaching induction 5 . Similarly, Selinker's (1972)
psycholinguistic process "transfer of training" may operate both as a primary and a
secondary process. He illustrates it with the use of he instead of she in the English
produced by speakers of Serbocroatian. This mistake is explained as being "due
directly to the transfer of training", as "textbooks and teachers in this interlingual
situation almost always present drills with 'he' and never with 'she' (1972: 218; my
italics)." I should think that this unacceptable use of the personal pronouns is more
adequately described as secondarily teaching induced, as the learners were not
Teaching-Induced Aspects of Interlanguage Discourse 103

faced with incorrect rules or texts but rather with inappropriately arranged exer-
cises, leading to wrong rule generalization.

3.3. Pragmatic errors and learner-specific features due to teaching materials

Inappropriately formal register. In their interactions with native speakers, our
learners often chose a register which was too formal for the occasion, as can be
illustrated by examples (1) and (2)6.
(1) (male student addressing female student at a wine-and-cheese party)
L: excuse me please^may I ask you whether you are alone^here
RU: enjoying the part^are you on your own
(2) (student saying good-bye to her landlady)
E: well er you got everything packed
L: yes I did everything and it was so nice with you I was very^delighted to
have er_to make the acquaintance of such a nice woman
ii ^ •• ^ y '~~—*

RU: yes I've done everything now thanks and I just wanted to say Mrs Bell
how lovely it's been living here and to thank you for everything
This inappropriate formal register use might be due to the intensive work with—
especially non-contemporary—literary texts, which is the main activity during the
last three years of English in German secondary schools. If one follows this in-
terpretation, the learners can be said to generalize a particular register from the
appropriate contexts to contexts calling for a different register ("pragmatic gen-
eralization"); the errors in question can then be accounted for as being secondarily
teaching induced.

However, one also finds quite a few instances of inappropriate register use in our
learners' course books, of which the following exercise is an example:
(i) "Stella and Barbara want to go to the theatre to see a play. They are
dressing.
Stella: Mother, I can't find my comb.
Mother: It may be in the cupboard in the bathroom, dear.
Stella: No, it isn't. May I have your comb, Mother?"
"On the way to the theatre.
Barbara: Shall we be allowed to keep our coats on in the theatre?
Stella: Yes, we shall."
(Learning English A2: 122).

The implicit rules underlying the use of may, be allowed to, and shall in these
dialogues are likely to lead directly to non-native IL rule formation, which can thus
be characterized as being primarily teaching induced.

Inappropriate use of modal verbs. Example (2) and (i) lead to a connection with the
second area of pragmatic errors due to teaching materials, viz. the area of modal
verbs. Practicing epistemic and non-epistemic may in close proximity and without
previous explanation and practice of these two functions, as is the case in the
104 Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 4, No. 2, 1982

course book which (i) is taken from, is likely to result in IL specific rule formation.
On the product level, such rules materialize in errors like the double-marking for
probability in (3).
(3) (Landlady reproaching student)
E: well you did make a lot of noise last night when you were coming in
L: oh well I can't remember so well but perhaps you may be right yes
RU: oh I don't remember last night very well but if you say so you're
probably right
Another modal verb which our subjects often use inappropriately ismust, as can be
seen from examples (4) and (5).
(4) (E and L witnessing a car crash)
E: what shall we do then what shall we 'do
L: oh ermjjerhaps we must stop other cars^coming
RU: perhaps we'd better stop other cars
IM: ja vielleicht mussten wir andere Autos anhalten
(5) (as 4) ^ ^
E: .. . I think there's a farmhouse on the other side of the road there
L: ye\er so one of us must go there and ask for help
RU: yes er so one of us had better go there and ask for help (I suppose)

Although these pragmatic errors will mainly be a result of transfer from German
miissen, it seems likely that the IL rule which functionally equates English must
and German miissen was reinforced by inappropriate grading of the rules express-
ing obligation in the learners' course book. Must is introduced as the first verb of
obligation at a very early learning stage, followed by have to a year later, whenmust
is already a stable and well-automatized element of the learner's IL system (see also
Speight 1977 for this point). Even then, however, the functional difference between
these two modal verbs is neither explicitly stated nor practiced; have to is merely
presented as a substitute for the morphologically defective must. Had better,
which is frequently used for expressing suggestions by the English native speakers
in our data, is not presented for productive use in this course book at all.

