Introduction to

Second Language
Acquisition
 Below are the levels of language except:

A. B. C. D.

morphology syntax semantics morphosynthesis

➝ WHAT IS KNOWING A LANGUAGE?

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 Short Answer submissions (1/3)

Name Response

Mitrha Acquiring the structure and usage of language applying to real life scenario.

sssuha the people know how to read, write, and speak in that particular language.

asmaa acquiring the language skills and increase the language competency

annur It means to be able to use the language meaningfully.

indrajit 2 being able to read, speak, write, and listen to the language
 Short Answer submissions (2/3)

Name Response

VTHZZ able to know the difference (words,meaning and pronounciation)

Indrajit AL Mohan Learning the meaning of words and ability yo comprehend sentences.

comprehend the spoken language, able to recognise sounds, manipulate the

sharaudah
language, and write the language

Najwa Able to understand the meanings

najah being able to comprehend and acquire the basic of any language
 Short Answer submissions (3/3)

Name Response

Able to identify the source and formation of a language and thus integrate it as a
Syakir
part of life.

Izzy Able to understand the language.

Able to communicate to people using that language

Izzah Whether it's writing or reading and speaking

Tevathaaranhi Able to comprehend the meaning of words

➝ Historical overview of SLA
➝ Nativism and
Environmentalism
⇾ Review of Skinner and
Chomsky
⇾ Nature vs Nurture
➝ Role of first language in 2nd
Lang Acquisition
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Overview
➝ Every human being acquires language at a very young
age.
➝ We know a language by formulating a grammar.
➝ A grammar may be defined as a set of rules which
characterises all and only the sentences of the language
that we as speakers are able to produce and understand.
➝ To learn a language is to master the rules of the mental
grammar.
➝ Mental Grammar is a system of rules that generate or
produce sentences of the language.

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Characteristics of Language
Acquisition
➝ Primary Linguistic Data
⇾ Environmental experience within which the children learn
language.
⇾ Despite the variety in experiences, every child in every
community acquires the language of that community.
➝ Universality of Language
⇾ Without special training, every normal child requires a
natural language.
⇾ Every child succeeds in converging on a grammatical
system that is equivalent to everyone’s else’s, despite
various linguistic experience.
➝ Uniformity of Language
⇾ Any child can become polylingual, acquire and retain all
the languages exposed to.
⇾ Children speak whatever languages spoken to them.

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2nd Language Acquisition
➝ Nativist
➝ The term nativist “is derived from the fundamental
assertion that language acquisition is innately
determined, that we are born with a built-in device of
some kind that predisposes us to language acquisition.”
(Brown 1973).
➝ In 1965, Noam Chomsky, a linguist, proposed the theory
that all people have an innate, biological ability to
acquire a language.
➝ He theorized that people possess a Language Acquisition
Device (LAD), a sort of neurological wiring
that, regardless of the language to be acquired, allows a
child to listen to a language, decipher the rules of that
language, and begin creating with the language at a very
young age.
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2nd Language Acquisition
➝ Nativist
➝ Eric Lenneberg (cited in Brown, 1987:19), in his
attempt to explain language development in the
child, assumed that language is a species - specific
behaviour and it is ‘biologically determined’.
➝ Another important point as regards the innatist
account is that nativists do not deny the
importance of environmental stimuli, but they say
language acquisition cannot be accounted for on
the basis of environmental factors only.
➝ There must be some innate guide to achieve this
end.

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2nd Language Acquisition
➝ Nativist
➝ With the LAD they are able to make or understand
utterances that they have not previously heard.
➝ Their first language is acquired with no direct instruction, no
practice, no drills and with no apparent difficulty.
➝ Chomsky suggests that, if provided with the correct input,
the LAD predisposes all people to the acquisition of a
second language in basically the same manner.
➝ Most of us cannot remember learning our first language – it
just seemed to happen automatically.
➝ However, for many children learning a second language, the
process does not seem natural or automatic, and it can be
associated with many negative experiences and memories.

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2nd Language Acquisition
➝ Nativist
➝ Nativist theory has been criticized on a number of
counts.
➝ Linguists have failed to specify the nature of
universal grammar.
➝ Many linguists have speculated that this may not be
possible.
➝ Grammar is not learned as rapidly as one might
expect if a great deal of innate knowledge is assumed.

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2nd Language Acquisition Theories
➝ Environmentalist Theory
➝ Environmentalists posit that environmental/outside influences
over the learner play a substantial role in acquisition of a
second language.
➝ The doctrine holds that all knowledge comes from experience,
ultimately from our interaction with the environment through
our reasoning or senses.
➝ In this sense, it can be contrasted to nativism, which holds that
at least some knowledge is not acquired through interaction
with the environment, but is genetically transmitted and innate.
➝ The principal environmentalist theory, Schumann’s
“Acculturation Model,” suggests that a learner’s social and
psychological distance from the target language group
influences that individual’s ability to develop proficiency in the
target language.
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2nd Language Acquisition
➝ Environmentalist
➝ Environmentalist theories of language acquisition hold that
an organism’s nurture, or experience, are of more
significance to development than its nature or inborn
contributions.
➝ Yet they do not completely reject the innate factors.
➝ Behaviourist and neo-behaviourist stimulus-response
learning theories (S-R for simplicity) are the best known
examples.
➝ Even though such theories have lost their effect partially
because of Chomsky’s intelligent review of Skinner’s
Verbal Behaviour (Chomsky, 1959), their effect has not
been so little when we consider the present cognitive
approach as an offshoot of behaviourism.
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2nd Language Acquisition

