Second Language Acquisition (SLA) – the

scholarly field of inquiry that investigates the

human capacity to learn languages other than
the first, during late childhood, adolescence or
adulthood, and once the first language/s have
been acquired.
 SLA
• Began in the late 1960s
• Language teaching, linguistics, child
language acquisition and psychology
(Huebner, 1998)
• Child Language Acquisition or First Language
Acquisition –investigates monolingual acquisition
• 18 months and 3-4 years of age –bulk of language is
acquired
• Between the womb and the first few months of life,
infants attune themselves to the prosodic and
phonological make up of the language
• They learn the turn taking
• 1st year – one- word utterances
• 2nd year – two-word utterances
• 3rd year – syntactic and morphological deployment
• 5 or 6 years –pragmatically or syntactically subtle phenomena
• Bilingual acquisition or multilingual acquisition
– the process of learning two or more
languages relatively simultaneously during
early childhood – before the age of four.
• Bilingualism (multilingualism) – the field that
studies bilingual/multilingual acquisition
 Differences between bilingualism and SLA:

• SLA often favors the study of late starting

acquirers, whereas bilingualism favors the
study of people who had a very early start
with their languages.
 Differences between bilingualism and SLA:

• Bilingualism researchers tend to focus on the

products of bilingualism as deployed in already
mature bilingual capabilities of children or adults,
whereas SLA researchers tend to focus on the
pathways towards becoming competent in more
languages than one.
Differences between bilingualism and SLA:

• Bilingual research typically maintains a focus

on all the languages of an individual,
whereas SLA traditionally orients strongly
towards the second language, to the point
that the first language may be abstracted
out of the research picture.
 Main concepts and terms:

• L2 acquisition – the process of learning

additional languages

• Mother tongue/first language or L1 –

the language(as in the case of
monolingual acquisition) or languages
(in the case of bilingual or multilingual
acquisition) that a child learns from
parents, siblings and caretakers during
the critical years of development, from
the womb up to about four years of
age.
 Main concepts and terms:
Additional language, second
language and L2

–any language learned after the L1

(or L1s)

-The third, fourth, tenth and so on

language learned later in life
 Main concepts and terms:
• Naturalistic learners learn the L2 through
informal opportunities in multicultural
neighbourhoods, schools and workplaces,
without ever receiving any organized
instruction on the workings of the language
they are learning.
• Instructed learners learn additional languages
through formal study in school or university,
through private lessons and so on.
 What is a

Theory- is a set of statements about natural phenomena that

explains why these phenomena occur the way they do. In the
sciences, theories are used in what Kuhn (1996) calls the job of
“puzzle solving.”
 Duty of a theory

• to account for or explain observed

phenomena.
• a theory also ought to make predictions about
what would occur under specific conditions.
 • disease was caused by microorganisms

• It could predict that doctors who delivered

babies without washing their hands after
performing autopsies on patients who had
died from childbirth fever would transmit the
disease to new patients.
• Connect phenomena – transmittal of disease,
fermentation processes in wine and beer
production, etc.
A theory of individual differences in working
memory – people vary in their ability to hold
information in what is called working memory

• People vary in their working memory capacity

 What Is a Model?

• A model describes processes or sets of

processes of a phenomenon. A model may
also show how different components of a
phenomenon interact. A model does not need
to explain why.
 What Is a Hypothesis?

• A hypothesis does not unify various

phenomena; it is usually an idea about a single
phenomenon.
• In science, we would say that a theory can
generate hypotheses that can then be tested
by experimentation or observation.
• Example from SLA:
- the Critical Period Hypothesis.
 Constructs

• All theories have what are called constructs.

Constructs are key features or mechanisms on
which the theory relies; they must be
definable in the theory. In the theory about
disease transmission, germ is a construct. In
the theory about working memory, capacity is
a construct; and in the theory about syntax, a
trace is a construct.
• Theories ought to explain observable phenomena.
• Theories ought to unify explanations of various
phenomena where possible.
• Theories are used to generate hypotheses that can be
tested empirically. Theories may be explanations of a
thing (suchas language) or explanations of how
something comes to be (such as the acquisition of
language).
• Theories have constructs, which in turn are defined in
the theory.
 Why Are Theories and Models Either Good or Necessary for SLA
Research?

• Theories can be utilized from a practical, real-

world perspective. Theories are also useful in
guiding research, which may not always have
immediate practical purposes related to
instruction
• Research can return the favor to theorists by
evaluating competing theories. Theories can
generate predictions, or hypotheses, about
how language acquisition will take place under
specific conditions. These hypotheses can
then be tested against observations and the
findings of empirical studies.
 What Needs to Be Explained by Theories in
SLA?
• Observation 1: Exposure to input is necessary
for SLA.
• Observation 2: A good deal of SLA happens
incidentally.
• Observation 3: Learners come to know more
than what they have been exposed to in the
input.
• Observation 4: Learners’ output (speech) often follows
predictable paths with predictable stages in the acquisition of
a given structure.
• Stage 1: no + phrase: No want that.
• Stage 2: subject + no + phrase: He no want that.
• Stage 3: don’t, can’t, not may alternate with no: He
can’t/don’t/not want that.
• Stage 4: Negation is attached to modal verbs: He can’t do
that.
• Stage 5: Negation is attached to auxiliaries: He doesn’t want
that.
• Observation 5: Second language learning is
variable in its outcome.
• Observation 6: Second language learning is
variable across linguistic subsystems.
• Observation 7: There are limits on the effects
of frequency on SLA.
• Observation 8: There are limits on the effect of
a learner’s first language on SLA.
• Observation 9: There are limits on the effects
of instruction on SLA.
• Observation 10: There are limits on the effects
of output (learner production) on language
acquisition.
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