3.4. Pragmatic errors due to classroom discourse

In this section evidence of how the specific properties of classroom discourse are
carried over by the learners to communication outside the classroom, resulting in
pragmatically inappropriate—or at least learner-specific—conversational be-
haviour are presented.

Rising intonation with non-intenogative function. A typical feature of the

learners' utterances is the combination of declarative syntax with interrogative
intonation, and the use of individual linguistic elements with rising instead of
falling intonation. This can be exemplified by (6) and (7).
(6) (E and L making an arrangement)
L: perhaps I could er^phone'yoy^at about^twelve o'clock today
RU: perhaps I could phone you at twelve o'clock ^
Teaching-Induced Aspects of Interlanguage Discourse 105

(7) (student entering his teacher's office)

L: helIo*Mr Sirns ^
E: al^Achirn^come in
RU: hello Mr Sims

It should be added that in the role play which the opening move in (7) is taken from
the learner is supposed to know the native speaker well and is expected by the
latter, so that it is difficult to see why he should want to express doubt about the
other person's identity or availability for talk, as is conveyed by the rising intona-
tion. I assume that the generalization of rising intonation to contexts which require
falling intonation is induced by the initiation—response—feedback sequences
which are typical for all traditional classroom discourse (e.g. Sinclair and Coulthard
1975; Griffin and Mehan 1981). The functional difference between requests for
information in non-classroom situations and teachers' initiations is that in the
former case, the speaker's intention is to fill a gap in his knowledge by eliciting
information which is (supposedly) available to the hearer (see Maas 1972: 213ff). In
the latter case, however, the speaker does possess the relevant information and
wants to find out, for reasons deriving from the institutional properties of the
formal learning/teaching context, if this information is part of the hearer's knowl-
edge (see Rehbein 1979 for an analysis of instructional elicitation processes). As
this function of teachers' initiations is part of learners' institutional knowledge,
they very often perform their responses by not only providing the requested infor-
mation but at the same time appealing for feedback from the teacher as to whether
their response is correct (cf. Edmondson 1979, 1980, 198 la ; Kahrmann 1979). A
typical "pedagogic exchange" of this kind has been documented by Edmondson
(1979:207):

I11) T: no^look at the words,, check through^ is that all rights I'll ask a few
questions^who wants to go to Germany^Conny
Con: Tom wants to go to Germany
T: ja a^what family^Tom belongs to what family^Ute
Ute: it is^erm (studies book) the family Bartlett
T: yes it's the Bartlett family^rigrit

In the second exchange, the learner uses rising intonation in responding to the
teacher's initiation, and the teacher confirms Ute's response in the following turn.

Complete sentence responses. A second feature of IL discourse which can be traced

to the communication norms obtained in the FL classroom is the response in a
"complete" sentence. An investigation into cohesion in the learner-native speaker
dialogues of the same corpus, carried out by Stemmer (1981), showed that the
learners' responses frequently lack cohesive devices like pronominalization, sub-
stitution and ellipsis, as can be illustrated by examples (8) and (9).
(8) (L would like to borrow some records from E)
E: well what happens if they get broken [. . . ]
L: [well wellpf course] of course if they get broken we buy new ones,that's
okay that's right
106 Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 4, No. 2, 1982

(9) (E and L making an arrangement)

