Name : Cerli Marsita

Nim : 1605111571
Summary

Second language learning: Key concepts and issues

'Second languages' are any languages other than the learner's 'native language' or 'mother tongue'.
They include both languages of wider communication encountered within the local region or
community (e.g. at the workplace or in the media) and truly foreign languages, which have no
immediately local uses or speakers. They may indeed be a second language learners are working with,
in a literal sense, or they may be their third, fourth, or even fifth language. It is sensible to include
'foreign' languages under our more general term of 'second' languages, because we believe that the
underlying learning processes are essentially the same for more local and for more remote target
languages, despite differing learning purposes and circumstances.

1. What makes for a good theory?

We need to understand SLL better than we do, for two basic reasons:

1. Because improved knowledge in this particular domain is interesting in itself, and can also
contribute to more general understanding about the nature of language, of human learning and of
intercultural communication, and thus about the human mind itself, as well as how all these are
interrelated and affect each other.
2. Because the knowledge will be useful. If we become better at explaining the learning process,
and are better able to account for both success and failure in SLL, there will be a payoff for millions
of teachers, and tens of millions of students and other learners, who are struggling with the task.

A better understanding of SLL can pursue in an organized and productive way and guided by
some form of theory. A theory is a more or less abstract set of claims about the units that are
significant within the phenomenon under study, the relationships that exist between them and the
processes that bring about change. Thus, a theory aims not just at description but also at
explanation. Theories may be embryonic and restricted in scope, or more elaborate, explicit and
comprehensive. They may deal with different areas of interest to us; thus, a property theory will
be primarily concerned with modelling the nature of the language system that is to be acquired,
whereas a transition theory will be primarily concerned with modelling the change or
developmental processes of language acquisition.

2. Views on the nature of language

Levels of language
Linguists have traditionally viewed language as a complex communication system, which
must be analysed on a number of levels: phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics and lexis3
pragmatics, and discourse. When examining different perspectives on SLL, we will first of all be
looking at the levels of language that these linguists attempt to take into account, and the
relative degree of priority they attribute to the different levels.

Competence and performance

 Language performance data are believed to be imperfect reflections of competence,
partly because of the processing complications that are involved in speaking or other forms of
language production, and which lead to errors and slips. More importantly, it is believed that, in
principle, the infinite creativity of the underlying system can never adequately be reflected in a
finite data sample (see Chomsky, 1965, p. 18).
In making sense of contemporary perspectives on SLL, then, we need to take account of
the extent to which a competence or performance distinction is assumed. This will have
significant consequences for the research methodologies associated with various positions.
theorists' views on the relationship between competence and performance are also closely
linked to their view of the language learning process itself, and in particular, to their view of the
ways in which language use (i.e. speaking or writing a language) can contribute to language
learning (i.e. developing grammatical or lexical competence in the language).

3. The language learning process

 Nature and nyrture
Skinner attempted to argue that language in all its essentials could be and was taught to
the young child, by the same mechanisms that he believed accounted for other types of
learning. (In Skinner's case, the mechanisms were those envisaged by general behaviourist
learning theory - essentially, copying and memorizing behaviours encountered in the
surrounding environment. From this point of view, children could learn language primarily by
imitating the speech of their caretakers. The details of the argument are discussed further in
Chapter 2.)
Chomsky, on the other hand, has argued consistently for the view that human language
is too complex to be learnt in its entirety, from the performance data actually available to the
child; we must therefore have some innate predisposition to expect natural languages to be
organized in particular ways and not others. For our purposes, it is enough to note that child
language specialists now generally accept the basic notion of an innate predisposition to
language.

 Modularity
A further issue of controversy for students of the human brain and mind has been the
extent to which the mind should be viewed as modular or unitary. The modular view has
consistently found support from within linguistics, most famously in the further debate between
Chomsky and the child development psychologist, Jean Piaget.
There are many linguists today who support the concept of a distinctive language
module in the mind, the more so as there seems to be dissociation between the development of
cognition and of language in some cases (Bishop and Mogford, 1993; Smith and Tsimpli, 1995;
Bishop, 2001; Lorenzo and Longa 2003).

 'Systematicity' and variability in SLL

When the utterances produced by second-language learners are examined and
compared with traditionally accepted target language norms, they are often condemned as full
of errors or mistakes. One of the big lessons that have been learnt from the research of recent
decades is that though learners' second-language utterances may be deviant by comparison
with target language norms, they are by no means lacking in system. Errors and mistakes are
patterned, and although some regular errors are caused by the influence of the first language,
this is by no means true of all of them.
 This systematicity in the language produced by second-language learn-ers is of course
paralleled in the early stages through which first language learners also pass in a highly regular
manner, described more fully in Chapter 2.Towell and Hawkins (1994, p. 5) identify it as one of
the key fea-tures that SLL theories are required to explain, and throughout the book we will be
examining how current explanations handle this feature.
However, learner language (or interlanguage, as it is commonly called) is not only
characterized by systematicity. Learner language systems are presumably - indeed, hopefully -
unstable and in course of change; certainly, they are also characterized by high degrees of
variability (Towell and Hawkins, 1994, p. 5). Most obviously, learners' utterances seem to vary
from moment to moment, in the types of'errors' that are made, and learners seem liable to
switch between a range of correct and incorrect forms over lengthy periods of time.

 The relationship between second language use and

SLL
'Performing' in a language not only involves speaking it. Making sense of the language
data that we hear around us is an equally essential aspect of performance. Indeed, it is basic
common ground among all theorists of language learning, of whatever description, that it is
necessary to interpret and to process incoming language data in some form, for normal
language development to take place. There is thus a consensus that language input of some
kind is essential for normal language learning.
Two major perspectives on interaction are apparent: one psycholinguistic, one
sociolinguistic.
From a psycholinguistic point of view, second language interaction is mainly interesting because
of the opportunities it seems to offer to individual second language learners, to fine-tune the
language input they are receiving. This ensures that the input is well adapted to their internal
needs (i.e. to the present state of development of their second language know-ledge). What this
means is that learners need the chance to talk with native speakers in a fairly open-ended way,
to ask questions and to clarify meanings when they do not immediately understand. Under
these conditions, it is believed that the utterances that result will be at the right level of
difficulty to promote learning:
Sociolinguistic views of interaction are very different. Here, the language learning
process is viewed as essentially social; both the identity of the learner, and his or her language
knowledge, are collaboratively constructed and reconstructed in the course of interaction. The
details of how this is supposed to work vary from one theory to another, as we shall see.

4. Views of the language learner

So, second language learners may be children, or they may be adults; they may be
learning the target language formally in school or college, or 'picking it up' in the playground or
the workplace. They may be learning a highly localized language, which will help them to
become insiders in a local speech community; or the target language may be a language of
wider communication relevant to their region, which gives access to economic development and
public life.
It is possible to distinguish three main points of view, or sets of priorities, among SLL
researchers as far as the learner is concerned: the linguistic perspective, which is concerned
with modelling language structures and processes within the mind; the social psychological
perspective, which is concerned with modelling individual differences among learners, and their
 implications for eventual learning success; and the socio-cultural perspective, which is
concerned*- with learners as social beings and members of social groups and networks.

5. Links with social practice

Rampton (1995b) and others have argued for a socially engaged perspective, where
theoretical development is rooted in, and responsive to, social practice and language education,
in particular. Yet others have argued that second language teach-ing in particular should be
guided systematically by SLL research findings (Krashen, 1985).