class notes

1. Development within a speaker

• Our language performances – listening to someone affects our long-term language competence

1. Development within a learner

RATE OF CHANGE/DEVELOPMENT

• Dynamic, rather than linear amount of change (sometimes gradual, sometimes sudden and dramatic)

ATTRACTOR STATES, FOSSILIZATION, VARIATION

• Attractor states = “Times of inherent stability”

• states of less variation/stabilisation of the sub-system (example: once we learn the form of past tense, it is unlikely to change again)

• past tense – there is a pattern, so the kids are drawn to use the pattern to all of the verbs – that is the attractor, later they fix the system with enough evidence they collected in their life

• fossilization – learners do not improve in a certain aspect of the language

• Fossilisation = process in which linguistic items, rules and sub-systems which speakers of particular native language will tend to be kept in their interlanguage relative to particular target language no matter what the age of the learner or amount of explanation and instruction he receives in the target language

• To get out of attractor state, we need the variation

• Attractor states may mean fossilization in SLA

• Free variation = two or more forms that performs the same language function within one particular context (there church/there’s church used in the same context), usually occurs in the earlier stages of development and then disappears as learner develops better organised language system

LANGUAGE AS A SYSTEM

• The basic assumption – there is a language system in every language user (even a beginner has their own system)

• Interlanguage – knowledge of L2, moving from L1 to L2, representation of L2 in the mind of the speaker

• The language system is dynamic – complex, changing, adapting …

• System is reacting to external input and changes with new input – open to external influences

• knowledge of all languages we know are part of one dynamic system – examples (code-switching, slower processing of L1, cross-linguistic influences)

• bilinguals are slower in the processing than monolinguals

• parsing – what relates to what: (sister of the psychologist) who studied in California/sister of (the psychologist who studied in California)

1. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

• EMPIRICISM: Main goal – to collect a lot of objective data

LINGUISTIC STRUCTURALISM

• American structuralism – Leonard Bloomfield (1933)

• Empiricism, taxonomic linguistic

• Recording of actual speech and collecting samples of written text (objective data)

• Goal of analysing data: description and classification, looking for pattern, highlight the differences

• Learning L1 – observing patterns in the input, learning by imitation, analogizing

BEHAVIORIST LEARNING THEORY (Skinner)

• Language learning is like any other learning

• Learning is a product of teaching

• Learning is formation of habits

• Connection between stimulus and response (stimuli present when a behaviour is rewarded or punished come to control that behaviour (reinforcement) – Pavlov’s dogs (conditioning – habit formation)

• Learning L2 is learning a new set of habits

• Concept of transfer is a central concept of SLA (prior learning influences subsequent learning)

• Positive/negative transfer (ich bin 12 j.a./ I am twelve – positive, mám 12 let/I am twelve – more difficult)