Social, Discourse, and psycholinguistic Aspect Of Interlanguage Rod Ellis By different sources: Fresi yuliana rahma yusita & Yayuk Fitriani, Rega Giyang Girana and Annisa Mustikanthi

The Elements Interlanguage as a stylistic continuum The aculturation model of l2 acquisition Social identity and investment in l2 learning

Social Aspects Of Interlanguage The prevaling persepective on interlanguage is psycholinguistic, as reflected in the metaphor of the computer. That is, researchers have been primarily concerned with identifying the internal mechanisms that are responsible for interlanguage devolopment.

Three rather different approaches to incorporating a social angel on the study of L2 acquisition can be identified: First, views interlanguages as consisting of different ‘styles’ which learners call upon under different conditions of language use. Second, concern how social factors determine the input that learners use to construct their interlanguage. Third, considers how the social identities that learners negotiate in their interactions with native speakers shape their opprtunities to speak and, thereby, to learn an L2.

Interlanguage As A Stylistic Continuum Elaine Tarone has proposed that interlanguage involves a stylistic continuum. She argues that learners develop a capability for using the L2 and that this underlies ‘all regular language behaviour’. This capability, which constitutes ‘an abstract linguistic system’, is comprised of a number of different ‘style’ which learner access in accordance with a variety of factors.

Elaine Tarone The careful style, evident when learners are conciously attending to their choice of linguistic forms, as when they feel need to be ‘correct’. Vernacular style, evident when learners are making spontaneous choices of linguistic form, as is likely in free conversation.

Elaine Tarone Tarone’s idea of interlanguage as a stylistic continuum is attractive in a number of ways. It explains why learner language is variable. It suggests that an interlanguage grammar, although different from a native speaker’s grammar, is constructed according to the same priciples, for native speakers have been shown to posses a similar range of styles. It relates language use to language learning.

Tarone has acknowledged, the model also has a number of problems: First, later research has shown that learners are not always most accurate in their careful style and least accurate in their vernacular style. Second, is that the role of social factors remains unclear

Howard Giles Another theory is howard giles’s accomodation theory. This seeks to explain how A learner’s social group influences of the course of L2 acquisition. For giles the key idea is that of ‘social accomodation’. He suggests that when people interact with each other they either try to make their speech similar to that of their addressee in order to emphasize social cohesiveness or to make it different in order to emphasize their social distinctiveness. According to the giles’s theory, then, social factors influence interlanguage development via the impact they have on the attitudes that determine the kind of language use learners engage in. Accomodation theory suggests that social factors, mediated through the interactions that learners take part in, influence both how quickly they learn and tha ctual route that they follow.

The Acculturation Model Of L2 Acquisition A Similar Perspective On The Role Of Social Factors In L2 Acquisition Can Be Found In John Schumann’s Acculturation Model. Schumann Investigated A Thirty Three Years Old, Costa Rican, Named Alberto, Who Was Acquiring English In The United States. Alberto Used A ‘Reduced And Simplified Form Of English’ Throughout.

The Problems he did not progress beyond the forst stage in the development of negatives he continued to use declarative word order rather than inversion in question he acquired vortually no aixilary verbs and he failed to mark regular verbs for past tense or nouns for possession.

John Schumann The main reason for learners failing to acculturate is social distance. A learner’s social distance is determined by a number of factors. Schumsnn also recognizes that social distance is sometimes indeterminate. As presented by Schumann, social factors determine the amount of contact with the L2 individual learners experience and thereby how successful they are in learning.

Two Problems With Such A Model First, it fails to acknowledge that factors like ‘integration pattern’ and ‘attitude’ are not fixed and static but, potetially, variable and dynami, fluctuating in accordance with the learne’s changing social experiences. Second, It fails to acknowledge that learners are not just subject to social conditions but can also become tha subject of them; they can help to construct the social context of their own learning.

Social Identity And Investment In L2 Learning Eva, an adult immigrant learner of English in Canada. Eva felt humiliated in this conversation because she found herself positioned as a’strange woman’, someone who did not know who Bart Simpson was. She was subject to a discourse which assumed an identity she did not have.

Social Identity And Investment In L2 Learning The notion of social identity is central to the theory Pierce advances. She argues that language learners have complex social identities that can only be understood in term of the power relations that shape social structures. A learner’s social identity is, according to Pierce, ‘multiple and cintradictory’. Pierce’s social theory of L2 acquisition affords a different set of metaphor. L2 acquisition involves a ‘struggle’ and ‘investment’. Learners are not computers who process input data but combatants who battle to assert themeselves and investor who expect a good return on their effort.

Conclusion Social cultural models of L2 acquisition, such as those of Giles, Schumann and Pierce, are intended to account for learner’s relative success or failure in learning an L2. That is, they seek to explain the speed of learning and the ultimate level of proficiency of different groups of learners.