E: so you'll phone up at twelve o'clock
L: I'll phone up at twelve o'clock and I'll see what I can do and^errn^then
we'll see er^what we can do
"Responding in a whole sentence" is frequently required by teachers (see also
Rehbein 1978; Jung 1979: 200; Mehan 1979). In FL teaching, the pedagogic ration-
ale behind this is often the practice of morphological rules which simply would not
be applied if the learner used—conversationally more appropriate—cohesive pro-
cedures. If the learning objective is, for instance, irregular verbs, and the teacher
asks "What time did Mira leave the party," then the reply "at two o'clock",
although perfectly adequate from a communicative point of view, does not serve its
purpose. It is characteristic of the traditional FL classroom that this conflict
between immediate pedagogic goals and the reality of communication outside the
classroom is solved by giving priority to the former. Another reason for the class-
room norm of "responding in a whole sentence" is that up to a few years ago, FL
teaching focussed on the sentence level rather than on larger units like text and
discourse, which consequently meant that most exercises involved the perfor-
mance of isolated sentences (compare, for example, the exercises in Learning
English A 1-3).

Inappropriate piopositional explicitness. The complete sentence replies, which

involve formal features of the learners' performance, are matched on a functional
level by what can be referred to as inappropriate propositional explicitness, a
phenomenon which often characterizes learners' realizations of speech acts and
discourse functions. Of this (10) and (11) provide examples.
(10) (male student addressing female student at a wine-and-cheese party)
L: would you like to drink a glass of Wine with me
RU: can I get you another glass of wine
(11) (L opening the door to unknown visitor)
E: er are you Mr^Bechstein
L: well it's me^and what's your name
RU: yes that's right
Primarily, such overexplicit utterances can be ascribed to the generalization of
discourse norms which hold true for argumentative and expository discourse to a
context where the relational function has higher priority, and which, for reasons of
social rules like saving one's own and one's interlocutor's face (see Goffman 1967;
Brown and Levinson 1978; Edmondson 1981), require a more implicit way of
expression. The reason why I suggest the FL classroom as a secondary causal factor
is that the majority of texts which our learners produced during their last three
years of English at school were precisely of an argumentative and expository kind,
written (or spoken) without being addressed to any specific (real or imagined)
recipient, apart from the teacher who is obviously the permanent recipient of all
learner responses. It is therefore not surprising that learners, even in contexts
where the hierarchy of speech functions is different, should take pains in getting
their referential meanings across as precisely as possible, while at the same time
neglecting other communicative functions.
Teaching-Induced Aspects of Interlanguage Discourse 107

Lack of marking for speech act modality. The predominance of the referential over
other speech functions is furthermore evidenced in the insufficient degree to which
relational and expressive functions are explicitly expressed in the learners' con-
tributions. Native speakers normally take care of such functions by formulating
their speech acts more or less directly, and by intensifying or downtoning their
illocutionary force, a phenomenon which has been termed speech act modality (see
House and Kasper 1981; Kasper 1981). In six of the 48 learner-native speaker
dialogues of our corpus, the learners do not mark their speech acts for modality at
all. On the process level, this has been tentatively explained in terms of the learners
using the communication strategy of global modality reduction (Faerch and Kasper
1980 and forthcoming). In other dialogues, the learners mark some, but not all, of
their utterances for speech act modality. In psycholinguistic terms, one might
describe the process leading to such individually unmarked utterances as local
modality reduction (Kasper 1979) or modality generalization, depending on
whether it seems more likely that the learner has difficulties in finding the appro-
priate linguistic means for marking for that function and therefore decides to
reduce on it, or whether he is not aware of the necessity for expressing it at all. In
the later case, his communicative behaviour is generalized from contexts with a
predominantly referential function to those where relational functions play a more
important role. Examples of learners' contributions whose lack of markedness for
speech act modality can be accounted for by modality generalization or modality
reduction as primary causal factors are (12) and (13).

