Second language acquisition (ch.15)

Second language acquisition (ch.15)
Meeting 5 Second language acquisition (ch.15)

Today’s agenda Repetition of meeting 4 (brain, L1 acquisition)
Seminar on chapter15 & mini-lecture The exam Qs? Goodbye

The brain Broca’s area, or the anterior speech cortex. Paul Broca, a French surgeion in the 1860s who reported that damage to this part of the brain was related to extreme difficulty in producing speech. Damage to the same area in the right hemisphere had no such detrimental effect. Language ability is in the left hemisphere. Wernicke’s area. This is the posterior speech cortex,. Wernicke, a German doctor, in the 1870s, damage to this part of the brain among patients who had speech comprehension difficultires. Further evidence of lg in left hemisphere. Motor cortex, an area that generally controls movement of the muscles. Articulatory muscles of the face, jaw, tongue and larynx close to Broca’s area. Where it says ’sound’ on this image.

Aphasia Depending on the area and extent of brain damage, someone suffering from aphasia may be able to speak but not write, or vice versa, or display any of a wide variety of other deficiencies in language comprehension and production, such as being able to sing but not speak.

Individual variation Speak but not write Write but not speak
Deficiency in language comprehension… …and/or in language production

Tomas Tranströmer

Tip of the tongue phenomenon
*fire distinguisher =malapropism, ”near-misses” for words

Reverend Dr William Spooner (1844-1930)
Slips of the tongue Reverend Dr William Spooner ( ) Has achieved immortality and an eponymous entry in the Oxford English dictionary as a consequence of his jumbled, and on occasions, amusing, misuse of his native tongue. Born in London, he attended New College Oxford, first as a student and later as lecturer, dean and warden. He also qualified as an Anglican priest. Amongst his students Spooner gained a reputation as a kind and perhaps somewhat eccentric individual whose brain and speech were not always in perfect synchrony. This manifested in the form of a number of potentially embarrassing faux pas such as his toast to Queen Victoria ‘Three cheers for our queer old dean’ and reference to ‘Our lord’ as ‘a shoving leopard’ (faux pas = error, blunder) These examples of reciprocal transposition of the first letters of closely adjacent words soon came to be known as ‘Spoonerisms’. (from Oxford University Press, online resource centre:

♫’Cause I’m strong enough
Slips of the ear ♫’Cause I’m strong enough Tell them about saltmannen, the only book I could read before my disputation ’Cause I’m Stroganoff

Victor & Genie Victor, Genie and the critical period hypothesis

Jim Sachs, Bard & Johnson. (1981). Language learning with restricted input: Case studies of two hearing children of deaf parents. Applied Psycholinguistics, 2 (1),

Ch.15. Second language acquisition
What is a second language as opposed to a foreign language? What is English in Sweden – a second or a foreign language?

SLA …a cover term for learning any other language (foreign, second, third…) after your first language (i.e. your mother tongue, your native tongue, your L1) Is it possible to change one’s first language? How many languages can a child acquire simultaneoulsy? The Aalborg child

positive reinforcement
Behaviorism imitation positive reinforcement feedback habit formation audiolingual method Who is this? Skinner. Principal at Bart Simpson’s school. The real Skinner Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform,[1][2] and poet.[3] He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.[4] He came up with the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism,[5] and founded his own school of experimental research psychology—the experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, which has recently seen enormous increase in interest experimentally and in applied settings.[6] He discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement.[7][8] In a recent survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.[9] He was a prolific author who published 21 books and 180 articles.[10][11] contrastive analysis Skinner

Contrastive analysis Skolan *The school
Errors in L2 due to L1 influence Negative transfer Learner awareness of transferable and less transferable L1 features Idiomatic expressions Skolan *The school

Positive transfer Swe-Eng

We’re related! Mamma Fisk Bok SVO Bil – bilar *bilbil Mother Fish Book
De har ett hus. De har ett rött hus. Bil – bilar *bilbil Mother Fish Book SVO They have a house. They have a red house. Car – cars *carcar

