HOME ASSIGNMENT
INTRODUCTION TO 2nd
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
UNNES 2012
NAME
:
MULYOKO
SRN
:
2201410151
ROMBEL :
03
PRODI
PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS
:
Chapter 2
The Nature of Learner Language
The main way of investigating L2 acquisition is by collecting and describing samples of learner
language. The description may focus on three following areas:
a. The kinds of errors learners make and how these errors change over time.
b. It may also identify developmental patterns by describing the stages in the acquisition of particular
grammatical features such as past tense, or
c. It may examine the variability found in learner language.
Let us consider each of these three areas in turn.
a. Errors and error analysis
There are good reasons for focusing on errors:
 First, they are a conspicuous feature of learner language, raising the important question of ‘Why do
learners make errors?’
 Second, it is useful for teachers to know what errors learners make.
 Third, paradoxically, it is possible that making errors may actually help learners to learn when they
self-correct the errors they make.
Identifying errors
The first step in analyzing learner errors is to identify them. To identify errors we have to compare
the sentences learners produce with what seem to be the normal or ‘correct’ sentences in the target
language. For example:
A man and a little boy was watching him.
The correct one should be:
A man and a little boy were watching him.
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Sometimes, however, learners produce sentences that are possible target-language sentences but not
preferred ones. For example:
… went in the traffic.
A native speaker would probably prefer to say:
… went into the traffic.
The confusion sometimes happens. It is difficult to reconstruct the correct sentence because we are
not sure what the learner meant to say. For example:
The big of them contained a snake.
It might be.
The bigger of them contained a snake.
There is a further problem. We need to distinguish between errors and mistakes. Errors reflects gaps
in a learner’s knowledge; they occur because the leaner does not know what is correct. Mistakes
reflect occasional lapses in performance; they occur because, in a particular instance, the learner is
unable to perform what he or she knows.
How can we distinguish errors and mistakes? One way might to be checked the consistency of
learners’ performance. Another way might be to ask learners to try to correct their own deviant
utterances.
Describing errors
Once all the errors have been identified, they can be described and classified into types. There are
several ways of doing this.
a. Classifying errors into grammatical categories.
b. Trying to identify general ways in which the learners’ utterances differ from the reconstructed
target-language utterances.
Explaining errors
Errors are, to a large extent, systematic and, to a certain extent, predictable. Errors are not only
systematic; many of them are also universal. Thus, the kind of past tense error found in one’s speech
has been attested in the speech of many learners.
Of course, not all errors are universal. Some errors are common only to learners who share the same
mother tongue or whose mother tongues manifest the same linguistic property.
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Error evaluation
Some errors can be considered more serious than others because they are more likely to interfere
with the intelligibility of what someone says.
Some errors, known as global errors, violate the overall structure of a sentence and for this reason
may make it difficult to process.
b. Development patterns
All learners, no matter whether they are learning naturalistically or in a classroom, and irrespective of
their first language, make omissions, overgeneralization, and transfer errors
We can also explore the universality of L2 acquisition by examining the developmental pattern learner
follow.
The early stages of L2 acquisition
When learners do begin to speak in the L2 their speech is likely to manifest two particular
characteristics. One is the kind of formulaic chunks which we saw in the case studies. Fixed
expressions like ‘How do you do?’
The second characteristic of early L2 speech is proportional simplification. Learners find it difficult to
speak in full sentences so they frequently leave words out.
The order of acquisition
To investigate the order of acquisition, researchers choose a number of grammatical structures to
study (for example, progressive –ing, auxiliary be, and plural –s). They then collect samples of learner
language and identify how accurately each features is used by different learners. This enables them to
arrive at an accuracy order which must be the same as the order of acquisition on the grounds that
the more accurately learners are able to use a particular feature the more likely they are to have
acquired that feature early.
Sequence of acquisition
The acquisition of a particular grammatical structure, therefore, must be seen as a process involving
transitional constructions.
As an example of this process, let us consider how L2 learners acquire irregular past tense forms.
Stage
1
2
3
Description
Learners fail to mark the verb for past time.
Learners begin to produce irregular past tense forms.
Learners over generalize the regular past tense form.
Introduction to SLA
Example
‘eat’
‘ate’
‘eated’
3
4
5
Sometimes learners produce hybrid forms.
Learners produce correct irregular past tense forms.
‘ated’
‘ate’
Some implications
The discovery of common patterns in the way in which learner language changes over time is one of
the most important findings of SLA.
The work on developmental patterns is important for another reason. It suggests that some linguistic
features are inherently easier to learn than others. This has implications for both SLA theory and for
language teaching.
Of course, it does not follow that because learners naturally learn one feature before another they
must necessarily do so.
c. Variability in learner language
We have seen that learner language is systematic. That is, at a particular stage of development,
learners consistently use the same grammatical form.
We have also seen that learner language is variable. At any given stage of development, learners
sometimes employ one form and sometimes another.
Language is systematic since it is possible that variability is also systematic. That is, we may be able to
explain, and even predict, when learners use one form and when another.
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