➝ Behavioural
➝ Skinner argued that children learn language as parents
selectively reward or punish only those behaviours
which they recognize as appropriate, grammatically
correct utterances.
➝ Bandura argued that language learning takes place
primarily by processes of observation & imitation.
➝ Simply put, children overhear language being used and
they imitate the behaviour of these models.

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2nd Language Acquisition

➝ Behavioural
➝ Criticisms
➝ It is simply not possible for parents to reinforce or
punish all of the possible utterances a child will use.
➝ Studies of parent-child interaction show that parents
reward grammatically incorrect utterances that are
truthful.
➝ The language that children hear contains too few
examples for them to learn the correct rules (poverty of
the stimulus argument).

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Interactionist Theory
➝ Interactionist theories are concerned with the
interplay between environmental & biological
factors in the process of acquiring language.
➝ Interactionists tend to view children as having a
strong biological predisposition to acquire a
language.
➝ However, in contrast to nativists, interactionists
stress the importance of both the social support
that parents provide the young language learner,
as well as the social contexts in which language-
learning child is instructed.

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Interactionist Theory
➝ Bruner (1983) argues parents provide their children a
language acquisition support system or LASS.
➝ The LASS is a collection of strategies that parents employ
to facilitate their children’s acquisition of language.
➝ Another strategy is called infant-directed speech or
‘motherese’.
➝ When using infant-directed speech, parents speak in a
higher pitch, stress important words, and talk more slowly
to their infants.
➝ Very young infants show a clear preference for infant-
directed speech. Gets an infant’s attention & increases the
chances of their understanding the message.

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Interactionist Theory
➝ Criticisms of Interactionist Perspectives
➝ deVilliers & deVilliers (1992) suggest that parents
rarely offer their children direct feedback on the
appropriateness of their grammar.
➝ Linguistic & social practices vary widely across
cultures.
➝ Some cultures do not use anything like the practices
described above and yet, their children still learn
language at a similar rate to Western children.

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Conclusion
➝ Each of the three theoretical perspective adds
something to the study of human language.
➝ Behavioural (Learning) theory provides some thoughts
on plausible mechanisms that might underlie the
acquisition of at least some facets of human language.
➝ Nativist theory highlights the fact that now all aspects
of a language can be learned in the time that humans
typically do and thus, that an innate language
mechanism must be a part of our equipment.
➝ Interactionist theories highlight the important role of
the social environment and the important role social
input has in structuring our language- learning.

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BRIEFLY SUMMARIZE THE
THREE PERSPECTIVES:
➝ NATIVIST
➝ BEHAVIOURIST
➝ INTERACTIONIST

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 What is the smallest unit of matter that
retains the properties of an element?

A. B. C. D.

Molecule Atom Cell Proton

Nature vs Nurture
Nature Nurture

Human beings are born with an Children imitate what they hear,
innate capacity for language learn through positive
development reinforcement, habit formation
Is part of our genetic make-up All errors during 1st language
acquisition are due to ‘bad habit’
formation.
As natural to us as breathing Children correct as they hear
and imitate accurate speech.
All human beings are born with
a set of structural rules of
grammar that permits the
production and comprehension
of an unlimited range of
utterances in the language.

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Role of 1st Language Acquisition
➝ L1 helps in the process of discovery and creation and
the important role to play in communicating
meaning and content
➝ L1 facilitate L2 development. By making use of his
previous linguistic knowledge which consists of what
he already knows about the target language and of his
L1.
➝ L1 mediates the learning of another language. L1
play an important role in L2 development.
➝ L1 reduces anxiety and enhance the affective
environment for learning, facilitates incorporation of
learners’ life experiences.
➝ Good in L1 depicts L2 literacy skills at the early
stage.
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Role of 1st Language Acquisition
➝ LANGUAGE TRANSFER,
➝ both positive transfer and negative transfer.
➝ Koda (1993) explores the transferred L1 strategies in
L2 sentence comprehension and finds that “reading
skills transferred from L1 interact with L2 specific
linguistic features in shaping cognitive strategies for
L2 processing” (p. 497).
➝ While similarities between L1 and L2 facilitates
learning that is called positive transfer, differences
between L1 and L2 cause interference errors due to
negative transfer (Ellis, 1997, p. 51).

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Role of 1st Language Acquisition
➝ LANGUAGE TRANSFER,
➝ Nonetheless, cross-linguistic research reveals that it is
not the most diverse areas between a learner's L1 and
L2 which cause the greatest learning problems but
“rather those areas which share considerable
similarity” (Pica, 1984, p. 695).
➝ Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) suggests that
comparing L1 and L2 features is beneficial in
examining L2 learners’ transfer errors (Lightbown &
Spada, 2013).
➝ However, “today contrastive analysis is only one of
many uncertain variables which one must re-evaluate
in second language teaching.

