Second Language Learning

Theoretical Foundations

Michael Sharwood Smith, Christopher N. Candlin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317893356
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

A survey and analysis of second language theory discusses the development of ideas in this expanding area of language studies. It looks at the implications of these ideas and directions for future research. Contains study questions and activities as well as practical guidelines on the use of available research resources.

PART I:

Towards Theory

1 A quick round tour

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1.0 Introduction

To know only one language is abnormal. At least this is what the statistics say. The majority of people on this globe can call themselves speakers of at least two languages even if their mastery of each language is not identical. Pure monolingualism is a result either of physical isolation from speakers of other languages or it is the result of cultural isolation. The latter type means that, in an area where more than one language is spoken, the dominant group of language speakers insists that its mother tongue is the standard way of communicating. For them, mastering any other language spoken in the area in question is thus rendered unnecessary.

Some people even believe that learning a second language can be harmful, at least in the case of young children. Might not children end up being non-native in any language, having no language to call their own? All the false ideas spread about the ill effects of bilingualism seem to stem from a fear of loss of identity and/or a loss of domination in a particular community. People actually living in established multilingual communities do not necessarily have this problem. Research does not show that bilingualism is a disadvantage unless, of course, bilinguals are discriminated against. It can even be an advantage.

This book, despite the above remarks, is not about the joys or woes of being bilingual. It is about the processes of becoming bilingual. More particularly it is about the psychological mechanisms that enable us to accomplish this feat even if we do not become indistinguishable from native speakers of the target language.

The notion of bilingualism (or multilingualism) as used in this book is a relative concept ranging from a hesitant command of a fledgling system to a fluent and sophisticated command of a second or other language. There have been many attempts to throw light on these mechanisms and the intention here is to give some idea of the various options that have been considered so far. This chapter introduces some important concepts in second language research together with the basic terminology. The aim is to give the reader a feel for the subject and the basic thinking that underlies it. All the concepts introduced in this chapter will be elaborated on in later chapters. A more numerous and detailed list of terms is provided in the glossary at the end of the book.

1.1 Pure and applied studies

Where does the study of second language learning best fit in? Is it an arm of the language teaching enterprise or is it part of some much more theoretical field? One key concept in second language research, which dates back to the late 1960s when the field of second language acquisition (SLA) was in its infancy, provides the best introduction to this issue. The most widely known term for this concept is ‘interlanguage’ (IL). It most generally refers to systematic non-native linguistic behaviour. Learners, i.e. non-native speakers, are seen to be in possession of their own language system. They are not viewed as simply having a cocktail of errors and non-errors. Put another way, their systematic performance shows them to be speakers of a sort of dialect of the language (an IL). Interlanguage may be contrasted with native language (NL).

In its attitude to learner behaviour, second language research parts company with the field of language-teaching methodology. Language teachers, like many language learners, typically focus on ways of bringing the learners’ current state of knowledge into line with the knowledge of a native speaker: we might call their approach to learner behaviour ‘target oriented’. Whatever learners know and do is related directly to the native target, i.e. to what they ought to know and do if they were native speakers. Deviance from the standard norms of the language is seen simply as the making of errors. The making of errors tells the teacher and learner what still has to be learned. Their errors are, for teacher and learner, not interesting phenomena in themselves. They just say where the learner ‘goes wrong’.

The new area of second language research, on the other hand, is not target oriented. It focuses on the nature of a particular current state of knowledge in a given learner or group of learners. In other words, what the learner knows and does at a given stage in his or her learning career is interesting as a phenomenon in its own right. Hence, strictly speaking, the term ‘error’ is misleading since it both calls our attention to the difference between the learner’s own system and the system of the native speaker and makes a negative value judgement about it. It is a target-oriented term. It is really more convenient to think of a learner as a native speaker of his or her own special dialect (Corder 1981).

The original impetus behind the study of learner language (interlanguage) might have been to provide a better base for language teaching strategies. The more we know about learning, the more, you might suppose, we should be able actively to influence learning. However, interlanguage studies, as an area which highlights language learning strategies, is more properly associated in the first instance with theoretical or experimental fields which purport to investigate the human language faculty. In a broader sense, it is part of cognitive science. That is to say, it is part of the general investigation into the workings of the human mind.

It should be added that although psychological and linguistic concerns have been uppermost in the field, second language research also has its place in sociology. Second language learning and use take place in a social context. The social behaviour of interlanguage users is, therefore, also to be viewed as an area of investigation within the broader framework of the social sciences. Conventionally, the social patterns exhibited by IL users are part of ‘bilingual studies’ rather than acquisition studies per se.

Ideally, second language researchers should, first and foremost, pursue their investigations without paying attention to the concerns of teachers. In practice, as was suggested above, IL research has often been done with reference to possible pedagogical applications. This has been because such studies were born as part of ‘applied linguistics’ and had the applied, i.e. practical, aim of facilitating guided language learning. It is not clear whether second language research or practical language teaching benefits from such a direct connection between pure and applied concerns. This is especially true at this rather early stage in the history of the field since researchers may become too eager (or feel too much pressure) to apply research prematurely to teaching and testing methodology.

