Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

Claudia Gutierrez

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This work delves into the complex relationship between second language acquisition (SLA) research and language teaching practices. It emphasizes the importance of understanding how individuals acquire a second language to enhance teaching methodologies. The text showcases various perspectives on SLA, including the interconnectedness of language stores, the significance of phonetic nuances, and the impact of learner strategies, thereby offering practical insights for educators and trainees.

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+ However peculiar and limited they may be, learners’ sentences come from the learners’ own language systems; their L2 speech shows rules and patterns of its own. At each stage learners have their own language systems. The nature of these learner systems may be very different from that of the target language. Even if they are idiosyncratic and constantly changing, they are nonetheless systematic. The starting point for SLA research is the learner’s own language system. This can be called the ‘independent language assumption’: learners are not wilfully distorting the native system, but are inventing a system of their own. Finding out how stu- dents learn means starting from the curious rules and structures which they invent for themselves as they go along - their ‘interlanguage’, as Larry Selinke1 (1972) put it. This is shown in Figure 1.1. The interlanguage concept had a major impact on teaching techniques in the 1970s. Teaching methods that used drills and grammatical explanations had insisted on the seriousness of the students’ mistakes. A mistake in an audio-lingual drill meant the student had not properly learnt the ‘habit’ of speaking; a mistake in a grammatical exercise meant the student had not understood the rule. The concept of the learner’s own system liberated the classroom and in part paved the way for the communicative language teaching methods of the 1970s and 1980s, and the task-based learning of the 1990s. Learners’ sentences reflect their temporary lan- guage systems rather than their imperfect grasp of the target language. If a student

Multi-competence - + In my own view, not yet shared by the SLA research field as a whole, the inde- pendent grammars assumption does not go far enough. On the one hand, we have the user’s knowledge of their first language; on the other, their interlanguage in the second language. But these languages coexist in the same mind; one person knows both. Hence we need a name to refer to the overall knowledge that com- bines both the first language and the L2 interlanguage, namely multi-competence (Cook, 1992) — the knowledge of two languages in the same mind (shown in Figure 1.2). The lack of this concept has meant SLA research has still treated the two languages separately rather than as different facets of the same person, as we see from time to time in the rest of this book.

Language teaching has also made use of structural grammar based on the concept of phrase structure, which shows how some words go together in the sentence and some do not. In a sentence such as ‘The man fed the dog’, the word ‘the’ seems some- how to go with ‘man’, but ‘fed’ does not seem to go with ‘the’. Suppose we group the words that seem to go together: ‘the’ clearly goes with ‘man’, so we can recognize a structure ‘(the man)’; ‘the’ goes with ‘dog’ to get another ‘(the dog)’. Then these struc- tures can be combined with the remaining words: ‘fed’ belongs with ‘(the dog)’ to get a new structure ‘(fed the dog)’, not with ‘the man’ in ‘the man fed’. Now the two structures ‘(the man)’ and ‘(fed the dog)’ go together to assemble the whole sentence. This phrase structure is usually presented in tree diagrams that show how words build up into phrases and phrases build up into sentences (see Figure 2.1).

Table 3.1 The 20 most frequent nouns, verbs and adjectives in English

Box 3.1 Test how many words you know

Figure 3.1 Different ways of storing the vocabulary of two languages in the mind

Table 3.2 Three levels of vocabulary I Sean oats te SERRE Re aos Streeter i a fice a ea Prototype theory claims that children first learn words that are ‘basic’ because they reflect aspects of the world that stand out automatically from the rest of what they see — prototypes. ‘Sparrow’ is a ‘basic-level’ term compared to a ‘superordi- nate-level’ term like ‘bird’, or a ‘subordinate-level’ term like ‘house sparrow’. The basic level of vocabulary is easier to use and to learn. On this foundation, children build higher and lower levels of vocabulary. Some examples of the three levels of vocabulary are seen in Table 3.2.