(12) (student to elderly lady who wants to see his drawings)

L: it's in the other room I take it wait a minute
RU: could you just wait a minute
(13) (L borrowed E's suede jacket without asking permission and got a red wine
spot on it)
E: well I think it's a bit much you know expecting me you know to borrow
my clothes and
L: oh I think when we live to-together then it's possible that I can lend your
clothes for a moment but er it's not often that such things happen I er that
your clothes get dirty
RU: oh I thought as we live together it would be all right if I borrowed
.i ^

something for a while and I mean it's not often that this happens

Whereas in the cases mentioned so far, the hypothesis is that the learners planned
their utterances on the basis of their IL knowledge, there are also speech act
realizations with a lack of markedness for modality which seem to be planned on
the basis of the learner's LI. However, while the learner preserves the illocution
and propositional content of his L1 plan in his IL realization, the modal component
is reduced. I have referred to this psycholinguistic process as LI transfer with
reduction. It can be detected if one compares the learner's intended meaning as
expressed in his L1 with his IL realization. Examples (4) above and (14) can illustrate
this point.
108 Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 4, No. 2, 1982

(14) (L is going to make a request which might lead to interactional conflict)

L: erm Colin we've got a problem erm
RU: well actually Colin we've got a bit of a problem
IM: ach ubrigens Colin wir haben da so'n kleines Problem

In (4), the German subjunctive has no functional equivalence in the learner's

utterance, and in (14), the marker ubrigens and the downtoning elements so'n
kleines are not expressed in the learner's topic introduction.

At the level of individual linguistic elements which can serve as "modality mark-
ers" (House and Kasper 1981), the total learners' performance shows a considerable
underrepresentation olappealers (e.g. question tags) and cajolers (e.g. you know, I
mean, actually); the English native speakers use appealers twice as often, cajolers
10 times as often as the learners (for a more detailed account see Kasper 1981:
246ff.|.

How does the preceding discussion relate to FL teaching? The psycholinguistic

processes leading to a lack of markedness for speech act modality are activated or at
least reinforced through the specific discourse norms obtained in the classroom. As
in most traditional teaching (notably at the more advanced level), the objective of
FL teaching is obviously to pass on knowledge and skills, which implies high
priority for the referential speech function. At the same time, however, expressive
and relational functions are also realized to a greater or lesser extent. The crucial
difference between other school subjects and FL teaching in this respect is that with
non-FL subjects, the various communicative functions are realized in one and the
same linguistic medium. In traditional FL teaching, however, the referential func-
tion is dissociated from interpersonal functions in that the former is realized in FL,
whereas the latter are performed in the learners' and teachers' LI. Evidence for this
hypothesis can be found by analyzing the text types used in our learners' FL class
and their "exploitation" in FL activities. It was further supported by our learners'
information about the distribution of English and German relative to various
classroom activities; they unanimously stated that even throughout their last
three years of English studies, relational, expressive and metacommunicative
functions were most frequently performed in their native language.

4. FL "pidgin"
Looking at the principles governing social interaction, one finds that many types of
interaction arenot governed by the conversational principles set up by Grice (1975),
which emphasize propositional, logical and rational aspects of communication.
Rather, participants organize their conversational behaviour according to princi-
ples which take care of their social needs, and which have been discussed as the
principle of face-saving (Goffman 1967), tact maxim (Leech 1977), politeness rule
(Lakoff 1973), or hearer-support maxim (Edmondson 1981 b). By contrast, the
conversational norms of the FL classroom, as far as using the FL is concerned, do
seem to follow the Gricean maxims, and so do the learners in their communication
outside the classroom. Conversational behaviour is thus orientated to minimal
Teaching-Induced Aspects of Interlanguage Discourse 109

communication requirements, which obviously include the referential function

but exclude others like the relational function, or at least reduce them to an
optional status.

In recent years, the pidginization hypothesis as a model of L2 acquisition has

received considerable attention (see in particular Schumann 1975, 1978; and the
contributions in Corder and Roulet 1977). In a nutshell, the basic assumption is
that the initial functional restrictions on IL use are matched by reductions at the
formal—morphophonemic, morphosyntactic, and lexical—levels; IL represents a
pidginized variety of L2. IL development can then be described in terms of a
differentiation at the functional level and a corresponding increase in well-
formedness at the formal level.

