class notes

ROBERT LADO’S ANALYSIS HYPOTHESIS

• Predicts learners’ difficulties in acquiring L2 (comparing L1 and L2 structures & looking for differences)

• Identifying structural differences leads to determining what needs to be taught

KEY FEATURES OF STRUCTURALISM AND BEHAVIOURISM-BASED APPROACH

1. Learning the spoken language meant acquiring a set of appropriate speech habits

2. Instruction should be built around a graded syllabus of structural patterns to ensure systematic step-by-step progress

3. Grammar should be taught inductively through presentation and practise of new patterns (visual and textual support)

4. Drills as very useful exercises (repeating)

5. Errors are avoided, expressed as bad habits

COUNTEREVIDENCE TO CAH PREDICTIONS (DUŠKOVÁ)

• Analysing learner’s errors in writing and speaking

• Czechs are learning Russian and English – what is learned easily?

• Similarities between Czech and Russian are problematic

• Errors made in English are intralingual (Within L2, NOT FROM L1)

• In Russian, a lot of interlingual interference from Czech as well as intralingual

MENTALISM (60-90s) – CHOMSKY

• Criticised the studies of only observable data – we should look inside, how language is acquired – underlying competence

• Universal grammar, language acquisition device

• Method – introspection (subjective data) – grammaticality judgements

• Modularity, grammar as a system of symbol-manipulating rules, poverty of stimulus, innateness

• Goal of analysing data – describing a native speakers’ mental representation of language

• Interlanguage – separate linguistic system that is revealed when adult second-language learners attempt to express meaning in a language they are in the process of learning

• Transfer – emphasis of L1 > L2 direction

• Cross-linguistic influence (Kellermann): bidirectional influence

• Positive/negative transfer

• Fossilization – attractor state

• Brown: natural order of acquisition

CORDER (1967) – THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEARNER’S ERRORS

1. Influenced the SLA field: emphasis shifted away from a preoccupation with teaching towards a study of learning

2. Errors= evidence of the learner’s linguistic development at the moment

3. Errors (evidence of the system the learner is using) as different from mistakes (linguistic performance, products of change circumstance)

4. A correct utterance is not a proof that the learner has learned the system.

5. Input is different from intake. The learner controls what goes in: the learner generated sequence of acquisition the built-in syllabus

MONITOR MODEL (Krashen 1981-85)

Five hypotheses:

1. Acquisition vs learning (learning conscious x acquisition subconscious)

2. Monitor hypothesis

3. Natural order hypothesis

4. Comprehensible input hypothesis

5. Affective filter hypothesis

STATISTICAL LEARNING

• human brains are attuned to the statistical properties in the environment

• SL refers to the process of discovering underlying structure in the environment from repeated exposure to environmental statistics, without external reinforcement, feedback, instruction, or conscious attempts to learn.