English 418 Second Language Acquisition Session Twenty Four ...

English 418 

Second Language Acquisition 

Session Twenty Four Notes 

Goals/Objectives: 

1) To examine the different aspects of a Personal Second Language Acquisition Theory 

2) To examine the different types of Second Language Syllabuses that have been proposed over the last several decades 

3) To examine the guidelines for developing your own SLA syllabus 

4) To examine whether or not second language teachers actually make a difference (the answer is “yes and no”) 

Questions/Main Ideas (Please 

write these down as you think 

of them) 

Notes: 

• Building a Personal Theory of SLA 

• An Integrated View of Second Language Acquisition 

• The learning of a second language is a multi-faceted endeavor 

• In order to fully understand this phenomenon, one must consider what is learned and what 

is not learned 

• As well as the contexts in which learning and non-learning take place 


• All of the things that we have been discussing are crucial in dealing with a part of what 

happens in learning a second language 

• None, however, is able to account for the total picture 

• A personal SLA theory must explain how the various pieces fit together and explain how 

each relates to a larger picture of acquisition 


• You must consider what a learner must do to convert input to output 

• There are five stages to this process: 

• (a) apperceived input 

• (b) comprehended input 

• (c) intake 

• (d) integration 

• (e) output 


• Constructing a Personal Theory

• First: you must decide whether or not acquisition can best be characterized by means of 

innateness 

• Is it nature or nurture 

• Does the learner come to the learning task with an underlying grammar? (Innatism) 

• Or does language learning result from social interaction? (Behaviorism) 


• Those working within the first paradigm take as the scope of investigation linguistic 

descriptions of grammars 

• In so doing, an idealized speaker-hearer is assumed, with the claim being made that in order 

to fully understand formal constraints on language, one needs to isolate that linguistic 

system and investigate it in and of itself without external influences 


• In the social interactionist view, language and social interaction cannot be separated without 

resulting in a distorted picture of the development of linguistic and interactive skills 

• Language and cognitive development are deeply embedded in the context 

• Thus, understanding the development of syntax, for example, can only come about as one 

investigates how syntax interacts with other relevant aspects of language 


• These conflicting positions have resulted in the development of different research traditions 

as a result of the different questions being asked 

• This, in turn, has resulted in conflicting views about the best way to gather data and the 

correct questions to be asked 


• Next, what is the role of input? 

• (Regardless of which perspective above you choose, it is clear that input of some sort is 

necessary in order for acquisition to take place) 

• We should first note that learners are exposed to a large body of second language data 


• A well-established fact about second language acquisition is that not everything that 

learners hear/read is used to form internal grammars 

• Some data filters through, some does not 

• In other words, some data is apperceived, some is not 

• The first stage of input utilization is called apperceived input


• Apperception is the process of understanding by which newly observed qualities of an 

object are related to past experiences 

• In other words, past experiences relate to the selection of what might be called noticed 

material 

• Apperception is an internal cognitive act, identifying a linguistic form as being related to 

some prior knowledge 


• You can think of apperception as a priming device that tells us which parameters to attend 

to in analyzing second language data 

• That is, it is a priming device that prepares the input for further analysis 

• What is noticed, then, interacts with a parsing mechanism that attempts to segment the 

stream of speech into meaningful units for the learner 


• Thus, apperceived input is that bit of language that is noticed in some way by the learner 

because of some particular features 

• Why are some aspects of language noticed by the learner, whereas others are not? 

• What are the mediating factors at this initial stage? 

• What factors serve as input filters? 


• One obvious factor is frequency 

• Something that is very frequent in the input is likely to be noticed 

• On the other hand, something that is unusual because of its infrequency may stand out for a 

learner 


• A second factor that influences apperception is affect 

• This category can include such factors as: 

• Social distance 

• Status 

• Motivation 

• Attitude 


• A third factor that may determine whether language data are apperceived is prior

knowledge 

• Learning involves integration of new knowledge with prior knowledge 

• One needs some sort of anchor on which to ground new knowledge 


• Prior knowledge factors can include: 

• Knowledge of the native language 

• Existing knowledge of the second language 

• Knowledge of other languages 

• World knowledge 

• Language universals 


• A final factor is that of attention 

• At a given point in time, does a learner attend to the input? 

• Attention is important because it allows a learner to notice a mismatch between what he or 

she knows about the second language and what is produced by speakers of the second 

language 


• Input can be apperceived (and is hence comprehensible), but may not be comprehended 

• Comprehensible input is controlled by the person providing the input, generally a native 

speaker of the language 

• Comprehended input is controlled by the learner 


• That is, it is the learner who is or who is not doing the “work” to understand 

• This distinction is crucial in the eventual relationship to intake, because it is the learner who 

ultimately controls that intake 


• Apperception can be conceptualized as a priming device 

• It prepares the learner for the possibility of subsequent analysis 

• In comprehending, however, the task facing the learner is to analyze the input in order to 

determine how to incorporate it into their grammars (interlanguage) 


• Therefore, there is another separation of components – that of comprehended input and 

intake

• This separation is important because not all input that is comprehended becomes intake 