Discourse Aspects of Interlanguage

The study of learner discourse in SLA has been informed by two rather different goals. On the one hand there have been attempts to discover howL2 learners acquire to ‘rules’ of discourse that inform native-speaker language use. On the other hand, a number of researchers have sought to show how interaction shapes interlanguage development.

Acquiring discourse rules There are rules or at least, regularities in the ways in which native speakers hold conversation. In the United States, for example, a compliment usually calls for a response and failure to provide one can be considered sociolinguistic error. Furthermore, in American English compliment responses are usually quite elaborate, involving some attempt on the part of the speaker to play down the compliment by making some unfavourable comment. However, L2 learners behave differently. Sometimes they fail to respond to a compliment at all. At other times they produce bare responses There is growing body of research investigating learner discourse. This show that, to some extent at least, the acquisition of discourse rules, like tha acquisition of grammatical rules, is systematic, reflecting both distinct types of errors and developmental sequences.

The role of input and interaction in L2 acquisition A number of rather different theoretical positions can be identified. A behaviourist view trearts language learning as environmentally determined, controlled from the outside by the stimuli learners are exposed to and the reinforcement they receive. In contrast, mentalist theories emphasize the importance of the learner’s ‘black box’. They maintain that learners’ brains are especially equipped to learn language and all that is needed is minimal exposure to input in order to trigger acquisition. Interactionist theories of L2 acquisition acknowledge the importance of both input and internal language processing. Learning takes place as a result of complex interaction between the linguistic environment and the leraners’ internal mechanisms.

Two types of foreigner talk: 1-Ungrammatically foreigner talk It is socially marked. If often implies a lack of respect on the part of the native speaker and can be resented by learners. It is characterized by the deletion of certain grammatical features such as copula be , modal verbs and articles, the use of the base form of the verb in place of the past tense form, and the use of special constructions such as ‘no + verb’. 2- Grammatical foreigner talk It is the norm. various types of modification of baseline talk can be identified: First, grammatical foreign talk is delivered at a slower pace. Second, the input is simplified. Third, grammatical foreigner talk is sometimes regularized. Fourth, foreigner talk sometimes consist of elaborated language use

Krashen According to Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis, L2 acquisition takes place when a learner understands input that contains grammatical forms that í + I’. Karenshen suggests that the right level of input is attained automatically when interlocutors succed in making themselves understood in communication. Success is achieved by using the situational context to make messages clear and through the kinds of input modifications found in foreigner talk.

Other hypotheses Michael Long’s interaction hypothesis also emphasizes the importance of comprehensible input but claims that it is most effective when it is modified through the negotiation of meaning. Another perspective on the relationship between discourse and L2 acquisition is provided by Evelyn Hatch. Hatch emphasizes the collaborative endeavours of the learners and their interlocutures can grow out of the process of bulding discourse. Other SLA theorist have drawn on the theories of L.S. Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, to explain how interaction serves as the bedrock of acquisition. The two key constructs in what is known as activity theory’, based on vygotsky’s ideas, are ‘motive’ and ‘internalization’.

  First, concerns the active way in which individuals define the goals of an activity for themselves by deciding what to attend to and what not to attend to. Second, concerns how a novice comes to solve a problem with the assistance of an ‘expert’. Who provides ‘scaffolding’, and then internalizes the solution.

Vygotsky Vygotsky argues that children learn through interpersonal activity, such as play with adults, whereby they form concepts that would be beyond them if they were acting alone. In other word, zones of proximal development are created through interaction with more knowledgeable others. Subsequently, the child learn how to control a concept without the assistance of others.

The role of output in l2 acquisition Here we find conflicting opinion: Krashen argues that ‘speaking is the result of acquisition not its cause’. He claims that the only way learners can learn from their output is by treating is as auto-input. In efeect, Krashen is refuting the cherished belief of many teachers that languages are learned by practicing them.

  Merrill Swain has argued that comprehensible output also plays in L2 acquisition. She suggests a number of specific ways in which learners can learn from their own output: First, output can serve a consciousness – raising function by helping learners to notice gaps in their interlanguages. Second, output helps learners to test hypotheses. Third, learners sometimes talk about their own output, identifying problems with it and discussing ways in which they can be put right.

Psycholinguistics aspects of SLA

L1 TRANSFER L1 transfer refers to the influence that thelearner’s L1 exerts over the acquisition of an L2. The learner’s L1 is one of the sources of error in learner language (negative transfer) The learner’s L1 can facilitate L2 acquisition (positive transfer)

Errors were largely the result of interference(another term for negative transfer) in theheyday of behaviourism. Behaviourist theories led to two developments: Some theorist, espousing strong mentalist accounts of L2 acquisition, sought to play down the role of the L1. Reconceptualize transfer within a cognitive framework.

