English 418 Second Language Acquisition Session Twenty Four ...
English 418 Second Language Acquisition Session Twenty Four ...
English 418 Second Language Acquisition Session Twenty Four ...
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• First: you must decide whether or not acquisition can best be characterized by means of<br />
innateness<br />
• Is it nature or nurture<br />
• Does the learner come to the learning task with an underlying grammar? (Innatism)<br />
• Or does language learning result from social interaction? (Behaviorism)<br />
• Building a Personal Theory of SLA<br />
• Those working within the first paradigm take as the scope of investigation linguistic<br />
descriptions of grammars<br />
• In so doing, an idealized speaker-hearer is assumed, with the claim being made that in order<br />
to fully understand formal constraints on language, one needs to isolate that linguistic<br />
system and investigate it in and of itself without external influences<br />
• Building a Personal Theory of SLA<br />
• In the social interactionist view, language and social interaction cannot be separated without<br />
resulting in a distorted picture of the development of linguistic and interactive skills<br />
• <strong>Language</strong> and cognitive development are deeply embedded in the context<br />
• Thus, understanding the development of syntax, for example, can only come about as one<br />
investigates how syntax interacts with other relevant aspects of language<br />
• Building a Personal Theory of SLA<br />
• These conflicting positions have resulted in the development of different research traditions<br />
as a result of the different questions being asked<br />
• This, in turn, has resulted in conflicting views about the best way to gather data and the<br />
correct questions to be asked<br />
• Building a Personal Theory of SLA<br />
• Next, what is the role of input?<br />
• (Regardless of which perspective above you choose, it is clear that input of some sort is<br />
necessary in order for acquisition to take place)<br />
• We should first note that learners are exposed to a large body of second language data<br />
• Building a Personal Theory of SLA<br />
• A well-established fact about second language acquisition is that not everything that<br />
learners hear/read is used to form internal grammars<br />
• Some data filters through, some does not<br />
• In other words, some data is apperceived, some is not<br />
• The first stage of input utilization is called apperceived input
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