Behaviorism Until 1960s: contrastive analysis & the audiolingual method Focus: on the learner’s external environment stimulus for the processes of learning (habit formation) The learner’s mental processes were disregarded (too subjective, too “hidden” for observation, measurement, and verification) Subjects were treated like objects in a lab experiment The individuality of subjects’ intentions is disregarded

Behaviorism and Second Language Learning Contrastive Analysis (CA) : 1940s - 1960s Language Learning of Behavioristic tradition: stimulus-response related habit formation Behaviorism undermined the role of mental processes L1 Acquisition imitation of utterances learn by repeating and imitating habit formation

American Structuralism - Bloomfield, Leonard (1933) Language - Oral language > written language - Pyramidally structured language organization Syntactic from the lower-level system Level to the higher-level system (phrases, clauses, sentences) Morphological Level (morphemes) Phonological Level (phonemes) Phonetic Level (phones)

Behaviorism and Second Language Learning Charles Fries: “The basic problems of L2 acquisition arise not out of any essential difficulty in the features of the new language themselves, but primarily out of the special ‘set’ created by the first language habits.” (Lado 1957) Robert Lado: “Individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings, and ….” (Lado 1957, 2) Fries (1945, 9): “The most efficient materials are those that are based upon a scientific description of the language to be learned, carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of the learner.”

Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis Strong version (a priori version) priori: in advance “We can predict and describe the patterns that will cause difficulty in learning, and those that will not cause difficulty, by comparing systematically the language and culture to be learned with the native language and culture of the student.” (Lado 1957, vii) vs. Weak version (a posteriori version) compares languages after the actual problem occurred (a posteriori), based on the actual and recurring difficulties exhibited in the learner’s performance starts with the evidence provided by linguistic interference and uses such evidence to explain the similarities and differences between systems (Wardhaugh 1970, 10) The learner’s errors provided evidence for the learner’s bad habit formation. Errors were regarded as “sins” (Brooks 1964)

Error Analysis (EA) - The explanations for the learner’s errors were sought not in the learner’s native language but in the target language - In EA, the learner’s errors were not regarded as “sins” that needed to be avoided at all costs; errors gained a new status and significance: - Mistakes vs. Errors: Errors are due to memory lapses, physical states such as tiredness and psychological conditions such as strong emotion. The weak version of the CAH The observed learner’s errors in the target language were compared with the learner’s native language: TL  NL Error Analysis The observed learner’s errors in the target language structures were compared with the target languages: TL  TL

Corder (1967)-1 Errors: the systematic errors of the learner ; his transitional competence Focus on the learner’s errors, not mistakes Errors may not be perceived as such because they represent an integral part of the learner’s “knowledge of the language to date.”: they are only errors from the native speaker’s perspective. Errors are not recognizable to the learner as errors because they are part of his or her current state of knowledge of the target language, or transitional competence, which represents an autonomous system of grammar with its own rules and regulations. Interlanguage (Selinker 1972)

Corder (1967)-2 Three significant points of the learner’s errors: The errors provide important information to the teacher as to “how far towards the goal the learner has progressed and, consequently, what remains for him to learn” The errors provide to the researcher evidence of “how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in his discovery of the language” They reveal some valuable insights as to the nature of an innate universal mechanism: the built-in-syllabus (iii) The errors are important to the learner because they are used for “testing his hypotheses about the nature of the language he is learning”

Corder (1967)-3 L2 learning is similar to L1 acquisition: “Let us say therefore that, given motivation, it is inevitable that a human being will learn a second language if he is exposed to the language data” (Corder 1967, 164) The learner’s errors are similar to the child’s native language errors. They cannot be viewed as evidence of bad habit formations Errors are not to be regarded as signs of inhibition, but simply as evidence of his strategies of learning. Until we learn more about how the learner’s built-in-syllabus functions, we should refrain from imposing our preconceived notions regarding language learning on language teaching.

the Morpheme Order Studies contributed to the final rejection of CA’s claim that language transfer is the main cause of errors in L2 acquisition tried to empirically validate the claim that L2 acquisition is similar to L1 learning and that L2 acquisition is guided by universal, innate mechanisms (L1=L2 hypothesis) “I propose therefore as a working hypothesis that some at least of the strategies adopted by the learner of a second language are substantially the same as those by which a first language is acquired” (Corder 1967, 164-64) The grammatical features of the L2 will be acquired in a predictable and invariant order, regardless of the learner’s native language background. Cf. Empirical Studies of Heidi Dulay & Marina Burt (1974), Roger Brown (1973) Nathalie Bailey, Carolyn Madden, and Stephen Krashen (1974); adult L2 learners: the Bilingual Syntax Measure (BSM) Innate mechanism, creative construction, gradually reconstruct rules