Students are often acutely aware of their ignorance of vocabulary in a way they are unaware of their ignorance of grammar and phonology. When you want to say something in a second language, it is the words that you feel you struggle for rather than the grammar or pronunciation. Hence L2 users have devised strategies to compensate for words they do not know, discussed in Chapter 6. Here we shall look at some of the vocabulary strategies students use, with or without their teacher’s approval. First test yourself on the task in Box 3.6.

What does this test tell you about (a) the person’s first language (b) the person’s first writing system?

Figure 4.1 The ontogeny phylogeny model (OPM) (Major, 2002) eee IED III III IID IRIE IN IID IE A number of models have been put forward to explain L2 phonological acquisi- tion in a second language. The ontogeny phylogeny model of language acquisi- tion put forward by Roy Major (2002) claims that the early stages of L2 learning are characterized by interference from the second language. Then the learner starts to rely on universal processes common to all learners. The L2 elements themselves increase over time until finally the learner possesses the L2 forms. This is shown in the stages captured in Figure 4.1. Major (2002) takes the example of English speakers learning the Spanish trilled [r]. They start with the English sound, written phonetically as [1] (stage 1). In the next stages, though the Spanish [r] starts to appear, they also use an uvular trilled [R] based on their universal processes. Spanish [r] continues to increase until it reaches 100 per cent, while [1] and [rR] decrease until they reach zero in stage 5. Learning pronunciation then depends on three different components — L1 transfer, universal processes and L2. The relationship between these varies according to the learner’s stage.

The other main type of writing system in the world links the written sign to its spoken form rather than its meaning. The English word <table> corresponds tc the spoken form /teibl/; the meaning is reached via the spoken form. Knowing the written form of the word tells you how it is pronounced, but knowing that ‘table is pronounced /teibl/ gives you no idea what it means. (Note: when words or let- ters are cited purely for their orthographic form they are enclosed in angle brack- ets <table>, parallel to slant brackets for phonological form /teibl/.) Theos hk aan see eens tapes ean A Ae Sn. A eee Ae eas See | Ss The big division in the writing systems of the world is between those based on meaning and those based on sounds, as seen in Figure 5.1. The Chinese character- based system of writing links a written sign to a meaning; the character X means a person, the sign A an elephant; it is not necessary to know how Ais pronounced or even to know what the Chinese spoken word actually is in order to read it. A Chinese-English dictionary does not tell you the spoken form: L] is simply given as ‘mouth’. Hence speakers of different dialects of Chinese can com- municate in writing even when they cannot understand each other’s speech.

trom the <a> in fat. The same relationship between long and short vowels underlies the consonant doubling rule in Box 5.4. A doubled consonant in writing, say <tt> in ‘bitter’ or <nn> in ‘running’, has nothing to do with saying the consonant twice, but shows that the correspondence of the preceding vowel is short: the <pp> in ‘supper’ shows that the preceding <u> corresponds to /14/, the <p> in ‘super’ that <u> is the long /u:/. This version of the doubling rule is highly simplified and ignores the fact that some consonants never double, <h, j>, or rarely double, <v> and <k> (‘revving’ and ‘trekker’), and that British and North American spelling styles are slightly different, as we see below. As always, there are exceptions, such as doubled consonants after long vowels, as in ‘small’ and ‘furry’. What the rules we have dis- cussed show, however, is that there is a system to English spelling. It may be com- plicated, but it is probably simpler than the system for speaking English. QT A racaarch hac monctl<y tacblad tha nrnhlame wrhich arica in acniiring 9 carnnd

Though Peter's sight improved, the eye-doctor operated. now of old the name of that forest was greenwood the great and its wide halls and aisles were the haunt of many beasts and of birds of bright song and there was the realm of king thranduil under the oak and the beech but after many years when well nigh a third of that age of the world had passed a darkness crept slowly through the wood from the southward and fear walked there in shadowy glades fell beasts came hunting and cruel and evil creatures laid there their snares |.R.R. Tolkien (1977) The Silmarillion

In many cases, British style has two spellings for a word, often with different meanings — ‘meter/metre’, ‘kerb/curb’ - where American style has one. There is also variation between the conventions adopted by particular publishers, say over <-ise>~<-ize> in words such as ‘socialise’.

