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SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION RESEARCH

In the Literature, but not always in the Classroom

Steve Schackne

Journal of Language and Linguistics Volume 1 Number 2 2002 ISSN 1475 - 8989

Abstract

This paper examines applied linguistic research done in four areas: 1) behaviorism, cognitivism, contrastive analysis, error analysis, 2) purpose and expectation and 3) Krashen's natural order of acquisition.

The paper then examines a conundrum: the compelling findings offered in the research, findings which have practical application in the classroom, and the fact that these findings have, in the real world, rarely been adopted by teachers or school districts.

The paper posits possible reasons for this "foot dragging" by educators, and closes by citing the ongoing increase of second language research and encouraging educators to apply the more relevant research to their classroom methodology.

1. Background

In 1957 Noam Chomsky changed the face of linguistics when he published Syntactic Structures, but it wasn't until the 1960s (and more prominently in the 1970s) when applied linguistic research started to change the prevailing views of classroom methodology; notably, the behaviorists, following B.F. Skinner, came under attack. Behaviorists, supporters of audiolingualism, embraced Skinner's Verbal Behavior, which suggested that language was a form of conditioned behavior. According to Skinnerian behaviorists, language could be acquired like a habit by a program of stimulus, response, and reinforcement. Audiolingualism used consistent and unending drilling of the students followed by positive or negative reinforcement.

Chomsky cited the fact that children spontaneously utter sentences they have never heard, much less practiced, before. No, language isn't just a habit, there must be a cognitive factor, a language acquisition device in the brain.

Later, linguists such as Stephen Krashen and the late Tracy Terrell conducted classroom research on input focus; like a child learning its native language (L1), the listening input is key, they said. Give students massive amounts of comprehensible input, and have them focus on meaning, not form, like a child listening to its parents.

Although the behaviorists are considered passe, much of the research undertaken from their era up to the present has potentially implications for language teachers and learners. Yet, many language curricula are designed oblivious to this fact. In other words, there is a lot of research available which can improve the language acquisition environments of students, but much of it is not utilized.

2. Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis

Contrastive analysis, a comparative analysis of two languages, their similarities and their differences, was thought by many in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s to be a useful predictor of where second language students would likely encounter problems in learning a second language. It stood to reason that if certain elements of a second language differed greatly from the student's native language, that student would likely encounter difficulties. Lado (1957) stated that his book Linguistics across Cultures,

"... rests on the assumption that we can predict and describe patterns that will cause difficulty in learning and those that will not cause difficulty."

The debate raged on, notably through the 1970s, and contrastive analysis took quite a pummeling. Error analysis did not escape unscathed, suffering notably from Schacter's (1974) study which showed error analysis misdiagnosing student learning problems due to their "avoidance" of certain difficult L2 elements.

The result today is that both contrastive analysis and error analysis are rarely used in identifying L2 learner problem areas and "customizing" curricula for homogeneous L2 groups, one exception being Pierson (1982) who used error analysis as a basis for developing curriculum items for Cantonese speakers. I contend that the research done in both CA and EA can be utilized in curriculum development to the benefit of the L2 learner.

The debate over contrastive analysis and error analysis has virtually disappeared in the last ten years. Most researchers agree that contrastive analysis and error analysis alone cannot predict or account for the myriad errors encountered in learner English. But Norrish (1983) argues,

"Although this 'strong predictive' claim for contrastive analysis can hardly be sustained any longer, it is certainly true to say that analysis has a useful explanatory role. That is, it can still be said to explain certain errors and mistakes."

Most young language teachers today are unaware of the CA-EA controversy and the research it engendered. Many of the original "overblown" claims of the two research methodologies have been debunked, but even a superficial grasp of these two theoretical constructs of language learning can be applied in the classroom to identify and explain some of the problems the students are experiencing.

3. Purpose, Expectation: An Alternative to Traditional Comprehension

The cognitivist Noam Chomsky implied more than once that his theories of language acquisition had nothing to do with adult language learning, and language teaching has never adopted a set methodology based on Chomsky's work. But, as cognitivism gained credibility relative to behaviorism, it was natural that researchers should turn their attentions to the role of thought processes in language acquisition: this can cover broad areas including psychology, physiology, areas most often associated with psycholinguistics, and I hardly want to bore the layperson by getting into that. However, I would like to address the thought processes of the L2 learner, what's going on when the student is accessing the target language.

