Second Language Acquisition and Second ... - Stephen Krashen

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Believe that your child can understand more than he or she can say, and seek, above all, to communicate. To understand and be understood. To keep your minds fixed on the same target. In doing that, you will, without thinking about it, make 100 or maybe 1000 alterations in your speech and action. Do not try to practice them as such. There is no set of rules of how to talk to a child that can even approach what you unconsciously know. If you concentrate on communicating, everything else will follow (p. 26). These comments are clearly in the spirit of the above discussion. The position outlined here maintains and refines some of my earlier hypothesis. In Chapter 8 it was claimed that speaking is theoretically unnecessary for acquisition, but may serve to encourage appropriate input (input with the proper size "net"). Acquisition (as opposed to learning), it was claimed, is the result of input, or intake, not actual production. Here, it is suggested that the adult uses the child's output as a part of the information he or she needs to estimate the child's current level of competence. Strictly speaking, however, speaking is not necessary. We turn now to simple codes the second language acquirer might face, to see whether they might have an effect similar to that of caretaker speech on second language acquisition. Simple Codes and Second Language Acquisition All three simple codes discussed above, teacher-talk, interlanguage-talk, and foreigner-talk, are clearly attempts to communicate. The question we thus need to ask is whether the "net" they cast is the same size, and whether they might have the same effect as caretaker speech on language acquisition. The "facts" about child language acquisition and caretaker speech seem to hold true for simple codes and second languages. In the first place, current research supports the hypothesis that structure emerges in second language performers in a more or less predictable order for adults (Bailey, Madden, and Krashen, 1974; Krashen, Sferlazza, Feldman, and Fathman, 1976; Fuller, 1978; Hyltenstam, 1977), revealed when testing is done in "Monitor-free" conditions (Chapter 4, this volume). The available data indicate, moreover, that the simple codes we are concerned with are "tuned" to about the same degree as caretaker 128
speech is: they are simpler than native speaker-native speaker speech, and are not "finely tuned" to the level of the acquirer, but one sees signs of "rough tuning". To illustrate this point, I present a brief survey of the literature available to me at this time, arranged according to input features: 1. Rate. This is evidence that caretaker speech is at least roughly tuned with respect to rate of speech. Broen (1972) compared rate of speech to 5- and 2-year-olds, and found that younger children received slower input. Also, Cross (1977) reports a 0.36 (ns) correlation between rate of input to fast acquirers and their age. On the other hand, Cross found no relation between rate of input speech and the children's linguistic competence, as measured by a test of comprehension (r = -0.12, ns). For teacher-talk, Henzl (1973), investigating the behavior of Czech speakers, concluded that teacher-talk was slower than native speaker-native speaker speech, but did not look for signs of fine tuning. Trager (1978) confirmed Henzl's findings for ESL at USC, and found some signs of tuning, with beginning ESL students receiving slower input than intermediate and advanced students. A recent study by Brunak and Scarcella (1979) confirms that interlanguage-talk is slower than native speaker speech. Also, I know of no data on foreigner-talk. 2. Lexicon. Broen (1972) reports that younger children receive a lower type/token ratio, supporting at least rough tuning for age for caretaker speech. Henzl (1973) also found that teacher-talk had a lower type/token ratio than native speaker-native speaker speech but did not look for tuning. Trager (1978), in a small-scale study (two ESL acquirers and two native speakers), concluded that the less advanced ESL performer received a lower type/token ratio. 3. Well formedness. Caretaker speech, according to Newport et al. (1977), is "unswervingly well formed". Newport et al., however, report that there is no evidence for tuning: caretaker speech is more well formed than adult-adult speech, but less mature children do not receive better formed input than more mature children. Cross (1977), however, reports good correlations for well formedness and linguistic 129
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Second Language Acquisition and Sec
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Acknowledgments I would like to tha
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Introduction This book is concerned
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performance..." (p.35). Corder (196
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when it does not get in the way of
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language (some similarities to firs
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In the second part of this chapter,
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far more valuable then the exercise
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Monitoring generally improves accur
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overconcern with correctness, howev
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language is spoken or may be expose
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2. Attitude and Aptitude in Second
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1973, p. 8). Carroll also suggests
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outines and patterns, and at a more
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Sentences, Paired Associates, and S
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stay-ins appeared to be integrative
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motivation played no role because o
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(1977), after interviewing teachers
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did not produce the same results. T
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a stage many people, but not all, r
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The Good Language Learner Revisited
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predict differences in student achi
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settle the issue of whether adults
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language had higher scores than stu
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Table 1. English proficiency and ye
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The "self-study" reinterpretation o
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series the evidence for learning is
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4. The Domain of the Conscious Gram
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Ann Fathman, confirmed our earlier
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significant differences for any of
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Table 1. Studies analyzing grammati
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Table 3. Counterexamples to orderin
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Table 4 (cont.) ___________________
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ut *der Katze Ohr (The cat's ear).
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Research Findings 1. First language
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First-language-influenced errors he
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and (4) Ich weiss nicht, I know not
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ain", the right hemisphere, appears
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second language acquisition in adul
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hemisphere is removed, and the pati
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Page 85 and 86: while English "orients its users to
Page 87 and 88: 7. On Routines and Patterns in Lang
Page 89 and 90: adulthood. A. Smith (1966) describe
Page 91 and 92: "That's a _______") which were char
Page 93 and 94: variation. Nelson, for example, dis
Page 95 and 96: which he had learned by imitation.
Page 97 and 98: and often incorporated them into hi
Page 99 and 100: what utterances mean by observing h
Page 101 and 102: Furthermore, she associated strings
Page 103 and 104: and patterns other than as discours
Page 105 and 106: similar difficulty orders for gramm
Page 107 and 108: understanding language that is "a l
Page 109 and 110: up to the intermediate level. As Wa
Page 111 and 112: practical only in a foreign languag
Page 113 and 114: is making some effort at making him
Page 115 and 116: It may be useful to distinguish thr
Page 117 and 118: the luxury of building up acquired
Page 119 and 120: marker /-s/, and the regular and ir
Page 121 and 122: to speak the language they were lea
Page 123 and 124: 9. The Theoretical and Practical Re
Page 125 and 126: contact with. "Teacher-talk" is the
Page 127 and 128: language in Los Angeles. S. K. also
Page 129 and 130: Caretaker Speech and Language Acqui
Page 131: speech is so well rooted in the "he
Page 135 and 136: Freed (1980) reports that foreigner
Page 137 and 138: e boredom. When they overshoot, the
Page 139 and 140: class was conducted entirely in Fre
Page 141 and 142: more expansions as well as repetiti
Page 143 and 144: Broen, P. (1972) The Verbal Environ
Page 145 and 146: Dulay, H. and M. Burt (1977) "Remar
Page 147 and 148: Hakuta, K. and H. Cancino (1977) "T
Page 149 and 150: Learning Aptitude. Rowley, Ma.: New
Page 151 and 152: Academy of Aphasia. Victoria, Briti
Page 153 and 154: Smith, A. (1966) "Speech and other
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