3.

SLA: Types of data analysis

 3.1. Introduction

 In this chapter we will trace the historical development of types of analyses of data that
researchers used to be able to understand better the process of second language acquisition.

 3.2 Contrastive analysis

 From the 1940s to the 1960s researchers conducted contrastive analyses, comparing two
languages. They wanted to identify points of similarity and difference between particular
native (NLs) and target languages (TLs) in order to get more effective pedagogy. Lado, Fries
said that language materials were thought to be more efficient when based on contrastive
analyses because individuals tend to transfer the meanings of their native language to
foreign language and culture when they attempt to speak and understand the language and
the culture as practised by natives.

 3.2.1 The contrastive analysis hypothesis

 When two languages are similar, positive transfer would occur; where tthey were different,
negative transfer, or interference, would result.

 Weinreich said: The greater the difference between two systems, the greater is the learning
problem and the potential area of interference.

 Stockwell, Bowen and Martin would expect the easiest linguistic point for a language learner
to master to be one where the L1 and the L2 correspond structurally and functionally. They
also do not predict the greatest difficulty in the new and missing categories, where
presumably the difference btween two languages are the greatest.

 3.2.2. Language acquisition as habit formation

 The behaviourists held that language acquisition was a product of habit formation.Second
language learning was viewed as a process of overcoming the habits of the native language in
order to acquire the new habits of the target language.The contrasive analysis was
imporatant to this view of language learning, since if trouble spots in the target language
could be anticipated, errors might be prevented.

 3.2.3. The CAH refuted

 Ironically, while the association of CAH with behaviourism gave it academic legitimacy, it
eventually led to its downfall. Chomsky challenged the behaviourist view of language
acquisition in his review of Skinner`s Verbal Behaviour. Perhaps the most fatal flaw of the
CAH, as pointed out by Long and Sato, was the assumption that one could depend solely
upon an analysis of a linguistic product to yield a meaningful insight into a psycholinguistic
process. Despite the criticism CAs continued to be conducted, particularly in Europe.

 3.3. Error analysis

 The enduring quality of CA was not due to sheer obstinancy; it was observed earlier that L1
influenced L2 performance, so that we can often identify the native language of a foreigner
speaker, at least where phonological evidence is available.

 Strong versus weak versions of the CAH

 In an attempt to reconcile this observation with the disappointing results of emipirical

investigations, Wardhaugh proposed a distinction between strong and a weak version of the
contrastive analysis hypothesis.

 3.3.2. Language acquisition as rule formation

 In the early 1960s, inspired by Chomsky`s theory of language acquisition, first language
acquisition researches began studying the speech of children acquiring English as an L1. They
characterized their subjects` performance by writing grammar. Chomsky posted a theory in
which humans were thought to possess a certain innate predisposition to induce the rules of
the target language from the input to which they were exposed. Children acquiring English as
their L1 were found to commit errors such as:* She doesn´t wants to go. * I eated it which
suggested that they internalized rules for subject-verb agreement and past tense formation
in English, but had not yet mastered the limitations of these rules.

 3.3.3. Interlingual versus intralingual errors

 To be sure, SL learners still committed errors which could be traced to L1 interference and as
such were termed interlingual errors by Richard. Intralingual errors- large number of similar
errors that are being committed by SL learners, regardless of their L1.Certain errors were
classified as overgeneralization, caused by the learners` failure to observe the boundaries of
a rule. Other errors were attributed to simplification or redundancy reduction, such as when
plural marker was omitted from a noun preceded by a cardinal number larger than one. In
1967 Corder made a distinction between a mistake and an error. Whereas a mistake is a
random performance slip caused by fatigue, an error is a systematic deviation made by
learners who have not yet mastered the rules of the L2.

 3.3.4. Interlanguage

 The term „interlanguage“ was coined by the American linguist Larry Selinker.

 The language system that the learner constructs out of the linguistic input to which he has
been exposed has been referred to as an interlanguage.

 The concept of interlanguage involves the following premises:

 The system of abstract linguistic rules is viewed as a „mental grammar“ and is referred to as
an IL.