Transfer errors do not always occur when theyare predicted to occur Transfer errors do not always occur when theyare predicted to occur. Differences between thetarget and native language do not always result inlearning difficulty. 6. According to Eric Kellerman, learnerstreat some linguistic features as potentiallytransferable and non-transferable. Kellerman found that advanced Dutchlearners of English had clear perceptionsabout which meanings of ‘breken’ (‘break’)were basic in their L1 . 7. He also found that they were prepared to translate asentence like: Hij brak zijin been. (He broke his leg.)directly into English, using ‘broke’ for ‘brak’ butwere not prepared to give a direct translation of asentence like: Het ondergrondse verset werd gebroken. (the underground resistance was broken.) 8. Other researchers have found that the transfer of someL1 grammatical features is tied to the learners of English.

When language transfer takes place there is usuallyno loss of L1 knowledge. This obvious fact has led to thesuggestion that a better term for referring to the effects ofthe L1 might be ‘cross-linguistic influence.’ 10. THE ROLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN L2 ACQUISITION Adults seem to have work hard and to study the language consciously in order to succeed when they acquire L2. in contrast, children seem to do so without conscious effort when they acquire their L1. 11. TWO OPPOSING POSITION CAN BE IDENTIFIED. Stephen Krashen has argued the need to distinguish ‘acquired’ L2 knowledge (i.e. implicite knowledge of language) and ‘learned’ L2 knowledge (i.e. explicit knowledge about language). 12. Richard Schmidt has poinyed out that the term‘consciousness’ is often used very loosely in SLA andargues that there is a need to standardize the conceptthat underlie its use. For example, he distinguihes betweenconsciousness as ‘intentionality’ and consciousness as‘attantion’.

‘Intentionality’ that refers to whether a learner makesan conscious and deliberate decition to learn some L2knowledge. He failed to recognize that ‘incidental’acquisition might in fact still involving some degree ofconscious ‘attention’ to input. In the other words, learningincidentally is not the same as learning without consciousattention. 14. Irrespective of whether learners learn implicitly orexplicitly, it is widely accepted that they can acquiredifferent kind of knowledge. Explicit knowledge may help learners to move fromintake to acquisition by helping to notice the gap betweenwhat they have observed in the input and the currentstate of their interlanguage as manifested in their ownoutput. 15. Another way of identifying the processes responsiblefor interlanguage development is to deduce theoperations that learners perform from a close inspectionof their output. We shall examine two of them here;operating prinsiples and processing constrains.

OPERATING PRINCIPLES Operating principles is the study of the L1 acquisition of many different language has led to the identification of a number of general strategies which children use to extract and segment linguistic information from the language they hear. 17. PROCESSING CONSTRAINS Processing constrains sought to account for both why learners acquire the grammar of a language in a definite order and also why some learners only develop very simple interlanguage grammar.

Later they develop the ‘initialization/finalization strategy’ Later they Later, learners achieve which enables them to move develop thethe end of a elements at access to the ‘subordinate ‘initialization/finalization and structure to the beginning clause strategy’, which strategy’ which enables them vice versa but prevents moving elements within a premits movement ofthem to move elements at structure. elements within mainthe end of a structure to the clauses but blocks them in beginning and vice versa subordinate clauses. but prevents them moving Later, learners achieve access to the ‘subordinate clause strategy’,elements within a structure. which premits movement of elements within main clauses but blocks them in subordinate clauses.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES Communication strategies When learners experience some kind of problem with an initial plan which prevents them Communication strategies from executing it. They can either abandon the initial plan and develop an entirely different one byWhen learners experience some kind of problem with an initial plan whichprevents them from executing it. They can either abandon maintain means of a reducation strategy or try to the initial plan anddevelop an entirely different one by means of a reducation strategy or try tomaintainoriginal communicative goal by adopting some kind of their their original communicative goal by adopting someachievement strategy. kind of achievement strategy.

TWO TYPES OF COMPUTATIONAL MODEL Two types of computational model Serial processing That is, imformation is processed in a series of serial processing sequential step and results in the representation of what has been learned as some kind of ‘rule’ or ‘strategy’. That is, imformation is processed in a series of sequential step and results in the representation of what has been learned as some kind of ‘rule’ or ‘strategy’.

PARALLEL DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING Thisparallel distributed credits the learner with the ability to perform a processing number of mental tasks at the same thing. Models based on paralled distributed processing reject the whole This credits the learner with the ability to perform a number of notion of ‘rule’. the same thing. Models based on paralled mental tasks at distributed processing reject the whole notion of ‘rule’.