L2 comprehension skills are most often classified as type 1 or type 2. According to Harmer (1983), type 1 skills are "...those operations that students perform on a text when they tackle it for the first time." This basically includes the two traditional tasks of reading to extract specific information and reading for general understanding. Type 2 skills are, quoting Harmer (1983) again

"...those that are subsequently used when studying reading or listening material and they involve detailed comprehension of the text (after the students have performed type 1 skills)."

These type 2 tasks include inferring opinion and attitude, deducing meaning from context, and recognizing function and discourse patterns and markers.

Traditionally, learners have encountered the two type 1 skills involved with extracting specific information and getting the "general picture." This is especially true for young learners and those at the lower levels. These skills have been so emphasized that reading strategies have been developed, skimming for general understanding and scanning for specific information, to deal with them. The more practitioners have examined learners' motivations and thought processes, the more these two traditional skills have been questioned.

In many classrooms around the world, students are given either written or listening material and asked to regurgitate specific information or the "main ideas" of the material. The student may or may not be interested in the topic and, if interested, may wish to pick up some general understanding or some specific information. In real life, people often don't approach reading or listening this way.

How is this type of activity set up in the classroom? First you solicit a list of topic areas your students are interested in--people usually don't listen or read when they are not motivated. Then you spend time generating interest in the lead-in part of the exercise. Interest leads to prediction, prediction based on expectation, and this in turn creates a purpose to read, to confirm or deny predictions and expectations.

4. The Krashen Era and the Natural Order of Acquisition

In the 1970s, an applied linguist from the University of Southern California started raising eyebrows by, like Chomsky, making some controversial assertions about language. Unlike Chomsky, though, Stephen Krashen's linguistic theories had a direct relationship to language learning and acquisition, thereby bringing them to the attention of language teachers around the world.

Steve Krashen is the father of "input theory," which stresses massive amounts of passive language or what Krashen (1979) refers to as I+1, language that is just a little beyond comprehension. Krashen contends that through context and extralinguistic information, like a mother talking to her child, learners will climb to the next level and then repeat the process. Terrell (1982) seconded Krashen's findings and coined the term, "natural approach"; that is, an approach that is like a child learning its L1 in the home.

The central core of Krashen's work involves his nine hypotheses, the main two being the input hypothesis and the acquisition-learning distinction hypothesis. But it is a lesser emphasized hypothesis I would like to address here.

One of the more interesting discoveries in language acquisition has been the finding that acquisition of grammatical structures proceeds in predictable order. Krashen (1987) cites research that shows both learners of L1 and of L2 tend to acquire grammatical elements in a fairly predictable order. Brown's (1973) study of children learning English as an L1 shows a distinct order with -ing progressive and plural being early acquired and regular past and possessive s being late acquired. Later Dulay and Burt (1974, 1975) showed that children studying English as a second language also showed a natural order of acquisition, no matter what their native language. Both the Brown study and the Dulay and Burt studies have been replicated (see de Villiers & de Villiers, 1973; Kessler & Idar, 1977; Fabris, 1978; Makino, 1980). In addition, Bruce (1979) and van Naerssen (1981) confirm a natural order of acquisition for other languages.

Does this mean that research should be applied to sequence grammar teaching according to the natural order of acquisition? Not really, according to Krashen. While arguing that grammatical sequencing will not lead to fluent acquisition of language, Krashen (1987) does hedge by saying,

"...that we should present rules one at a time in some order when the goal is conscious learning..."

