Interlanguage and the ‘natural’ route of developme.ppt

1、3 Interlanguage and the natural route of development,I. A mentalist theory of language learning,The obvious inadequacies of behaviourist explanations of L2 acquisition led researches to look towards an alternative theoretical framework. From a preoccupation with the role of nurture (i.e. how externa

2、l factors shape learning), researchers switched their attention to nature (i.e. how the internal factors shape learning). Therefore, this new theoretical framework was mentalist/nativist in orientation.,Chomsky (1959) attached importance to the active contribution of the child and played down imitat

3、ion and reinforcement. Universal Grammar was claimed to be the source of the childs knowledge of his L1. This view of FLA was represented in the form of a model: primary linguistic data (input) AD (including UG) G (a specific grammar) Lenneberg (1967) stressed the biological prerequisites of languag

4、e. He claimed that only homo sapiens was capable of learning language.,The uniqueness of childrens early utterances is a universal feature of L1 acquisition. For example: Mommy sock. 妈妈 车车。 The finding that childrens early utterances are different in form from adult utterances in the L1 acquisition

5、provides a strong argument for giving up behaviourist accounts of L1 acquisition. Since many utterances produced by children are not similar to the kind of utterances modelled by an adult, it cannot be argued that the process of L1 acquisition is the process of habit-formation through imitation and

6、reinforcement.,In the 1960s and 1970s a mentalist theory of L1 acquisition emerged. According to this theory: 1. Only human beings are capable of learning language. 2. The human mind is equipped with a faculty for learning language, referred to as a Language Acquisition Device. This is separate from

7、 the faculties responsible for other kinds of cognitive activity (e.g. logical reasoning). 3. The acquisition device is the primary determinant of language acquisition. 4. The acquisition device declines with age. 5. Input is needed, but only to trigger the operation of the language acquisition devi

8、ce.,II. Interlanguage,The term interlanguage was coined by the American linguist Larry Selinker (1972). It is recognized that L2 learners construct a linguistic system that draws partially on the learners L1 but is different from it and also from the target language. A learners interlanguage is, the

9、refore, a unique linguistic system.,The concept of interlanguage involves the following premises about L2 acquisition: 1. The learner constructs a system of abstract linguist rules which underlies comprehension and production of the L2. This system of rules is viewed as a mental grammar and is refer

10、red to as an interlanguage. 2. The learners grammar is permeable. That is, the grammar is open to influence from the outside (i.e. through the input). It is also influenced from the inside. For example, omission, overgeneralization, and transfer errors provide evidence of internal processing.,3. The

11、 learners grammar is transitional. Learners change their grammar from one time to another by adding rules, deleting rules, and reconstructing the whole system. This results in an interlanguage continuum. That is, learners construct a series of mental grammars or interlanguages as they gradually incr

12、ease the complexity of their L2 knowledge. For example, learners may begin with a very simple grammar where one form of the verb is represented (e.g. write), but over time they add other forms (e.g. writing and written), gradually sorting out the functions that these verbs can be used to perform.,4.

13、 Some researchers have claimed that the systems learners construct contain variable rules. That is, they argue that learners are likely to have competing rules at any one stage of development. However, other researches argue that interlanguage systems are homogeneous and that variability reflects th

14、e mistakes learners make when they try to use their knowledge to communicate. These researchers see variability as an aspect of performance rather than competence.,5. Learners employ various learning strategies to develop their interlanguages. The different kinds of errors learners produce reflect d

15、ifferent learning strategies. For example, omission errors suggest that learners are in some way simplifying the learning task by ignoring grammatical features that they are not yet ready to process.,6. The learners grammar is likely to fossilize. Selinker suggested that only about five percent of l

16、earners go on to develop the same mental grammar as native speakers. The majority stop learning when their interlanguage contains at least some rules different from those of the target language system. Fossilization does not occur in L1 acquisition and thus is unique to L2 grammars. This concept of

17、interlanguage offers a general account of how L2 acquisition takes place. It incorporates elements from mentalist theories of linguistics (e.g. language acquisition device) and elements from cognitive psychology (e.g. learning strategies).,III. Error Analysis,Superficially, it seems rather odd to pa

18、y attention to what learners get wrong rather than to what they get right. However, there are good reasons for focusing on errors. First, they are an obvious feature of interlanguage. Then arises a question: Why do learners make errors? Second, it is useful for teachers to know what errors learners

19、make. Third, paradoxically, it is possible that making errors may actually help learners when they self-correct the errors they make.,Identifying errors,One day an Indian gentleman, a snake charmer, arrived in England by plane. He was coming from Bombay with two pieces of luggage. The big of them co

