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ow that the new year, and new
decade is under way, I expect a lot
of people are thinking about the projects
that lie ahead of them, and also looking
back, and reflecting on what they have
done. One of my projects, for the next
couple of years, is to compile (with the
help of a lot of other people) the Routledge Encyclopedia of Second Language
Acquisition. This will be the first encyclopedia of second language acquisiti on
(SLA) , but very definitely not the last. lt is
though, a sign of how far the field of SLA
has come, since it began about forty years
ago, that such a project is possible. The
scope of enquiry has broadened consider- ably since the early days of research.
SLA research now covers a huge area
that can be broken down into a number of
related sub-areas. This month I’ll look
ahead and talk about how this encyclopedia will be organized, and what I think
these sub-areas are. Twenty or thirty years
from now the scope of an encyclopedia of
SLA will probably be different from that
which 1 will describe here. Possibly new
fields of enquiry, and research methodol- •
ogies, will emerge and contribute to our
inter disciplinary knowledge of SLA. But I
think, as is true tod ay, research and
findings in each area of SLA will continue
to be relevant to language teaching.
The areas of SLA research I describe
below overlap with, and blend into each
other. They are more like colors in a
painting than pieces in a jigsaw puzzle
with sharply defined, interlocking edges.
Within each area I have put one or more
terms that fit best in the area in quotation
marks.
used to describe how a more knowledgeable partner can help a learner construct
their knowledge of the second language
(L2) . Activities that promote this will
likely be of interest to language teachers.
• The study of Discourse and pragmatics
in SLA concerns issues such as ‘politeness’, and ho w perceptions of it are
affected by choice of L2 words and phrases
for ‘speech acts’ such as apologizing or
requesting in the L2.
N The first of these, Social and sociocultural influences on SLA, is currently
an area of much activity. An example of an
entry in this area is ‘scaffolding’, a term
• Of course this area is closely related to
Language and the lexicon in SLA, and
the differences between languages, e.g., in
whether they have ‘inflectional morphol- ^
• Research into Cognitive processes in
SLA describes mental processes such as
‘inhibitory control’, or the ability o no
think about one thing (for example, words
in the L 1) while processing another
(words in the L2) . This is often difficult
for L2 learners to achieve.
R There are many sources of Individual
differences in SLA, and inhibitory control
is one of them (this is an example of where
the areas blend into each other) . Bilinguals have very good inhibitory control
when it comes to language selection.
Another, rather different source is ‘willingness to communicate’, as is measured by
responses to questionnaires by L2 learners.
H The Psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics of SLA deals specifically with mechanisms and stages in language processing,
such as the ‘phonological loop’, which is
where we store and rehearse sounds of the
L2 temporarily in ‘Working Memory’. It is
heavily involved in learning from recasts,
as I described in my August essay on
interaction and feedback.
17: 55
Seoond Lanauaae Acoulslton Research and Teachlna
ogy’ for marking the past tense, or the
object of a sentence. This area also adrms
ses choices that exist within any language,
such as the use of ‘WH-questions’ in English, versus other ‘constructions’ for asking
questions.
9 The study of SLA development is the
study of L2 stages in the emergence of
these morphemes, WH-words, and multiword construclions. To what extent are
there ‘morpheme acquisition orders’ that
are shared across L2 learners with a wide
variety of L1s, and to what extent is there
‘transfer’ of L1 knowledge to the L2 while
learning them. Large-scale projects such as
the ‘European Science Foundation Project’ in the 1980s and 1990s studied these
issues during ‘naturalistic’ untutored learning of L2s in many European countries.
0 Instructed SLA differs from naturalistic
learning in its social setting, and aims to
speed up learning through various pedagogic interventions. Some of these can be
called ‘Focus-on-Form’ techniques lhat
aim to focus learner attention on aspects of
the L2 that are infrequent in the input, or
easy to overlook, such as ‘input enhancement’. In this technique forms can be
underlined or italicised to increase their
perceptual salience in reading materials.
Alternatively ‘flooding’ is a technique for
providing many examples of the forms,
above their usual level of frequency, in
spoken or written input.
0 Measuring and researching SLA involves, for example, assessing the ‘variance’ between learners in any group in
their ‘accuracy’ in using a form, or identifying the ‘hesitation phenomena’ that
occur during spoken performance, and
contributing to ‘fluency’. It can also involve ‘Conversation Analysis’ of learner
performance on ‘tasks’, as well as identification of features of ‘teacher talk’ that
distinguish it from speech between one
‘native speaker’ and another.
0 Finally, Theoretical constructs in SLA
include the models, hypotheses and mechanisms that have been proposed to account
for the findings from SLA research. These
include ‘triggering’, or the notion that the
input learners hear or read activates innate
options in 'Universal Grammar’ for the
learner, such as the fact that the language
can drop subjects. They also include ‘emergentist’ models and theories such as the
‘Competition Model’ which argues that L2
learning takes place without innate knowledge of grammar, and involves usagebased mapping of L2 forms (like Whwords) to their functions (one of which is
asking questions) .
There are now a number of Handbooks
of Second Language Acquisition (e.g.,
Doughty & Long, 2003; Ritchie & Bhatia,
2009) with lengthy chapters addressing
these issues. But an encyclopedia aims to
provide short entries, and organize links
between them in a way that allows readers
to fashion their own brief (or longer)
journeys. It is a project that will keep me
busy this year and next year, and, I hope,
it will keep readers busy and interested for
many years afler that.
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Doughty, C. & Long, M. (2003) (Eds.) , The
Handbook of Second Language Acquisi lion. Blackwell.
Ritchie, W. & Bhatia, T. (2009) . (Eds.) , The
Ne tv Handbook of Second La nguage
Acquisition. Emerald.
Robin so n, P. (forthcoming) . (Ed.) , The
Routledge Ericyclopedia of Second Lan guage Acquisition. Routledge.
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The English Teachers’ Magazine February 2010
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