Figure 7.1 Phrase structure tree of ‘The man ate breakfast’

‘Top-down’ parsing, on the other hand, means breaking down the whole sentence into smaller and smaller bits, that is, going from the top of the tree to the bottom, as represented in Box 7.3. Given ‘The man ate breakfast’, the top-down process tries to find the whole structure of an SVO sentence. It first tries to find a noun phrase, which in turn means trying to find, first, an article ‘the’, and then a noun, ‘man’. If it suc- ceeds, the next step is to find a verb phrase, which means trying to find a verb ‘ate’ and a noun phrase ‘breakfast’. If the quest to find a noun phrase and a verb phrase succeeds, it has parsed the whole sentence, complete with its structure. The list in the figure is in fact a mirror of a computer program to parse sentences in a computer lan- guage like Prolog. The schema theories mentioned earlier are top-down in that they see how the sentence fits in with whole patterns in the mind.

Another survey shows the nine most popular reasons across the EU for learning a new language (EuroBarometer, 2006), shown in Figure 8.1; a UK report came up with 700 reasons for studying modern languages (Gallagher-Brett, n.d.). Clearly the reasons why people learn new languages are far wider than for their personal careers. Motivation in L2 learning, however, has mostly been used to refer to long-term stable attitudes in the students’ minds, in particular integrative and instrumental motivation, introduced by Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert in a series of books and papers (Gardner and Lambert, 1972; Gardner, 1985, 2007). A discussion of the socio-educational model within which these two factors are crucial is pro- vided in Chapter 12. The integrative motivation reflects whether the student ident- ifies with the target culture and people in some sense, or rejects them. The statement in the Focusing questions at the beginning of this section, ‘Studying a foreign language is important to my students because they will be able to partici- pate more freely in the activities of other cultural groups’, was taken from one used by Gardner for testing integrativeness in the AMTB (Attitudes and Motivation Test Battery), which can be found in full online; a short version is also on the website. The more that a student admires the target culture — reads its literature, visits it on

This model is mainly used for groups that have active contact within the same country. My examples come from the use of English in England, not of English in Japan. When there are no actual contacts between the two groups, the model is less relevant, particularly for classroom learners who have no contact with the L2 culture except through their teacher, and whose experience of the L2 culture is through the media or through the stereotypes in their own culture.

Figure 8.3 Responses to ‘It is important to be able to speak two languages’ RS OOS TT aT ISR TER TSI SERNAME ON ETT SOV MEMS SAU ONRRETED SUREAEE I Se AEE ne REE NM NTR JEON AGED FURR ORIN RERINR HOES Nae O Ae A crucial aspect of attitudes is what the students think about people who are L2 users or monolinguals. I asked adults and children in different countries to rate how much they agreed with statements such as ‘It is important to be able to speak two languages’. As we see in Figure 8.3, most groups have fairly positive attitudes towards speaking two languages, but the British adults, who were university stu- dents, are clearly more positive.

Figure 8.4 Responses to ‘I will always feel more myself in my first language than in anothe language’