Interlanguage Larry Selinker Zero L2 knowledge Native-like proficiency
An interlanguage or, more explicitly, interim language is an emerging linguistic system that has been developed by a learner of a second language (or L2) who has not become fully proficient yet but is approximating the target language: preserving some features of their first language (or L1), or overgeneralizing target language rules in speaking or writing the target language and creating innovations. An interlanguage is idiosyncratically based on the learners' experiences with the L2. It can fossilize in any of its developmental stages. The interlanguage rules are shaped by: L1 transfer, transfer of training, strategies of L2 learning (e.g. simplification), strategies of L2 communication (or communication strategies like circumlocution), and overgeneralization of the target language patterns. Interlanguage is based on the theory that there is a "psychological structure latent in the brain" which is activated when one attempts to learn a second language. Larry Selinker proposed the theory of interlanguage (1972), noting that in a given situation the utterances produced by the learner are different from those native speakers would produce had they attempted to convey the same meaning. This comparison reveals a separate linguistic system. This system can be observed when studying the utterances of the learners who attempt to produce a target language norm. Those utterances can be observed to be variable across different contexts; that is, interlanguage becomes or more less target-like when produced in different social contexts (Tarone, 1979; Selinker & Douglas, 1985). idiosyncratic fossilization

Innatism UG LAD competence L1 (+L2) Critical period performance
Vet ni vem han är? ………. KLICK, Chomsky. MIT. Professor i lingvistik, men började som matematiker. Politiskt kontroversiell. Uppmärksammad på många sätt, t.ex. för sina teorier om språkinlärning. Han disputerade med sin avhandling -57 Syntactic structures, teoretisk lingvistik. Två år senare angriper han Skinner. Chomskys berömda attack på Skinner. A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior in Language, 35, No. 1 (1959), sid Slutet 50-talet, början 60-talet. Han utmanade bl.a. Skinners teorier om hur barn lär sig språk. Sa egentligen det självklara: Barn upprepar inte bara vad vuxna säger. De hittar på mängder av meningar som de aldrig har hört. Infinit antal meningar skapas. Det är ju självklart nu, när vi hör det, men det var det inte då. KLICK Chomsky hävdade att det fanns det han kallade för UG och LAD. Det kan ni. Han introducerade också de berömde begreppen KLICK Competence=knowledge, invariable(oföränderlig), innate knowledge used in the language(medfödd vetskap/kunskap om språk), internaliserad kunskap om språk. Performance=användning, förändring, externa bevis på kompeten i använding, t.ex. det klassiska hur vi påverkas om omständigheter. Ångest, kontext etc. (En del har liknat competence och performance med Sausssures langue och parole.) KLICK L1 (+L2) Chomsky har aldrig skrivit något om främmandespråk—mejlkontakt—men många ser paralleller med hur vi lär oss främmande språk. Begreppet competence har ju levt vidare i ”kommunikativ kompetens’. Detta kommer egenligen från Dell Hymes på 70-talet. Hymes la till ability/förmåga i begreppet kompetens; förmåga ingick EJ i Chomskys kompetens-begrepp. Lägga till: Skinner hade dock inte helt fel; för det är ju onekligen så att barn alltid börjar prata det språk som föräldrarna pratar. Vi skulle bli extremt förvånade om våra småbarn skulle börja prata t.ex. turkiska eller japanska istället för svenska. Så visst har imitation viss betydelse. Denna självklarhet har kommit så sent som för bara två år sedan, t.ex. Dalrymple (2006). KLICK kristisk period. Det är i sammanhanget också värt att nämna Eric Lenneberg. Eric Heinz Lenneberg ( ) var pionjär inom kognitiv psykologi och språkinlärning. LAD funkar bara under en kritisk period, = Critical Period Hypothesis. Lenneberg var mkt intresserad av innateness (det medfödda). Kom från Düsseldorf och var jude, flydde under nazismen till Brasilien och sedan till USA där han till slut hamnade på Harvard som psykologiprofessor och neurobiologiprofessor. U of Michigan och Cornell. Lenneberg's 1964 paper "The Capacity of Language Acquisition," först publicerad 1960, hävdade att människan har en specifik biologisk kapacitet för språk, t.ex. kom han fram till detta i diskussioner med Chomsky. Denna kapacitet fungerar under en kritisk period, denna kritiska period skulle ligga under tiden fram till inträdet i puberteten, sedan är det för sent. Hjärnan blev sen för stel (plasticitet). Men, Hur bevisa? Av naturliga skäl är exmplen få, men det finns några kända fall: Victor, Francois Truffaut – “The untamed child” 1799, doctor Itard. All Victor ever learned to say was ‘lait, and ‘O Dieu’. Genie, USA, Curtiss , California. I know this one! She learned to speak, but it never got close to normal. I Ryssland, Vargpojken LYOCHA, nu under jullovet Vet ej hur det gick med honom, han rymde innan läkarundersökningen var klar. Man har givetvis diskuterat om CPH även skulle gälla för främmandespråksinlärning och L2 inlärning. Kritisk period för främmandespråksinlärning? Forskning visat att vuxna inlärare kan kompensera mycket genom t.ex. stark motivation och erfarenhet. Kritisk period kan dock finnas för uttal. Kan vara svårt att bli accentfri i ett främmandespråk om man lär sig efter den kritiska perioden. (En del lär sig dock även uttal.) Väldigt intressant med kollega, Marika, f.n. bor i England med sin familj. Två barn, 7 och 10 ca. 10-åringen hopplöst svensk intonation och uttal medan den yngre direkt fixade det. Efter ca. Ett år svängde det dock för 10-åringen och han är nu också i princip accentfri. Man kunde vara rätt för att han hade fossilized, men det hade han inte. EN LITEN PARENTES OM UTTAL ETC FÖLJER NU!!! Sen kan man verkligen ifrågasätta om målet ska vara att låta som en infödd talare. En didaktisk frågeställning. Om vi tänker på målen vi har i skolan för språk, för höga betyg står det ofta att man ska tala ”med ett tydligt och klart uttal” för VG i främmande språk (språkval) åk 9, för MVG krävs ”ett gott uttal” och i engelska står det för VG ”talar tydligt”, och för MVG ”talar tydligt med språkligt flyt”. Moderna språk steg 7 ”uttrycker sig muntligt med klarhet och flexibilitet i både informella och mer formella situationer samt talar strukturerat och med sammanhang”.Vad tycker ni? Vilket ska målet vara för det talade språket? BEEHIVES. Kanske ska inte the native speaker vara normen, utan som Vivan Cook säger CLICK: "L2 users should be judged by what they are, L2 users, not what they can never be by definition, native speakers." p50 , Basing teaching on the L2 user, i Llurdas bok från 2005. Critical period Lenneberg performance Chomsky