• For example, input may be comprehended only for the immediate purpose of a 

conversational interaction 

• Or it may be used for purposes of learning – where the intake is incorporated into the 

learner’s grammar 


• In SLA theory, intake refers to the process of attempted integration of linguistic 

information 

• Thus, input that is only used in a conversation and for the sake of that conversation is not 

regarded as intake 


• Intake is the process of assimilating linguistic material 

• It refers to the mental activity that mediates between input and grammars and is different 

from apperception or comprehension as the latter two do not necessarily lead to grammar 

formation 


• Thus, input and intake refer to two fundamentally different phenomena 

• Intake is that component where psycholinguistic processing takes place 

• It is where incoming information is matched against prior knowledge 


• And where, in general, processing takes place against the backdrop of existing internalized 

grammatical rules 

• This is the place where generalizations and over-generalizations are likely to occur 

• It is where fossilization stems from 


• This is the component where several major processes occur, including: 

• Hypothesis formation 

• Hypothesis testing 

• Hypothesis rejection 

• Hypothesis modification 

• Hypothesis confirmation 

• Building a Personal Theory of SLA

• After there is language intake, there are several possible outcomes: 

• 1) Hypothesis confirmation/rejection (intake) 

• This results in intake 


• 2) Apparent non-use 

• This stems from the fact that the information contained in the input is already incorporated 

into a leaner’s grammar 

• This does not preclude it from being used, however 


• The additional information may be used for rule strengthening or hypothesis 

reconfirmation 

• Part of becoming a fluent speaker of a second language involves the automatic retrieval of 

information from one’s knowledge base 


• Information that may appear to be redundant may in fact be serving an important purpose in 

terms of the access a learner has to that information 

• 3) Storage – perhaps some level of understanding has taken place, yet it is not clear how to 

integration can or should take place 


• 4) Non-use 

• In this final possibility, learners make no use of the input at all 

• This may be because they have not succeeded in comprehending it at a useful level 


• Finally, what is the role of output? 

• There are two points to emphasize: 

• First, there is the role of comprehensible output in the testing out of hypotheses 

• This provides a feedback loop back into the intake component 


• Second, there is the role output plays in forcing a syntactic rather than solely semantic 

analysis of language 

• This provides a feedback loop to comprehended input 

• Thus, output is an active part of the entire learning process 

• Second Language Syllabuses

• Second Language Instruction 

• Does Instructed Second Language Acquisition really make a difference? 

• A major goal for studying what we have been studying is to provide a sound 

psycholinguistic basis for Second Language teaching 

• But what role does all this theory play? 


• Evidence from morpheme studies has shown that instruction has little or no effect on the 

acquisition order 

• Found similar orders of acquisition between naturalistic and instructed settings 

• The result was the claim that instruction has little or no effect on the acquisition order of 

SLA 

• Instruction has been proposed to help SLA in two important ways, however: 


• 1) Rate of acquisition 

• A study by Pienemann (1984) suggests that while it seems impossible to alter the 

developmental sequences, it does seem possible that instruction can have a facilitating 

effect on the rate of SL learning 

• It is in fact in this area that instruction is most clearly beneficial, with empirical support 

strong and diverse 


• Long reviewed eleven studies of the achievement of learners after comparable periods of 

classroom instruction, natural exposure, or combinations of the two (called ‘mixed’) 

• He found six which clearly showed faster development in children and adults receiving 

formal SL teaching, two whose findings, while ambiguous, were arguably in the same 

direction, and three which showed minor or no effects for instruction 


• Weslander and Stephany: report on a large-scale evaluation of “pull-out” ESL for 577 LEP 

students (grades two through ten) in public schools in Des Moines, Iowa 

• Results showed that children receiving more ESL instruction outperformed those receiving 

less instruction on the Bilingual Syntax Measure, with effects being strongest at lower 

levels 

• Why is it important that we increase the rate of acquisition?


• 2) Ultimate Level of Attainment 

• Less research in this area, but equally compelling 

• Major study done by Pavesi (1984), who compared relative clause formation in instructed 

and naturalistic acquirers 


• The instructed learners were 48 Italian high school students, aged 14 to 18, who had 

received from two to seven years of grammar-based EFL instruction, but had had no 

informal exposure to English 


• The naturalistic acquirers were 38 Italian workers (mostly waiters), aged nineteen to fifty, 

in Edinburgh, Scotland, who had received only minimal or (usually) no formal English 

instruction 

• Had been in Britain from three months to twenty five years (average of six years), during 

which they had been exposed to English in a variety of home, work, and recreational 

settings 


• Non-equivalent group design: age discrepancy between groups 

• Lower socio-economic levels for naturalistic learners, less education 

• On the other hand, balance of exposure to language clearly in favor of naturalistic learners 

• Results: High school students outperformed the naturalistic acquirers on virtually every 

measure of language attainment 


• Bottom line: formal SL instruction does not seem able to alter acquisition sequences, except 

temporarily and in trivial ways which may even hinder subsequent development 

• On the other hand, instruction has positive effects on the rate at which learners acquire the 

language, and probably beneficial effects on their ultimate level of attainment 


• The other bottom line: without it, naturalistic or not, the learning process would simply 

never begin, if learners are left to their own devices 

• Syllabuses 

• Translate decisions into actual teaching units 

•

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English 418 Second Language Acquisition Session Twenty Four ...

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