Second Language Acquisition (1)

Describing and Explaining Second Language Acquisition

A.     Definition

The systematic study of how people acquire a second language is a fairly recent phenomenon. At such a time, there is obvious need to discover more about how second languages are learned. Finally, some researchers define Second Language Acquisition as the study of the way in which people learn a language other than their mother tongue, inside or outside of a classroom.

B.     Goals

1.      Description of SLA : To describe how learner language changes over time. For example might be the pronunciation of a second language, how learners’ accents changes over time.

2.      Explanation of SLA            : To identify the external and internal factors that account for why learners acquire a second language in the way they do.

2.1.External Factors

a.       Social Milieu

Social conditions influence the opportunities that learners have to hear and speak the language and the attitudes that they develop towards it.

b.      Input

It is about the input that learners receive that is the samples of language to which a learner is exposed.

2.2.Internal factors

a.       Cognitive mechanism

Learners possess cognitive mechanisms which enable them to extract information about the second language from input.

b.      Knowledge

Learners also possess general knowledge about the world which they can draw on to help them understand second language input. It is possible that learners are equipped with knowledge of how language in general works and that this helps them to learn a particular language.

c.       Communication Strategies

Learners possess communication strategies that can help them make effective use of their second language knowledge.

d.      Language Aptitude

Learning second language will be easier when the learners have natural disposition for learning it.

C.     Methodological Issues

1.      Language is such a complex phenomenon that researchers have generally preferred to focus on some specific aspect rather than the whole of it.

2.      Some researcher defines ‘acquisition’ in terms of whether the learner manifests patterns of language use that are more or less the same of the target language.

3.       The measurement whether ‘acquisition’ has taken place concerns learners’ overuse of linguistic forms.

D.     Issues in the Description of Learner Language

1.      Learners make errors of different kinds. For example, they failed to use request in socially appropriate manner.

2.      Second language learners acquire a large number of formulaic chunks, which they use to perform communicative function that are important to them and which contribute to the fluency of their unplanned speech.

3.      The issue of whether learners acquire the language systematically.

E.      Issues in the Explanation of Second Language Acquisition

1.      Second Language Acquisition must account for both ‘item learning’ and ‘system learning’ and how the two interrelate.

2.      The systematic nature of second language acquisition.

3.      The importance of external as opposed to internal factors.