The Monitor Model – five hypotheses
acquisition-learning natural order affective filter monitor 80-talet: Krashens teorier, monitormodellen. Består av 5 hypoteser och Krashen var mkt inflytelserik under ffa 1980-talet. En del av er pluggade nog då. Kommer ni ihåg dem? PAUS PAUS PAUS KLICK: Fem stycken hypoteser! Acq vs learning (non-interface position). Natural order (sant, också möjligt att verifiera i studier) Monitor (editor, redaktör). Speciellt i skrivande, svårare i tal pga tidsbrist. Inputhypotesen: Genom att exponera elever för comprehensible input så är det så att input blir i+1 då man förstår i+1. Lite svårare. Vi känner till detta. Viktigt för läraren att ge elever input på rätt nivå. Affective filter: positiv motivation, om det är nere, acquisition är möjligt. Betydelsen av ett positivt klassrumsklimat för språkstudier ska vara framgångsrika. Språklärare har en mycket högre känslighet än hur det var förr. Eller hur? Minns ni hur det var när ni gick i skolan? (någon frivilig?) Jag minns Ulf i min klass… Och Eva-Lotta… GÅR EJ ATT TESTA HYPOTESERNA. Kritik. Bränna honom och hans teorier! KLICK. Hemsk nidbild. En del hävdar att han pajar för immigranter i USA, hela Kaliforniens språkprogram åt skogen pga Krashen. Förtjänar kritik eftersom hypoteserna är ej är testbara, men han har definitivt bidragit med dessa termer, viktiga för språklärare, vi använder dem så gott som dagligen eller har dem åtminstone i bakhuvudet, eller hur? Krashen comprehensible input: i → i + 1

