reading sla

C5 – IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT LEARNING

• There are various computer corpora of spoken and written English that are widely available through university networks. In addition, computer analyses can be used to calculate frequencies of word combinations (collocations).

• A6 Age, motivation, attitude and aptitude = The main point of this chapter was that all of these factors interact in a complex and dynamic way.

Age

• Critical period hypothesis (Lenneberg) = it is not possible to acquire a native-like level of proficiency when learning the second language starts after a critical period, normally associated with puberty

• This hypothesis is most strongly used with acquiring phonological system

• Scovel argues that late starters bay be able to learn the syntax and the vocabulary of a second language, but that attaining a native-like pronunciation is impossible for them

• The critical period is debated widely – its proponents showed in several studies that it is difficult, if not impossible, to acquire a native command of a second language when learning after childhood (Study Johnson and Newport – the higher the age the lower the score)

• Coppetiers, Sorace – these two studies show that young starters are better than late (but is it because of the critical period?)

Three reasons against:

1. the young learners have more time and exposure to attain L2 perfectly

2. it is difficult, if not impossible to determine the boundaries of a critical period

3. in spite of the difficulty for most adults to achieve native-like command of L2, some learners do manage (Selinker’s famous 5%)

• NO CRITICAL PERIOD, BUT RATHER INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES OTHER THAN AGE

• Simple evidence to support CPH – most late starters never reach their native-like proficiency, but what is the reason is not answered yet

• Lennengerg – when brain matures, it loses its plasticity (process is called cerebral lateralisation – specialisation of hemispheres) – according to Lenneberg, after this process is done, there is no ability to learn a new language system

• X Krashen argued that the lateralisation is completed much earlier than that (around age 5)

• Bley-Vroman (1988) asserts that L1 learning is based on innate mechanisms, which are no longer available to L2 learners = In this view, second-language learning is seen as a process that is fundamentally different from first-language acquisition because children still have access to innate processes (UG), but that adult L2 learners will have to resort to a more explicit type of learning, which can never lead to the same kind of attainment as natural, implicit learning.

• A counterargument for this position is that most L2 learning will also involve implicit learning.

• When children learn the sounds of their first language, they perceive the sounds in what Wode (1994) labels the ‘continuous mode’: all sounds are perceived and qualified equally. However, once children have established a linguistic sound system, they start categorising the speech sounds they hear in terms of the sounds they already know (‘categorical perception’)

• Particularly when the instruction is focussed on individual needs and when global characteristics are emphasised (as opposed to concentration on individual phonemes), pronunciation instruction tends to be beneficial

• studies have shown that older learners learn a second language faster than younger learners do, given the same amount of time, which may be due to their more fully developed cognitive skills

• It has proven to be very difficult to point to the exact age at which the critical period ends and to explain what causes a possible critical period for language acquisition, so overall, the evidence for the existence of a critical period is not convincing.