Valdman (1977) establishes three models of such a development, each reflecting the
communicative demands of different acquisition contexts: (1) In an ideal informal
SL context with favourable attitudinal and motivational sets both on the part of the
learner and the native speakers he interacts with, IL develops gradually and sym-
metrically at the functional and formal level. (2) In traditional FL teaching with a
strong emphasis on formal correctness, IL evidences a higher degree of well-
formedness even at the initial stages, whereas its functional use is low ; there is-an
asymmetric development at the two levels with dominance of well-formedness. (3)
In informal SL acquisition contexts with unfavourable attitudinal and motiva-
tional sets on the part of the learner and native speaker interactants, initially strong
emphasis on (a few!) functional aspects, combined with little attention to well-
formedness, will lead to a pidginized L2 variety. Further development towards an
L2 norm is, among other things, impeded by the back-lash effect exerted by a
stigmatized language variety on its user.

If one relates these three models to the present discussion, our learners' FL learning
process can partly be represented by model 2; formal correctness is given high
priority in a German school context, and even though the learners' IL performance
certainly deviates morphologically and lexically from a target norm of English,
these deviations do not suggest pidginization. However, if the concept of well-
formedness is extended beyond the phonological, grammatical and lexical compo-
nent to include formal aspects of the modal level, which I think it should in order to
adequately account for language use in direct interaction, then model 2 is no longer
fully appropriate as representing the learners' IL development. Rather, the de-
ficiencies in the learners' performance at the modal level could be depicted by an
inverse variety of model 1. Given the functional dissociation of LI and FL in the
classroom, expressive, relational and metacommunicative functions are not regu-
larly realized in IL, which therefore does not systematically develop formal features
to match such functions. In analogy to the reductions at the phonological, gram-
matical and lexical level which typically characterize pidgins in informal SL
environments, one might describe these reductions at the modal level as a pidgin-
like variety which typically results from the communicative norms holding in FL
classroom contexts. As LI is available as a means by which non-referential func-
tions can be realized, the restricted use of FL does not result in communication
deficits inside the classroom, and can therefore escape the attention of both
teachers and learners. Outside the classroom, however, it does lead to functionally
110 Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 4, No. 2, 1982

restricted language use, and may well contribute to what Harder (1980) calls the
"reduced personality" of the FL learner.

Notes
1. The following terminology will be observed:
Acquisition: informal acquisition; cover term referring to all types of language acquisi-
tion and learning
Learning: language acquisition under formal classroom conditions
LI: native language
L2: cover term for second or foreign language
SL: second language; non-primary language institutionalized as a regular means of
communication in the learner's speech community
FL: foreign language; non-primary language not institutionalized as a regular means of
communication in the learner's speech community
IL: interlanguage; the linguistic knowledge system the learner activates when trying to
communicate in L2. Like any other language, it comprises pragmatic, semantic, syntac-
tic, morphological and phonological rules. Unlike most other languages, it is typically
developmental and can be permeated by learning and communication strategies.
2. Felix (1981) and Wode (1981) have recently made the valuable point that the explanation
of L2 acquisition in terms of general cognitive principles is insufficient: rather, the
cognitive devices specially geared towards language (LI and/or L2) acquisition should be
in the focus of L2 acquisition research.
3. The "diversity of context" approach to L2 acquisition has its predecessor in the sociolin-
guistic criticism of the homogeneity assumption underlying Chomskyan linguistics: the
description of language variety is a logical precondition for the identification of invariant
properties (see Hymes 1972: 276).
4. This is also implied, though not elaborated on, by Jain 1974 and Richards 1974a.
5. cf. " . . . any inexplicit explanation may be open to misinterpretations by the student. The
teacher must be on guard to monitor drills and explanations to be certain that they do not
lead to false generalizations" (Stenson 1975: 57; my italics).
6. The following conventions are used in the transcripts:
L = German learner of English E = English native speaker
RU = reconstructed utterance IM = intended meaning
^ = fall '-'"*/ = rise-fall
sjl
= rise '-^* = fall-rise
AA
-^ = short pause = longer pause
" = primary stress [ ] = simultaneously spoken passage

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