Cognitivism Jim environment Vygotsky connectionism private speech
Zone of proximal development Sociocultural perspective Kognitivt perspektiv sen 90-talet. Hjärnan. Psykologiska teorier allt vanligare för L2 forskning. Man tror inte direkt på Chomskys LAD, att det bara är hjärnan, utan man lär sig språk genom interaktion KLICK , sampelets betydelse KLICK, miljöns betydelse för inlärning är viktigt. KLICK Vygotsky. Ryss, skrifter hittades långt efter hans död. Närmaste utveckingszonen, barnet har en sådan. Påminner mkt om Krashens i+1 men hos Krashen så kommer det utifrån, så att säga, medan Vyggan betonar individens samtal med läraren/den vuxne då inläraren bygger sin kunskap, detta kan även ske via private speech, resonemang med sig själv. Tänka högt—Amy Snyder Ohta UofW, t.ex. Connectionism (el. Interactionism) – Nick Ellis, vikten av att göra sammankopplingar, helt enkelt. Det är t.ex. viktigt hur ofta (frekvens) en inlärare stöter på ett ord eller en fras. Till slut kan man det helt enkelt. Man har gjort en koppling, det behöver inte vara speciellt medvetet i och för sig. Inläraren säger helt korrekt ”Me duele la cabeza” på spanska, som ett chunk, helt korrekt. KLICK KLICK gul ruta Ellis, några andra namn, Swain som betonar betydelsen av output (inte bara input är viktigt, utan också comprehensible output). Lantolf, sociokulturella teorier i Vygotskys anda, Long med sin Interaction Hypothesis. Han menade att i interaktion tvingas man modifiera vad man säger till dess att förståelse uppstår, engelska negotiation of (for) meaning. Viktigt att skapa sådana situationer i klassrummet. Pica och Gass liknande, ni kommer att stöta på artikel av Gass i vår kurs. Schmidt pratar om det som benämns noticing, dvs man betonar att det är viktigt att inläraren medveten lägger märke till en språkligt företeelse för att inlärning ska kunna ske. Det spelar ingen roll om vi ger feedback ifall inte inläraren uppfattat (noticing) vad det är vi påpekar, till exempel. Noticing är själva startpunkten för att inlärning ska kunna ske över huvud taget. MacWhinney föreslår the competition model, som en förklaring till såväl L1 som L2 inlärning. Inlärning kräver inte nödvändigtvis uppmärksamhet eller ett speciellt LAD, utan istället är det form, betydelse och använding som ett helt paket. Genom att exponeras för en massa språklig input får helt enkelt inläraren tillräckligt många ’cues’ med vilka ett språk signalerar speciellt funktioner, tex ordföljd. Jag tycker det påminner om Nick Ellis resonemang. Nödvändigheten av interaktion illustreras bra med exemplet Jim, som ni kanske känner till. Öra. KLICK. Jim hörde jättebra, men inte hans föräldrar, de var döva KLICK. (Knyter också an till kritisk period för att lära sig språk) Exemplet med Jim. Döva föräldrar, hörande Jim. Väl omhändertagen, men de teckenspråkade ej med honom. Han hade dock tillgång till tv, kärlek etc. Myndigheterna upptäckte honom, då var han 3,9 år. Låg nivå språk, icke-grammatisk ordföljd t.ex. Man satte in behandling där han helt enkelt fick prata med vuxna, och då han var 4,2 år gammal var hans ovanliga språkfel borta och han var normal, så att säga. Slutsatsn är att en tv räcker inte för att ett barn ska börja prata ordentligt, interaktion är kritiskt. Jims yngre bror Glenn uppvisade aldrig samma problem eftersom Glenn kunde interagera med Jim! N. Ellis (explicit/implicit learning), Lantolf (socio-cultural perspective), Long (negotiation of meaning), Swain (output), Gass (interaction approach), Schmidt (noticing)… connectionism Jim