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Role of 1st Language Acquisition

➝ LANGUAGE TRANSFER,
➝ No longer does it seem to be as important as it once
was” (Wardhaugh, 1970, p. 129).
➝ Thus, since language transfer and, therefore, CAH is
based on behaviourism that considers language
learning as transferring habit formation, these ideas do
not appear influential in L2 development theories.

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Role of 1st Language Acquisition
➝ INNATIVIST
➝ By contrast, both Chomsky and Krashen consider
innate ability and view L2 acquisition as similar to
L1 acquisition.
➝ Krashen’s Monitor theory explains language learning
as the comprehension of linguistic input and
interaction with the input through innate guided
processes.
➝ Treating the influences of L1 nominal on L2
development, Monitor Theory suggests that all
acquisition is followed by universal internal
procedures.

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Role of 1st Language Acquisition
➝ INNATIVIST
➝ This conception implies that all learners follow
similar paths in L2 development; use similar
strategies in L2 development and commit same
errors in the process of L2 development regardless
of their L1 backgrounds.
➝ However, Larsen-Freemen concludes, “language
background does not seem to radically influence the
way in which learners acquire English morphemes”
(as cited in VanPatten & Williams, 2015, p. 30).
➝ Therefore, there are two premises: L2 development is
independent of the influence of L1, and L2 follows
similar developmental sequences of L1.

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Pedagogical Implications
➝ L1 has implications for interactive tasks and cognitive
tasks in L2 classes.
➝ Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory can explain the role of
L1 for interactive tasks and cognitive tasks, which
argues that learning processes depend on social
interactions: interpersonal (or “interpsychological”)
and intrapersonal (or “intrapsychological”).
➝ From an interpersonal point of view, L1 is very
important because it is “a child’s first primary tool for
social interaction” (Echevarria & Graves, 2011, p. 40)
and it regulates communication moves in collaborative
interaction.

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Pedagogical Implications

➝ Thus, the usage of L1 has significance in interactive

activities to assist communication in form of both peer
scaffolding and teacher scaffolding to facilitate L2
development.
➝ Suggesting the usage of L1 in interpersonal
communicative tasks (i.e. pair and group work) in L2
classes, Storch and Wigglesworth (2003) recommend,
“teachers should not prohibit the use of some L1
altogether in group and pair work but should
acknowledge that the use of the L1 may be a normal
psychological process that allows learners to initiate
and sustain verbal interaction” (p. 768).

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Pedagogical Implications
➝ L1 assists the beginning learner to access the language
and communication universals that allow the learners
to determine the communicative intention of the
speaker, even when he/she lacks comprehension of the
words uttered.
➝ Even though using L1 facilitates collaborative tasks in
L2 classes, excessive dependence on L1 will increase
student’ evading tendency of using L2, which is not
effective for L2 development.
➝ If learners mostly depend on their L1 when an L2 rule
is required in production that is not available in their
repertoire, this dependence may increase production
for the time being, but actual L2 development may not
occur (Krashen, 1982).
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Pedagogical Implications
➝ Weighing interaction in both L1 and L2, Wells (1999)
suggests, “the principles on which the balance between
L2 and L1 is struck also need to be enunciated and
justified” (p. 253).
➝ Krashen and Terrell (1983) argue that L2 should be
used instead of L1 in the L2 learning process to avoid
the negative influence of L1.
➝ Therefore, emphasis should be given to developing
skills in both target language and native language.
➝ The ending of this quotation justifies the role of L1 in
L2 development by providing evidence that an L2
learner uses his/her L1 in the thinking processes for
producing a linguistic output in L2.

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Pedagogical Implications
➝ L2 development will not occur successfully without
the development of L1.
➝ Even though the role of L1 in L2 development is
important, the right equilibrium of using L1 as a
resource in L2 development processes is crucial.
➝ Freeman and Freeman (2009) argue, “the general
public and, in fact, most educators believe that more
English equals more English, when the truth is the
opposite. More first-language knowledge equals more
English” (p. 3).
➝ Since acquiring L1 prepares learners to learn any
additional language, the research attention should be
given to how effectively L1 can be used in L2
development.
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Pedagogical Implications

➝ Additionally, as L2 learners transfer knowledge

already learned in their L1 into their L2 due to cross-
linguistic influences, Rodriguez, Carrasquillo, and Lee
(2014) recommend for “using concepts and content
students already know in their first language to create
bridge to learning new language structures” (p. 70).
➝ Therefore, using content in L2 classrooms, which is
learnt in L1, can benefit both content knowledge and
language skills.
➝ However, extensive use of L1 in L2 classrooms will
negatively influences L2 development.

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Thanks!
Any questions?

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TUTORIAL TASK
➝ Please visit this site
https://crackerbarrel.weebly.com/
and come up with a discussion of the issue
presented.
➝ Present your discussion in the form of
infographic/PPT etc

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