1. Second Language Acquisition Theories Week 6

2. Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) Theoretical bases: structural linguistics and behaviourist psychology Structural linguistics: detailed descriptions of particular languages from a collection of utterances produced by native speakers (i.e. corpus)

3. Behaviourist psychology: habit formation by means of ‘stimulus- response-reinforcement’ the ability to perform any tasks new learning situations helped by means of the transfer of the old habits

4. CAH logic: if the acquisition of the L1 involved the formation of a set of habits, then the same process must also be involved in SLA 1950s - 1960s: language seen as habit L1 seen as the major cause for lack of success

5. Types of habit formation in SLA L1 = L2 habits L1 habits modified or eradicated in the context of L2 Newly-acquired L2 habits

6. CAH tenets: detailed comparisons between the two languages in order to determine areas that will be easy or difficult to learn for pedagogical purposes Teaching method: Audiolingualism stimulus, reinforcement and reward

7. Strong view: prediction of learning difficulties and success (of teaching materials) based on comparison between two languages i.e. predictive contrastive analysis Language transfer: positive (easy) and negative (difficult) transfer

8. Hierarchy of difficulty (most difficult --> easiest) (NL)S1 S1 a S1 b (TL) English ‘know’Italian ‘sapere’ ‘conoscere’ Differentiation (Split)

9. Underdifferentiation/ Overdifferentation English Vs. Japanese (The Article system) English --> Japanese (absent or underdifferentiation) Japanese --> English (new or overdiffirentiation)

10. Coalescing Opposite to Differentation Correspondence L1 = L2 (positive transfer)

11. Criticisms English Vs.French English: postverbal pronoun placement He wants them again. The dog has eaten them. 1. Overprediction L1-L2 contrast  learning difficulty

12. French: preverbal pronoun placement Il les veut encore. Le chien les a mange. Negative transfer: English --> French *Il veut les encore. *Le chien a mange les. Positive transfer: French --> English no errors produced

13. 2. Underprediction L1-L2 similarity  positive transfer Spanish Vs. English: copular Vs. be *That very simple. *The picture very dark.

14. 3. Only a small number of errors as a result of contrasting properties between L1 and L2, i.e. 25% *He comed yesterday.

15. 4. Difficulty  errors But in that moment it was 6:00. Difficulty in tense usage rather than the preposition from the learner’s viewpoint

16. 5. Evidence from morpheme studies Dulay and Burt (1974) Natural sequences in child second language acquisition Subjects: 60 Spanish and 55 Chinese children Methodology: Bilingual Syntax Measure (BSM)

17. seven coloured pictures to elicit responses on English grammatical morphemes Pronoun case Article Singular form of to be Singular auxilary Possessive Past -regular -irregular -ing Plural 3rd person singular

18. Result same developmental patterns across learners of different L1s, i.e natural order

19. Conclusion language learners = active participants learning guided by universal innate mechanisms transfer no longer seen as a major factor, i.e. lack of importance of L1 influence

20. Criticisms 1. BSM biased the results Same results in other studies not using BSM 2. Morphemes with different meanings grouped together,i.e. English articles

21. 3. Accuracy order = developmental sequences? Correct forms not necessarily mean correct underlying rules 4. Grouped data obscured individual variation

22. Error analysis (EA) Corder’s 1967: ‘The significance of learner’s errors’ Errors = evidence of the state of the knowledge of L2 learners, not products of imperfect learning Errors = evidence of an underlying rule-governed system

23. Errors vs. Mistakes Errors = systematic, not usually recognisable Mistakes = slips of the tongue From TL norm, deviant forms are errors but from the learner’s linguistic norm, they are mistakes. EA methodology: comparison between L2 learners’ errors and the TL system

24. Criticisms Total reliance on errors (other information needed) Schachter (1974)’s study of the production of relative clauses by Persian, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese students

25. Data No of errors Total Persian 43174 Arabic31154 Chinese976 Japanese563 Avoidance factor

26. Discrepancy between what linguists interpreted and the learner’s actually performance Cause of errors: wrong assumption that correct usage of a structure implies correct rule structures absence of errors may be due to a limited sampling bias

27. Source of errors: multiple sources of errors possible The English article system absence of the learner’s L1 many functions of English articles EA only provides a partial picture to the linguistic system of L2 learners

28. Interlangauge Transitional competence Approximative system Interlanguage ‘A separate linguistic system based on the observable output which results from a learner’s attempted production’ (Selinker1972: 214)

29. L2 learners = creators of their own linguistic systems Independent of L1 and L2 influence Errors = indicators of progress, learning strategies, procedures Errors = window to the learner’s built-in syllabus

30. Permeability: ‘the penetration into an IL system of rules foreign to its internal systematicity, or the overgeneralisation or distortion of an IL rule’ basic grammar --> complicated grammar Fossilisation: ‘a cessation of further systematic development in the IL’ imperfect L2 system

31. Language transfer Interlingual identification (units of equivalence) same units --> positive transfer different units --> errors not an all-or-nothing process (i.e. selective transferability)

32. Role of L1 influence (Cross- linguistic influence) Avoidance 3 possible causes L1 different from L2 L1 same as L2 complexity of L2 structures

33. Rate of learning L1 = L2 --> faster learning Route of learning acquisition of English ‘the’ by Chinese and Spanish learners Chinese: thisSpanish: this/ the

34. Overproduction Topic prominent structures by Chinese and Japanese learners of English Phonology Eckman’s Markedness differential hypothesis unmarked --> marked: difficult to learn marked --> unmarked : easy to learn

35. Psychotypology Learners’ perception of the distance between L1 and TL Transferability and selectivity some structures are more sensitive to transfer than others

36. CAH and Interlanguage CAH serves as a tool that helps L2 learners to find some equivalent between L1 and TL. Source for testable hypotheses CAH provides a picture of what L2 learners may do in learning TL structures. Indication of the learner’s progress

37. CAH prepares L2 learners for the fact that they will have some problems learning TL unsuccessful learning i.e. fossilisation