Seminar The four sharings: Worksheet 5

Pia’s thesis Russian police are hunting a "werewolf boy" - who snarls and bites - after he escaped from a Moscow clinic just a day after being rescued from the wild. Doctors expressed shock saying he was found living with a pack of wolves in a remote forest in the Kaluga region of central Russia. Read more:

Extramural English (EE)
English outside the classroom = Extramural English /Sparetime English: linguistic activities that learners are involved in outside the classroom, also input they get. There’s a lack of research on this topic. It’s like ’yes, we know that teenagers are surrounded by English’ but no empirical studies on whether actual learning taking place. This slide just shows you what EE might be. Mural - Lat/French WALL (muralmålning) – intramural=inside the walls/classroom, extramural – outside.

Research question Does extramural English have an impact on students’
oral proficiency and vocabulary? This is my main Research Q – read it I will mention a few thins about vocabulary today, but not so much CLICK, instead focus is on EE and OP. SPSS: To answer my question, I have used SPSS, a statistical software, in my quantitative method of analysis.

9th grade – 2006/07 3 2 4 I carried out my study during one scool year, There were 80 informants in my dear sample, all 9th graders. Collected all my data from them, 36 boys and 44 girls, 3 different schools and municipalities, 4 classes. Leave out: School 1 = typical Swedish small town, rather big school 600 students 7-9, 5% immigrant background (enrolled in mother tongue classes). School GPA is on par with GPA in Sweden. School 2 = also a typical Swedish small town, fairly well off, high socio economic standard, very few immigrants, none enrolled in mother tongue classes. School GPA well above Swedish average. 300 students. Smallest school in my sample. School 3 = situated in a city, bigger place compared to the others, about 400 students, highest proportion of immigrants at about 40 %. GPA is on par with Sweden.

What data? How representative?
Extramural English (EE) Two language diaries Hours / week Oral Proficiency (OP) Five speaking tests, random dyads OP grade, 1-6 Vocabulary Two written tests Generalizability of results What data have iI collected? And how representative is my sample? Data – lots of data. Extramural English EE - Questionnaire but today data from Language diaries. Show a diary! – Read the various categories. Eng, Swe, Other languages. OP tests – brief explanation. Generalizability of results. How representative is my sample? My sample represents the statistical population found here (marked) = 9th graders in the western part of central Sweden (Western Svealand).

Total extramural English
Individual variation Lack of research My variable of total extramural English: hours per week on the X-axis; from 0 hours to 60. ON the Y-axis, number of students. You can see that the distribution is skewed to the right with a tail; here we find the extreme students with lots of EE. But what do they spend their time on?

The EE House I will tell you, with the help of The EE House, Extramural English House. My metaphor. The EE house has two floors and an attic. First floor: Three rooms. CLick. Each room corresponds to one of the activities measured by the Language Diary. Click. Second floor: Two rooms, the office and the library. The computer is in the office, you surf the Internet and play video games on the computer. Video games = all sorts of games. In the library, read books, newspapers and magazines in English. Everything in English. The attic: A chest – other activites. Anything. My sample spent on average 18.4 hours per week in the EE house. But what did they do there?