 The grammar is open to influence from the outside (through the input), but also from the
inside ( the omission, overgeneralization, tranfer errors).
 The concept of IL might better be understood if it is thought of as an continuum between the
L1 and L2 –the learner′s grammar is transitional, learners change their grammar by adding
rules, deleting rules and restructuring the whole system.

 One of the major issues for which any description of IL must account is the fossilization –
linguistic items, rules and subsystems which speakers of a particular NL will tend to keep in
their IL relative to a particular TL, no matter what the age of the learner or amount of
explanation and instrucrion he receives in the TL.

 3.3.5. Error analysis criticized

 By focusing on errors, researchers studied what learners were doing wrong. It was often
difficult to indentify the unitary source of an error. An error like The doges ran home could be
due to the overgeneralization of the syllabic plural, but it also is developmental error of the
type children learning English as their native language commonly make.

 3.4.Performance analysis; Morpheme studies

 Since learner errors are part of a learner′s performance, EA has a role in PA and the learner′s
total performance must be taken into account in any DA.

 The view of language acquisition is a product of rule formation. SLA research attention has
continued to focus on morphosyntax.

 SL researchers scored protocols of subjects′ speech for suppliance ofgrammatical

morphemes in obligatory context – contexts where the TL requires a particular linguistic
structure, such as the plural marker at the end of a common English noun preceded by a
cardinal number.

 3.4.2. Developmental sequence

 The subject of developmental investigations is to discover how language is processed by the

child for the purpose of acquisition. This is reflected in the way that children decompose
complex structural patterns and then rebuild them step by step until they finally reach target
like mastery. Researchers concluded that pre-targetlike regularities must be regarded as an
essential part of the total process of acquiring a language.

 Some subjects were recorded and transcripts analyzed for particular structures in a
longitudinal study. The major discovery was the degree of similarity between L1 and L2
developmental sequences. It was discovered that SL learners follow a pattern of verb phrases
development in their target language Spanish similar to that of native Spanish speakers, but
Wode argued that there were differences, and that the differences were systematic due to
children’s relying on their L1 only under a structural condition where there was a ‘crucial
similarity’.

 3.4.3. Lerner strategies

 Butterworth was one of the first language acquisition researchers who studied the
acquisition of English by an adolescent, a thirteen-year-old native speaker of Spanish. The
 adolescent tended to reduce English structure to simple syntax and used relexification, which
means replacing Spanish words with English while retaining the Spanish syntactic patterns.

 The conclusion was that researchers should not adopt a normative TL perspective, but rather
seek to discover how an IL structure which appears to be non-standard is being used
meaningfully by a learner.

 3. 4. 4 The acquisition of forms and functions

 Huebner conducted a study where he observed whether learners using prefabricated

routines or formulas are really using them appropriately right from the beginning.

 He suggested that the acquisition of appropriate functions for formulaic utterances may be
an evolutionary process.

 Bahns and Wade demonstrated that learners do not learn all the function of a particular
form at the same time. They concluded that it is obvious that one cannot generally claim that
the function is required before the form or that the form is acquired before the function.

 Perhaps what is a general principle regarding learning both L2 form and function is that
initially learners attempt to maintain a relationship between one invariant surface linguistic
form and a single function. They are motivated to do so in order to keep their IL system
internally consistent.

 3. 4. 5 Formulaic utterances

 Huang and Hakuta identified the use of formulaic utterances as one strategy their subjects
employed.

 Wong Fillmore feels that the memorization of such utterances is indispensable in SLA,
because in her opinion it is the memorized utterances which get analyzed and out of which
the creative rules are thus constructed.

 Krashen and Scarcella believe that memorized utterances and creative speech are produced
in ways that are neurotically different, which is the reason why there can be no interface
between them.

 Schmidt could find no evolution towards creative rules from his subject’s memorized
utterances. He concluded that for his subject memorization, which considerably enhanced
his fluency, is a more successful acquisition strategy than rule formation.

 According to Chomsky language acquisition is a product of rule formation. He has maintained

that grammar rules are not psychologically real. Just because a sentence can be explained by
the application of a particular linguistic rule, this does not mean that the speaker applied it
each time.

