Applied Linguistics
Lecture 4: Theories of Second Language Acquisition 2
4.1 Current psychological theories: The cognitive/developmental
perspective
 Cognitive/developmental psychologists hypothesize that language has no specific
module (i.e. UG) in the brain; rather it is part of the general theories of learning.
 The cognitive/developmental perspective includes four models: information
processing model, connectionism, the competition model, and second language
applications.
4.1.1 Information processing
‘pay attention’ → automaticity
 In information-processing model, cognitive psychologists believe that learners at
first ‘pay attention’ using cognitive resources to process information. Gradually,
through experience and practice, information that was new becomes easier to
process quickly. This frees the learners to pay attention to aspects of language
that become automatic.
‘individual words’ → overall meaning
 Learners use their attention on processing attention of individual words. On the
other hand, proficient language users give attention to the overall meaning where
proficient speakers and listeners of language perform automatic responses in
using or understanding the language without using the resources to process new
information.
‘Practice’ = production + exposure + comprehension
 ‘Practice’ is not limited to the production of language. It is also the exposure and
comprehension of language in which cognitive effort is made by the learner
without being fully aware of that.
‘Declarative knowledge’ → ‘Procedural knowledge’
 Language learning starts with the ‘declarative knowledge’ (or knowledge ‘that’),
which becomes ‘procedural knowledge’ (or knowledge ‘how’) through practice.
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Restructuring
 ‘Restructuring’ is a qualitative changes in the learner’s knowledge where learners
‘put it all together’ incorporating too much of systematic aspect. (e.g. after saying
the past tense ‘saw’, the learner may say ‘seed’ or ‘sawed’)
‘Transfer appropriate processing’
 Information is best retrieved in situations that are similar to those in which they
are acquired. This is because when we learn something our memories also record
something about the context in which it was learned and even about the way we
learned it (e.g. reading or hearing)
4.1.2 Connectionism
 The learner is exposed to thousands of linguistic features.
 After hearing the language features in specific situational contexts over and over
again, the learner develops a stronger and stronger network of ‘connections’ in his
mind between these elements that have frequently occurred in the learner’s input.
 For example, hearing phrases like ‘I say’ and ‘he says’, the learner will make
connections between the subject and the verb. So, each subject pronoun activates
the correct verb form.
 The presence of one feature activates the others in the same network.
4.1.3 The competition model
 The competition model takes into account the language form + language meaning
+ language use.
 Through exposure of thousands of language forms associated with particular
meanings, learners come to understand how to use the ‘cues’ with which a
language signals a specific function.
 The competition model requires the learners learn the relationship of the different
cues appropriate to the language they are learning.
 The relationship between words may be signaled by word order, grammatical
markers, and the animacy of the noun in the sentence.
▫ the SVO Word order in English signals the relationship between sentence
components.
Box push boy
‘A box pushes a boy’
is interpreted by a four-year-old child as
▫ grammatical markers (for example, the subject agreement on the verb, case
marking on pronouns) in Italian and Spanish signal the relationship
between sentence components.
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▫ animacy of nouns signals the relationship of the elements in the sentence
in Italian.
Il giocattolo guard
ail bambino
The toy
is looking at the boy
‘The boy is looking at the toy’
(MacWhinney 1997)
4.1.4 Second language applications: Interacting, noticing, and processing:
There are four hypotheses that are inspired by the cognitive /developmental
perspective
1.
The interaction hypothesis
▫ Researches prove that speakers modify of their speech and their interaction
patterns help learners participate in a conversation.
▫ Modified interaction makes language more comprehensible to learners
(Krashen’s comprehensible input).
▫ The relationship between interactional modification and language acquisition is
described by Long (1983) as follows:
1. Interactional modification makes input comprehensible
2. Comprehensible input promotes acquisition
Therefore,
3. Interactional modification promotes acquisition
▫ Interactional modification during interaction leads to a better understanding than
linguistic simplification or modification planned in advance.
▫ Examples of conversational modification are:
1. Comprehension checks by the native speaker (e.g. ‘the
bus leaves at 6:30. Do you understand?’
2. Clarification requests by the learner (e.g. ‘Could you
repeat please?’)
3. Self-repetition or paraphrase by the native speaker (e.g.
‘She got lost on her way home from school. She was
walking from school. She got lost’)
▫ Interactional modification yields to language development.
When communication is difficult → the interlocutors ‘negotiate for meaning’ →
the learners’ ‘comprehensible output hypothesis’ pushes them to produce output
that is comprehensible to the interlocutor → learners’ language development.
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2.
The noticing hypothesis
▫ The noticing hypothesis suggests that nothing is learned unless it has been
noticed, noticing something that is heard or seen in the second language to fill a
gap in the knowledge of the language.
▫ The question of whether the learner must be aware that he is ‘noticing’ is
debatable?
- According to information
processing theories, anything
that uses up our ‘mental
processing space’ even if we
are not aware of it on purpose
can contribute to learning.
3.
- According
to
the
connectionist
perspective,
the likelihood of acquisition
is best predicted by the
frequency
with
which
something is available for
processing, not by
the
learner’s
awareness
of
something in the input.
Input processing
▫ In order to interpret the input, the learner should focus on the details of the
language form.
▫ As discussed in the competition model, the learner is required to understand the
form of the language they are learning
▫ For example, to interpret the following Spanish sentence
La singue el señor
She follows the man
‘The man follows her’
(Spanish)
(Bill VanPatten, 2004)
the learner should not rely on word order alone, he should pay attention to
whether the pronoun is a subject or an object.
▫ Two reasons are responsible for the input misinterpretation:
a) learners have limited processing capacity and cannot pay attention
to form and meaning at the same time.
b) they tend to focus priority to meaning than the form.
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4.
Processability theory
▫ Ease of processing features of syntax and morphology affects the sequence of
development.
▫ In other words, the easier the features are to process, the first to be developed.
▫ Features that are occurred at the beginning or end of a sentence are easier to
process than those in the middle.
▫ Some features are ‘variational’ used by learners of different developmental
stages. They are not affected by the same beginning-middle-end constraints
▫ According to Piennemann (1999,2003),
‘Learners do not simply transfer features from their first
language at early stages of acquisition. Instead they have to
develop a certain level of processing capacity in the second
language before they can use their knowledge – in their first
language’
Reading for this lecture:
Lightbown & Spada (3th ed.): 38-46
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