All: Time per room (%) .357**; .307** =2 2 =26 25 1 36 20 16 =72
Oral proficiency Vocabulary =26 25 1 Of course they visited different rooms. Some romms they stayed in longer than other rooms. We have the time in percentages here, with Most time spent in the music room = 36%, 6 ½ hours, individual variation large – i analyze group level! Music room is follwed by time spent in the office, TV-room, films and unfortunately, I’m sad to report that they didn’t read a whole lot in English and we know that reading is always important. In my study as well, I will get back to that. Percentages for each floor? First floor, 74%, to be compared with 26 on the 2nd floor. Almost 3 times as much. Why is more time spent on the first floor? This is where you normally enter a house and we find activites that are easily accessed by anyone: Music, tv, films. Also time spent in the attic is very little. Chest. Students wrote down themselves what these various activities could be: chatting, oral and written, talk on the phone, write on web forums, sing karaoke etc. CLICK: Time EE and results correlate positively (true for both OP .307** p=.008 Spearman and VOC indevariable .357** p=.001 Spearman). Significant correlation, not random. There is something going, there is a relationship. EE seems to be part of the explanation as to why students perform the way they do in school, even though it cannot explain everything, of course. But, time alone is not enough to analyze EE. What you do is also important. Relative importance of the various activities. For ex, is one hour film worth as much as one hour of reading? What’s most important, videogames or music? TV? Backward linear regression analysis in SPSS: Possible to see the order of relative importance for the EE activities, in relation to OP and in relation to VOC. Attic (other) excluded. Now, to explain the relative importance, the metaphor EE as a house is helpful. As i said, the first floor is easy to access. Almost anyone can walk in there and spend time there and almost everybody does that. However, it is very important to have the energy, ability, strength, motivation to walk upstairs to the second floor. It is crucial, i’d say. The room where the least time is spent, the library, is most important for OP (1=Newspapers/magazines, 2=books, 3=music, 4=TV, 5=Internet, 6=Video games, 7=Film) , and the office is most important for VOC (1=Video games and Internet, 3= TV, 4=Newspapers, 5=Books, 6=Music, 7=Films). Time spent on the 2nd floor seems to be time well invested for the students. Who visits the various rooms then? Interesting difference between boys and girls... 36 20 16 =72 .357**; .307** Time and results

Gender: Time per room (%)
Boys Girls Boys and girls behave very differently in the EE house. Boys stays there longer, slightly less than 21 hours per week, girls a little bit more than 16 hours per week. Let’s look at the boys first. More than half of their time on the first floor, the rest upstairs. Most time upstairs on the 2nd floor in the office, 43%. Most of that is playing video games (38%). Shall we compare with the girls? Yes! Compare, click in red arrows. Girls most time on the first floor. The great, great difference lies withing the office, where both activies are statistically different when genders are compared. CLick_green rectangle. I said earlier that it is very important to have the energy/ability to move up to the second floor. Just because boys happen to spend more time than girls there does not mean that they are better at English than girls. Because they are NOT. Girls are better at everything in English, with one exception: vocabulary. This is the only point of measure where boys outperform girls. i think party of the explanation as to why this is so is found in the time spent in the office.

EE & OP - gender Correlation between EE and OP for boys and for girls. The correlation for boys is stronger than the correlation for girls. This slide is a visual of the results for boys and girls.

Gender pattern Boys: Strong positive correlation between EE and OP; statistically significant (.515**, Spearman, 2-tailed) Girls: Weak positive correlation between EE and OP, not statistically significant (.118, Spearman, 2-tailed) The same pattern for vocabulary and self-efficacy I correlated EE with OP and found a positive correlation for boys, also statistically significant. For girls there is also a positive correlation but weaker than for boys and not statistically significant. What does this mean? My interpretation is that boys seem more sensitive to EE than girls, boys appear more affected by EE. Self-efficacy: people’s judgement of their own ability to carry out certain tasks

Main conclusions 1 EE correlates positively and significantly with both the level of OP and the size of VOC The correlation b/w EE and VOC is stronger and more straightforward than the correlation b/w EE and OP EE has an impact on both OP and VOC; causal relationship more salient regarding VOC

Main conclusions 2 EE activites which require learners to be active/productive and to rely on their language skills (upstairs) have a greater impact on learners’ OP and VOC than EE activities where learners can remain fairly passive/receptive (downstairs).

Main conclusions 3 Boys spend more time on active/productive EE activities than girls; therefore, EE has a greater impact on boys’ OP and VOC than it has on girls’

Background variables socioeconomic

Main conclusions 5 OP is clearly connected with socioeconomic background variables, whereas EE is not. EE is an independent variable; it is a possible path to progress for any learner, regardless of his or her socioeconomic background Implications for the English classroom? Young learners?

The exam Russian police are hunting a "werewolf boy" - who snarls and bites - after he escaped from a Moscow clinic just a day after being rescued from the wild. Doctors expressed shock saying he was found living with a pack of wolves in a remote forest in the Kaluga region of central Russia. Read more:

Questions? Good luck studying
Goodbye!

Second language acquisition (ch.15)

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