 Wagenr –Gough observed an Iranian 5-year-old child and his strategy in answering questions
was to incorporate the question along with his answer, a strategy referred to as
incorporation.
 3. 5 Discourse analysis

 Discourse analysis can be seen as recognition of the need to examine not only the learner’s
performance but also the input to the learner

 3. 5. 1 Conversational analysis

 Conversational analysis is a sub-area of discourse analysis. The value of examining what

learners can be learning when engaged in collaborative discourse was most promoted by
Hatch. She believes that one learns how to do conversation, how to interact verbally and that
out of this interaction syntactic structures are developed.

 We have an good example of vertical construction in a conversation between a native

speaker of English and a non-native speaker where the non-native and his interlocutor
collaborate to produce a combined social discourse relaying on the strategy of scaffolding or
building his utterances on those of the native speaker. It is thought that through the
negotiation of such vertical constructions, learners acquire the “horizontal” word order of
the TL.

 Hatch does not deny that SLA takes place through role formation but suggest that other
processes which are nonlinguistic may be critical to the learner’s discovery of linguistic
elements that make up the system. The connection between conversational interaction and
IL development is complex.

 In her study of the acquisition of past tense reference in English by Vietnamese speakers,
Sato found in her study that certain aspects of conversation appeared to facilitate the
acquisition of salient linguistic structures (adverbial expressions and lexical past verbs) but
apparently did not work for the less salient verbal inflections.

 3.5.2 Other applications of discourse analysis

 It has already been mentioned how discourse analysis allows the investigation of relationship
between NS input and learner IL forms and the contribution of conversational interaction to
SLA. These two avenues of inquiry require the interviewer to work with units of language
above the sentence level. Conversations, monologues and written texts are all discourse
units.

Researchers are not only concerned with how IL forms evolve. They are also concerned with
learning how to appropriately use the forms for a particular discourse function. This has led
to the study of speech acts. Giddens, Inoue and Schaefer constructed role-play situations to
elicit complaints from Spanish, English and Japanese native speakers. The discovery was that
the speakers of all three languages structured their complaints pretty much the same way.
Speakers always began with openers, provided an orientation for the listener afterwards,
stated the problem, justified the complaint and the adressee's reason for having wronged
the speaker, offered a remedy and concluded the speaking turn with expressing their feelings
about the adressee or the wrong committed.
 Many new SLA areas of investigation have been opened because of the need to view both
form and function.

1) Foreigner talk discourse – This research has mostly centered around the nature of the
adjustments which native speakers make when conversing with the non-native speakers and
how these modifications affect SLA

2) Coherence and cohesion – The achievement of coherence and cohesion at the

suprasentential level is the focus of this area. Many studies have been conducted on how SLA
learners learn to comprehend and produce these texts

3) Communicative strategies – Non-native speakers have an incomplete knowledge of a SL,

so the researchers have been identifying what compensatory strategies they use in order to
maintain a conversation

 4) Contextual analysis – SLA researchers must sometimes undertake analysis which

determines the effect of context on linguistic forms

5) Classroom discourse analysis – This research deals with the interactions between teacher
and students in an L2 classroom setting

6) Discourse/functional analysis – The center of this research is how learners use the
rudimentary knowledge of SL syntax they possess to accomplish discourse functions in oral
narratives

7) Speech act analysis – This analysis deals with how certain speech acts are realized in a
language. Once we understand how a particular function is accomplished in the native
language and target language of our subjects, we can proceed with an analysis of the SLA
process.

The need to investigate pragmatic conventions contrastiong L1 and L2 brings us back to the
topic with which we started this chapter.

 Conclusion

 We have seen how each new txpe broadens our perspective and makes its contribution. We
can't say that each type of analysis replaced its predecessor, but we could say is subsumed
what came before it. The view of language acquisition as a product of rule formation has
prevailed over successive modes of inquiry. This is probably due to the fact that SLA research
attention has continued focusing on morphosyntax. When it comes to the semantic
dimension, neither habit formation nor rule formation may be applicable. Furthermore,
verbal association and concept learning are more likely to have explanatory power. All this is
speculative and will be subject to investigation.