A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Languages
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INSIGHTS FROM WORK ON SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Second language acquisition (SLA) has been the focus of considerable research in recent
years (for an overview, see Mitchell and Myles, 2004). There is still no coherent agreed
model, owing to the difficulties involved in separating out and evaluating the diverse
elements which contribute to second or foreign language (L2) acquisition and
disagreements over the role of a learner’s mother tongue (L1) in this process.
Nevertheless, all language teachers need a basic understanding of the principal aspects
of SLA. Towell and Hawkins (1994: 7–16) list these as:
• ‘Transfer’: learners’ unconscious application of L1 grammatical features to their L2
grammar.
• ‘Staged development’: learners progress through a series of intermediate stages
towards L2 acquisition.
• ‘Systematicity’: the broadly similar way L2 learners develop their ability in the target
language; the majority of L2 learners go through the same developmental stages
regardless of their L1 or the type of input they receive.
• ‘Variability’: during the developmental stages, learners’ ‘mental grammars of L2’
allow alternative forms which may co-exist for a long period.
• ‘Incompleteness’: the failure of most L2 learners to attain a level of automatic
grammatical knowledge of L2 comparable to that of native speakers.
One of the implications of these features of SLA is that error and inaccuracy are both
inevitable and necessary. The traditional assumptions of language teaching that learners
must master new forms in a conscious manner when they are first presented to them,
that error should not be tolerated and indeed should be avoided at all costs, are
misguided. SLA research reveals, on the contrary, that L2 competence both generally and
in specific grammatical instances is by its very nature developmental, that it grows as a
function of both conscious and unconscious learning and that error plays a major part at
all stages of this process.
L1 acquisition depends on learners interacting with other L1 speakers and engaging
with increasing amounts of new information which steadily builds on previous
knowledge. It therefore seems reasonable to suggest that L2 acquisition will similarly be
furthered by interaction with authentic language. While immersion learning (e.g. in
Canada) and bilingual programmes in several countries have highlighted the dangers of
‘fossilisation’ if no formal learning takes place, they have also crucially demonstrated
that learners need repeatedly to focus on meaning while being exposed for extended
periods to L2. For this reason target language use in the classroom and the deployment
of a wide range of authentic texts are now both recognised as crucial to the languagelearning
process at advanced levels. The real benefit of authentic texts is that they help
shift the focus on interaction along the continuum of L1/L2 medium-oriented
communication towards L2 message-oriented communication (see Dodson, 1985). That
is to say, authentic texts and realistic tasks (e.g. preparing an address in a mock French