Suppose someone found that, under certain conditions and with respect to certain limited grammatical constructions, drawing the learners’ attention to the rules of grammar had absolutely no effect at all, no matter what technique was used. It would be only too easy to jump from this finding to a much more general claim that ‘giving learners rules is a waste of time’. Actually, this is a fundamental tenet of some current language teaching methods. Such a research finding, incorrectly generalised, would seem to offer attractive scientific backing to people wishing to promote such methods to the exclusion of all others.

Research findings can be too rapidly applied to practical areas. Furthermore, there is the danger of a neglect of possible, interesting connections with other non-applied fields of research. If the primary goal is to advance our understanding of the processes of second language acquisition irrespective of its relevance to teaching, then second language acquisition research can profit from much closer links with first language research, psychology, linguistics and sociology.

It is useful, then, to accept the distinction in SLA studies between pure and applied research. The point is an important one given a general over-eagerness to make connections between second language research and more practical areas of activity. However, looking at matters from the opposite perspective, one can observe an equally warped view. There is no need to seal off second language research and let it live on in splendid isolation. In other words, non-applied research is frequently relevant to, for example, language teaching, to speech therapy, to the phenomenon of language awareness (among monolinguals and bilinguals), and any other problems experienced by bilingual communities. The plea is more for a certain indirectness in the relationship between what second language researchers’ main concerns should be and the urgent and very specific needs of a given type of language practitioner. In view of the relative youth of second language research, this book will, then, focus on the non-applied domain although applied matters will receive some attention in the concluding chapter.

1.2 Basic terminology

Some terminology in this book will need to be interpreted within different theoretical perspectives. However, for ease of reading, some working definitions are first necessary. Various standard abbreviations also need to be mentioned: for example, ‘interlanguage’, which, as mentioned above, may be defined as referring to the systematic linguistic behaviour of second language learners (see below for the definition of ‘second’) will be used interchangeably with the abbreviation ‘IL’. Readers more familiar with the psychological literature on the subjects covered will appreciate that specific theoretical assumptions are simply made here and not discussed. Any discussions that are necessary will be held over to later chapters. The annotated glossary will also serve as a foretaste of the interesting theoretical issues that a careful definition of terms gives rise to. A more extensive glossary is provided at the end of the book.

1.2.1 Second language (SL, TL, L2, L3)

‘Second’ language will normally stand as a cover term for any language other than the first language learned by a given learner or group of learners a) irrespective of the type of learning environment and b) irrespective of the number of other non-native languages possessed by the learner. This includes both ‘foreign’ languages (for example, French as a foreign language for Austrians) and languages which are not one’s mother tongue but are nevertheless spoken regularly in one’s own community (for example, French for English-speaking Canadians). ‘Second’ seems better than definitions such as ‘secondary’ or ‘non-native’ which imply lower status. ‘Second language’ is often abbreviated to ‘L2’ (as opposed to ‘L1’ – the mother tongue). An L2, then, means, unless otherwise specified, a particular ‘non-native language under discussion’, that is, the so-called ‘target’ language (TL). In certain circumstances, the more literal terms L3, L4, etc., may be also used as in ‘the influence of a learner’s L2 German upon her L3 Dutch’. Second language research is to be interpreted as covering a large area, including psychological, neurological, pragmatic and sociological aspects of L2 development and L2 use.

1.2.2 Interlanguage (IL)

IL most generally refers to the systematic linguistic behaviour of learners of a second or other language; in other words, learners of non-native languages. It calls our attention to the possibility of viewing learner language such as ‘the Finnish of English learners of Finnish’, for example, as possessing systematic features which can be studied in their own right. The idea is that they are not merely imperfect reflections of some norm – in this particular case that norm would be ‘educated native speaker Finnish’.

The ‘language’ part of the term ‘interlanguage’ suggests this idea of an autonomous linguistic system while the ‘inter’ of ‘interlanguage’ reminds us that this version of Finnish is supposed to be a half-way house, an intermediate stage in the user’s linguistic development. In using the term ‘interlanguage’ as a noun, it is best to keep to the behavioural definition. Essentially this means the language events that you can actually observe and record. It is not the invisible language system: this must exist somewhere in the mind of the user but we cannot perceive it directly. Interlanguage is, as it were, the bees and beehives we can see, touch, hear and smell and not the principles that dictate their shape and determine all the fascinating activities that we can observe. In this way we can talk about given samples of ‘interlanguage’ and speculate about the ‘interlanguage system’ that underlies it.

The terms ‘interlanguage’ and ‘learner language’ will be used interchangeably in this book. Without denying their sociological value, it can be said that interlanguage studies typically focus on the linguistic and psychological aspects of second language research. For the linguistic and mental systems underlying interlanguage, terms such as ‘interlanguage system’ or ‘interlanguage grammar’ or ‘interlanguage lexicon’ will be employed.

1.2.3 Input and intake

Another term which is widely used is ‘input’, taken from information processing. The most normal meaning in language acquisition research circles is language data (utterances, texts) which the learner is exposed to: that is, the learner’s experience of the target language in all its various manifestations. Hence, ‘input studies’ are studies of the ‘language bath’, i.e. the actual l...