Many orders of grammatical sequencing have been suggested over the years, including frequency of occurrence, grammatical simplicity, and utility, with most traditional grammar texts attempting to order along the lines of grammatical simplicity. But does this make sense when research has shown that the irregular past tense is most often acquired before the regular past tense? Partly. Krashen suggests that simplicity does play a role, but natural order does also. Krashen (1987) contends that we can only teach what is learnable and what is portable (that which can be carried around in the students' heads). The natural order studies can provide us with at least some of the information we need in that rules to be learned should meet three criteria: learnable, portable, not yet acquired. The sequencing issue then revolves around which items meeting all these criteria should be presented first. Granted, this is not a "magic bullet" for sequencing grammatical items in the classroom, but it contributes by limiting the set of items that must be sequenced.

Many textbooks are sequenced according to grammatical simplicity which is part of the equation, but "perceived" grammatical simplicity may vary from country to country; that is, a materials developer in Malaysia may arrange English syntactical items in a far different simple to complex order than a materials developer in Hungary. Here is where an understanding of the "natural order of acquisition" may have practical application in the classroom. However, it has yet to make any meaningful inroads in most traditional curricula.

Conclusion

n almost all fields, change occurs quite slowly. It takes a new drug years to get from research to market. The language teaching field is similar. Many classrooms still reflect a behavioristic approach to language teaching, even though historical results of audiolingual methodology have been relatively disappointing. Relevant research, that is, research with real pedagogical application, is out there. It just remains for many teachers and teacher trainers to bring it into the classroom.

References

Brown, R.A. 1973. First Language. Cambridge: Harvard Press. Bruce, L. 1979. The Acquisition of Grammatical Morphemes by Adult Students of Russian as a Foreign Language. MA Paper, Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California. Chomsky, N. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. deVilliers, P. & J. deVilliers. 1973. 'A Cross-sectional Study of the Acquisition of Grammatical Morphemes in Child Speech.' Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2.37-53. Dulay, H. & M. Burt. 1974. 'Natural Sequences in Child Second Language Acquisition.' Language Learning 24.37-53. Dulay, H. & M. Burt. 1975. 'A New Approach to Discovering Universal Strategies of Child Second Language Acquisition.' IN: Developmental Psycholinguistics: Theory and Application, ed. D. Dato, 209-233. Washington: Georgetown University Press. Fabris, M. 1978. 'The Acquisition of English Grammatical Functions by Child Second Language Learners.' TESOL Quarterly 12.482. Harmer, J. 1983. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Essex: Longman. Kessler, C. & D. Idar. 1977. The Acquisition of English Syntactic Structures by a Vietnamese Child. Paper presented at the Los Angeles Second Language Acquisition Forum, UCLA. Krashen, S. 1982. 'Theory Versus Practice in Language Training.' IN: Innovative Approaches to Language Teaching, ed. R.W. Blair, Rowley, Mass: Newbury House. Krashen, S. 1987. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Lado, R. 1957. Linguistics Across Cultures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Makino, T. 1980. Acquisition Order of English Morphemes by Japanese Adolescents. Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin Press. Norrish, J. 1983. Language Learners and Their Errors. London: Macmillan Press. Oller, J.W. 1971. 'Difficulty and Predictability.' PCCLLU Papers. Honolulu: University of Hawaii. Pierson, H.D. 1982. Error Analysis as a Basis for Developing Curriculum Items in English as a Second Language for Cantonese Speaking Students. Ann Arbor: University Microfilm Intl. Pinker, S. 1994. The Language Instinct. London: Penguin. Politzer, R.L. 1968. 'An Experiment in the Presentation of Parallel and Contrasting Structures.' LL 19.1-2. Richards, J.C. 1971. 'A Non-Contrastive Approach to Error Analysis.' English Language Teaching XXV.204-219. Richards, J.C. 1971a. 'Error Analysis and Second Language Strategies.' Language Sciences 17.12-22. Richards, J.C. ed. 1974. Error Analysis: Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. London: Longman. Rossner, R., P. Shaw, J. Shepherd, J. Taylor & P. Davies. 1979. Contemporary English Book I. London: Macmillan. Schackne, S. 1994. 'Extensive Reading and Language Acquisition: Is There a Correlation?' ERIC ED 3.88-110. Schacter, J. 1974. 'An Error in Error Analysis.' LL 24.2.205-214. Selinker, L. 1972. 'Interlanguage.' IRAL 10:3. Skinner, B.F. 1957. Verbal Behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Taylor, B.P. 1974. 'Toward a Theory of Language Acquisition.' Language Learning 24.23-35. Terrell, T. 1982. 'A Natural Approach.' IN: Innovative Approaches to Language Teaching, ed. R.W. Blair, Rowley, Mass: Newbury House. Wardhaugh, R. 1970. 'The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis.' TESOL Quarterly 4:2.123-130.

