Developmental Sequences in
Second Language Learning
Presenters: Jacqueline dos Anjos, Hanna Heseker, Dana Meyer
Let‘s assume...
Second
Language
Acquisition
Table of Contents
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1. Background: Influences in SLA
2. Grammatical Morphemes
3. Stages of Development
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3.1 Negations
3.2 Questions
 3.2.1 Activities
3.3 Relative Clauses
4. Movement through Developmental Sequences
5. More about First Language Influence
6. Conclusion
Background: Influences in SLA
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High level of cognitive development
Mental lexicon of real-world concepts
Knowledge of L1 structures
Different learning environments and
conditions
→ Learners develop an interlanguage: Various
levels of success in their L2 acquisition
Grammatical Morphemes
Concept of Grammatical Morphemes
What is a morpheme?
“smallest meaningful segment of a
language“
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What is a grammatical morpheme?
“a word that functions to specify the
relationship between one lexical
morpheme and another“
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Obligatory Contexts
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“Obligatory contexts“ in which specific
grammatical morphemes must occur:
‘Yesterday I listened to that song
three times.‘
Stephen Krashen‘s Natural Order Hypothesis
-ing (progressive)
plural
copula (‘to be’)
auxiliary (progressive
as in ‘He is going’)
article
irregular past
regular past –ed
third person singular –s
possessive ‘s
Source: Lightbrown,
Patsy M. and Nina
Spada. How Languages
are Learned. 3rd ed.
Oxford: Oxford UP,
2006. 84.
Reception of Accuracy Order
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learners may only use morphemes
correctly in certain contexts
Morphemes placed in wrong positions
not taken into considerations
Results may depend on task
construction
What this means for L2 acquisition...
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developmental sequences identified in
L2 acquisition are similar to those in L1
acquisition
Similarities in L2 acquisition of learners
cannot be traced back exclusively to L1
transfer
Questions
Questions
1st stage
 Dog? Four Children?
 Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments
2nd stage
 It’s a monster in the right corner?
 Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting with
rising intonation
3rd stage
 Where the children are playing?
 Does in this picture there is four astronauts?
 Fronting: do-fronting; wh-fronting, no inversion; other
fronting
Questions
4th stage
 Where is the sun?
 Is there a fish in the water?
 Inversion in wh- + copula; yes/no questions with other
auxiliaries
5th stage
 How do you say proche?
 What’s the boy doing?
 Inversion in wh-questions with both an auxiliary and a
main verb
6th Stage
 Question tag: It’s better, isn’t it?
 Negative question: Why can’t you go?
 Embedded question: Can you tell me what the date is
today?
Questions
1st Stage
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Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments
2nd Stage
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Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting with rising intonation
3rd Stage
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Fronting: do-fronting; wh-fronting, no inversion; other fronting
4th Stage
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Inversion in wh- + copula; yes/no questions with other auxiliaries
5th Stage
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Inversion in wh-questions with both an auxiliary and a main verb
6th Stage
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Question tag, Negative question, Embedded question
Relative Clauses
Relative Clauses
Part of speech
Relative clause
Subject
The girl who was sick went home.
Direct object
The story that I read was long.
Indirect object
The man who[m] Susan gave the present to
was happy.
Object of preposition
I found the book that John was talking about.
Possessive
I know the woman whose father is visiting.
Object of comparison
The person that Susan is taller than is Mary.
Source: Lightbrown, Patsy M. and Nina Spada.
How Languages are Learned. 3rd ed. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2006. 90.
Movement through Developmental
Sequences
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Stages in language learning are not like
“closed rooms“
Stress situations may cause learners to
fall back into an earlier stage
Learners may have difficulty moving
beyond a stage when facing similarities
between first and interlanguage
patterns
More about First Language Influence
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First language interacts with
developmental sequences
When learners reach a certain stage
and perceive a similarity to their first
language, they may linger longer at
that stage
Addition of a substage
May learn a second language rule but
restrict its application
Phenomenon of “Avoidance“
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Feature in the target language too distant
and different from their first language →
don’t try it
Extent of transfer has do to with the L2
learner’s beliefs about the distance between
the L1 and the L2
Language acquirer
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will typically avoid those structures that he is not
sure are grammatical in the L2
knows that idiomatic or metaphorical uses of
words are often unique to a particular language
Conclusion
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The idea of developmental sequences
greatly facilitates our understanding of
L2 acquisition
However, the concept of L1 transfer
should always be taken into
consideration when looking at L2
acquisition processes
List of References
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Lightbrown, Patsy M. and Nina Spada. How
Languages are Learned. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP,
2006.
Saville-Troike, Muriel. Introducing Second Language
Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.
Cook, Vivian. Second Language Learning and
Language Teaching. 3rd ed. London: Arnold, 2001.
Thank you for your attention
and participation!