20、ntained a snake. A man and a little boy was watching him in the customers area. The man said to the little boy Go and speak with this gentleman. When the little boy was speaking with the traveller, the thief took the big suitcase and went out quickly. When the victim saw that he cried Help me! Help

21、me! A thief! A thief! The policeman was in this corner whistle but it was too late. The two thieves escape with the big suitcase, took their car and went in the traffic. They passed near a zoo and stop in a forest. There they had a big surprise. The basket contain a big snake.,To identify errors we

22、have to compare the sentences learners produce with what seem to be the normal sentences in the target language which correspond with them. A man and a little boy was watching him. went in the traffic. The big of them contained snake.,Errors they occur because the learner does not know what is corre

23、ct. Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance; they occur because, in a particular instance, the learner is unable to perform what he or she knows. The big of them contained a snake. The basket contain a snake. (a mistake),How can we distinguish errors and mistakes?,One way might be to check

24、 the consistency of learners performance. If the narrator of the above story consistently substitutes contain for contained, this would indicate a lack of knowledge an error. However, if he sometimes say contain and sometimes contained, this would suggest that he possesses knowledge of the correct f

25、orm and is just slipping up a mistake. Another way might be to ask learners to try to correct their own deviant utterances. Where they are unable to, the deviations are errors; where they are successful, they are mistakes.,Describing errors,When all the errors have been identified, they can be descr

26、ibed and classified into types. One way is to classify errors into grammatical categories. We could gather all the errors relating to verbs and then identify the different kinds of verb errors in the above sample (e.g. errors in the past tense).,Another way is to identify general ways in which the l

27、earners utterances differ from the reconstructed target-language utterances. omission: leaving out an item that is required for an utterance to be considered grammatical misinformation: using one grammatical form in place of another grammatical form misordering: putting the words in an utterance in

28、the wrong order Classifying errors in these ways can help us diagnose learners learning problems at any one stage of their development and, also, to plot how changes in error patterns occur over time.,Explaining errors,The identification and description of errors are preliminaries to the task of try

29、ing to explain why they occur. Errors are systematic. The verb errors described above do not involve haphazard substitutions of past tense verbs. We find evidence of regular replacements using a single form. All of the past tense errors involve the use of the simple form of the verb. This systematic

30、ity suggests that the narrator of the story has constructed some kind of rule.,Many errors are universal. The kind of past tense error found in the above sample has been attested in the speech of many learners. Most, if not all learners go through a stage of learning where they substitute the simple

31、 form of the verb for the past tense form.,Evaluating errors,Some errors can be considered more serious than others because they are more likely to interfere with the intelligibility of what someone says. Teachers will focus their attention on these. Global errors: violate the overall structure of a

32、 sentence and for this reason may make it difficult to process. For example, The policeman was in this corner whistle Local errors: affect a single constituent in the sentence and are less likely to create any processing problems. Most of the errors in the above sample are of this kind.,IV. Empirica

33、l research,Empirical research is required to decide on the nature of the interlanguage continuum. Was the continuum to be considered as stretching from the learners mother tongue to the target language? Or the continuum to be considered as the gradual complexification of interlanguage knowledge. Cor

34、der (1978) refers to the former view as a restructural continuum and the latter as a recreation continuum.,Restructuring continuum The learner is seen as gradually replacing features of his mother tongue as he acquires features of the target language. Recreation continuum The learner is seen as slow

35、ly creating the rule system of the target language in a manner very similar to the childs acquisition of his language.,Cross-sectional research,morpheme studies The studies were conducted according to a more or less fixed procedure. Data were elicited from a sample of L2 learners, using some kind of

36、 elicitation device such as the Bilingual Syntax Measure. This consisted of a series of pictures which the learners were asked to describe. The authors claimed that the corpus they collected in this way reflected natural speech. The next step was to identify the grammatical items which were the targ

37、et of the investigation.,The morpheme studies indicated that accuracy order was the same as acquisition order. They provided strong evidence of a natural sequence of development in SLA. Irrespective of learner differences, L2 learners appear to progress along the interlanguage continuum in a very si

38、milar way. The main hypothesis of interlanguage theory, therefore, was supported. However, attempts to test the validity of the studies against case studies of individual learners (Hukuta 1974; Rosansky 1976) suggested that accuracy order was not the same as acquisition order.,Longitudinal research,

39、The longitudinal studies of SLA have one major advantage over both Error Analysis and the cross-sectional studies. They provide different points of time and therefore enable a reliable profile of the SLA of individual learners to be constructed. The disadvantage lies in the difficulty of making generalizations based on the profiles of one or two learners.,Initially, negative utterances are characterized by external negation. e.g. No you playing here. A little later internal negation develops; that is, the nega