ES ee eee ee ee ae ee ee ee A simple point to make to students is that codeswitching between two people who both know the same two languages is normal. There is a half-feeling that peo- ple who switch are doing something wrong, either demonstrating their poor knowledge of the L2 or deliberate rudeness to other people present who may not be able to join in, as we see in Figure 10.1. This seems particularly true of children in England. This feeling is not helped by the pressure against codeswitching in many classrooms, as we see in the next section. Occasionally codeswitching may indeed be used for concealment from a third party. However, this may be to pre- serve the niceties of polite conversation: Philip, a 7-year-old French/English speaker, switches to French to his mother in front of an English guest to request to go to the loo: ‘Maman, j’ai envie de faire pipi’ (Mummy, I need to have a wee). Too long has codeswitching been seen as something reprehensible (young chil- dren who use switching are doing something terrible — they cannot keep their lan- guages separate!), rather than something completely natural and indeed highly skilled, as Fred Genesee (2002) points out. Codeswitching is a normal ability of L2 users in everyday situations and can be utilised even by children as young as 2. The Institute of Linguists’ examinations in Languages for International Communication (discontinued in 2004) (Institute of Linguists, 2008) assessed whether candidates can mediate between two languages. At beginners’ level this may be reading an L2 travel brochure or listening to L2 answerphone messages to get information that can be used in the first language. At advanced stages it might be researching a topic through reading and conducting interviews in order to write a report. To take an Italian example, students are told they are working for an English charity that needs a report on immigration. They are given a dossier in advance of newspaper articles on the topic in Italian. On the day of the test they are given a task-brief, listing points that they should cover; they then have to interview someone in Italian for 15 minutes to establish the information; finally they have two hours to write up a professional report in English based on the dossiers and the interview. In this international use of a sec- ond language, the L2 learner is not becoming an imitation native speaker, but is someone who can stand between the two languages, using both when appropri- ate. While this is not in itself codeswitching, it involves the same element of

SaaS RT nen ENT eT nee NENA oa IIE II IS OE OE Oe Society as a whole depends on the interlocking of these languages and so is based on multilinguals who can plug the gaps between one level and another, whether within one territory or internationally. According to de Swaan (2001), the learning of second languages usually goes up the hierarchy rather than down: people learn a language that is the next level up. Speakers of a peripheral language

Figure 12.1 Robert Gardner’s socio-educational model (Gardner, 2007) But where do attitudes and integrativeness come from? The answer, according to sardner, is the educational setting and cultural context within which the students ire placed. A society sets a particular store by L2 learning; it has stereotyped views of foreigners and of certain nationalities, and it sees the classroom in a particular way. Hence one way of predicting if students will be successful at L2 learning is to ook not at the attitudes of the students themselves, but at those of their parents or ndeed of society at large. The crucial factors are how the learner regards the speak- rs of a second language, as seen in Chapter 8, and how highly he or she values L2 earning in the classroom. a FO a (a ee a: EE: Se) a: | a ae = a Sen pee en a ee Se) Den. ee eee: ey Many would say that all the models described so far neglect the most important part of language — its social aspect, Lang,. There are two versions of this. One is that L2 learning usually takes place in a social situation where people interact with each other, whether in the classroom or outside. The second version is that L2 learning takes place within a society and has a function within that society. This covers the local and international goals of language teaching discussed in Chapter 11.

Audio-lingual teaching divided language into the four skills of listening, speak- ing, reading and writing, and grouped these into active skills which people use to produce language, such as speaking and writing, and passive skills through which they receive it, such as listening and reading. As well as speech coming before writ- ing, passive skills should come before active skills, which leads to the ideal sequence of the four skills given in Figure 13.1: (1) listening, (2) speaking, (3) read- ing, (4) writing. So students should listen before they speak, speak before they read, read before they write. Needless to say, no one now accepts that listening and reading are exactly ‘passive’, as Chapter 7 demonstrates. Of all the styles, the audio-lingual most blatantly reflects a particular set of beliefs about L2 learning, which is often referred to as ‘habit formation’. Language is a set of habits, just like driving a car. A habit is learnt by doing it again and again. The dialogues concentrate on unconscious ‘structures’ rather than the conscious ‘rules’ of the academic style. Instead of trying to understand every word or structure, stu- dents learn the text more or less by heart. Learning means learning structures and vocabulary, which together add up to learning the language. Like the academic style, language is seen more as form than meaning, even if its basis is more in struc- tural than traditional grammar. Oddly enough, despite its emphasis on the spoken language, the structures it teaches are predominantly from written language. "teas eyrcey| at hae aisdicn. Baevatesl] eter So tee: oot She chiidoante:in Shahan? tn emammnn

Table 13.1 Substitution table from Success with English (Broughton, 1968)