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ERROR ANALYSIS

University of Moulay Ismail'''School of Arts and Humanities MEKNES MOROCCO

Khalil Zakari

ERROR ANALYSIS

    (Adapted from: ChangOk Shin)

Comment

ERROR ANALYSIS should be explained in the relationship with INTERLANGUAGE because it is difficult to understand the construct of INTERLANGUAGE without the background of ERROR ANANLYSIS.

1. Definition

Error Analysis involves a set of procedures for identifying, describing, and explaining errors in learner language. ( Ellis. R. 1994. The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford:Oxford University Press. p701) The field of error analysis in SLA was established in the 1970s by S. P. Corder and colleagues. Error analysis was an alternative to contrastive analysis, an approach influenced by behaviorism through which applied linguists sought to use the formal distinctions between the learners' first and second languages to predict errors.

2. The Difference between Error Analysis (EA) and Contrastive Analysis(CA):

Error analysis became distinguished from contrastive analysis by its examination of errors attributable to all possible sources, not just those which result from negative transfer of the native language. (Brown, Douglas B. 1994. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. Third Edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents. p.206) Error analysis showed that contrastive analysis was unable to predict a great majority of errors, although its more valuable aspects have been incorporated into the study of language transfer. A key finding of error analysis has been that many learner errors are produced by learners making faulty inferences about the rules of the new language.

3. Error analysis may be carried out in order to:

a. identify strategies which learners use in language learning. b. try to identify the causes of learner errors. c. Obtain information on common difficulties in language learning, as an aid to teaching or in the preparation of teaching materials. ( Richards, Jack C et al. 1992. Dictionary of LanguageTeaching & Applied Linguistics. Second Edition. Essex: Longman Group UK Limited. p.127)

4. Errors in Error Analysis:

Error analysts distinguish between errors, which are systematic, and mistakes, which are not. They often seek to develop a typology of errors. Errors can be classified according to basic type: omissive, additive, substitutive or related to word order. Errors can be classified by how apparent they are: overt errors such as "I angry" are obvious even out of context, whereas covert errors are evident only in context. Errors may also be classified according to the level of language: phonological errors, vocabulary or lexical errors, syntactic errors, and so on. Errors may be assessed according to the degree to which they interfere with communication: global errors make an utterance difficult to understand, while local errors do not. In the above example, "I angry" would be a local error, since the meaning is apparent.

5. The Importance of Error:

Learner’s errors are not negative things. Learner’s errors can be a strategy when learning second language. “A learner’s errors are significant in three different ways:

First to the teacher, in that they tell him how far towards the goal the learner has progressed. Second, they provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of the language. Thirdly, they are indispensable to the learner himself, because we can regard the making of errors as a device the learner uses in order to learn (Corder, S.Pit. 1967. The significance of learners’ errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics 5:167)”

6. The Contribution of Error Analysis:

a. ‘Creativeness’ of much learner language.

b. helped to make errors respectable – to force recognition that errors were not something avoided but were inevitable feature of the learning process. “ You Can’t learn without goofing”.

c. Error analysis is closely related to the study of error treatment in language teaching. Today, the study of errors is particularly relevant for focus on form teaching methodology.

7. The Limitations of Error Analysis:

a.An overstressing of production data (with learner production (speaking and writing) and not with learner reception (listening and reading).

b.Fails to account for the strategy of avoidance

c.Too closely focused on specific languages rather than viewing universal aspects of language.

For these reasons, although error analysis is still used to investigate specific questions in SLA, the quest for an overarching theory of learner errors has largely been abandoned. In the mid-1970s, Corder and others moved on to a more wide-ranging approach to learner language, known as interlanguage.

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