These are in-depth notes from the first term of General Linguistics term 1, about Second Language Acquisition. It has notes from the slides and the textbook regarding all the sections, from theories to cognition, aptitude, motivation and more. They are organised by chapter.
General Linguistics: 2nd Lang Acquisition
These notes are a compilation of lecture notes and textbook notes, with some of my own
interpretations and understandings. I take no credit for the intellectual property of the
authors of the lecture notes or textbook.
Table of Contents
General Linguistics: 2nd Lang Acquisition .......................................................................... 1
Differences & Similarities ......................................................................................................... 3
Differences between L1 + L2 acquisition ........................................................................................................3
Similarities between L1 + L2 ...........................................................................................................................3
Theories of SLA ........................................................................................................................ 3
1 – Behaviourist Theory ..................................................................................................................................3
2 – Nativism ....................................................................................................................................................3
3 – Information processing .............................................................................................................................4
4 – Connectionism ..........................................................................................................................................4
5 – Socioculturalism........................................................................................................................................4
Age Effects in SLA (Ch. 2) .......................................................................................................... 5
Age of Acquisition ...........................................................................................................................................5
Counter evidence ...........................................................................................................................................5
Potential underlying causes of age effects .....................................................................................................6
Adults vs Children ...........................................................................................................................................6
Morphosyntax ................................................................................................................................................6
Learner language (Ch. 3+6) ....................................................................................................... 7
Selinker’s interlanguage .................................................................................................................................7
Transfer...........................................................................................................................................................7
Developmental orders + errors of learning L2 ...............................................................................................8
Environment (Ch. 4) ............................................................................................................... 10
Classroom exposure .................................................................................................................................... 10
Naturalistic exposure ................................................................................................................................... 10
Case of Wes ................................................................................................................................................. 10
Cognition (Ch. 5) .................................................................................................................... 12
Information Processing Theory ................................................................................................................... 12
Skill Acquisition Theory ............................................................................................................................... 12
Memory ....................................................................................................................................................... 12
Attention...................................................................................................................................................... 13
Aptitude (Ch. 7) ..................................................................................................................... 14
Intelligence .................................................................................................................................................. 14
L1 ability ....................................................................................................................................................... 14
General language-related difficulties .......................................................................................................... 14
Memory capacity ......................................................................................................................................... 15
Learning conditions ..................................................................................................................................... 15
Motivation (Ch. 8) .................................................................................................................. 16
Motivation quantity ..................................................................................................................................... 16
Motivation quality ....................................................................................................................................... 16
Self-determination theory ........................................................................................................................... 17
Motivation in FL contexts ............................................................................................................................ 17
, Differences & Similarities
Differences between L1 + L2 acquisition
L1 L2
First language – no prior Not first language
From birth (prior even) Later in life – widely varying
Immersed in language context – no effort Varying levels + types of input
No choice to acquire A choice ? (school, uni etc.)
Low cognitive maturity – learning lang., Varying cognitive maturity
walking etc. at the same time
Native-like outcome – fluent Varying native-like, if at all
→ far differing conditions + results
Similarities between L1 + L2
L1 L2
Follows different developmental stages Follows different developmental stages
→ babbling, mabbling, one-word → don’t go through those stages, already
utterances know how to speak
Follows its own rules Follows its own rules
→ Systematicity
Explaining SLA to a 6 year old: First language is the language is the one you are speaking
right now, that you learnt from your mom and dad. So when you want to learn another
language, then it may be harder but it is possible. You’ll have to learn new words that might
not make sense at first, but the more you practice and speak it to whoever understands, it
will become easier. Another good way to remember is to put labels on some objects, like
apples, fridge, and the things around you and to try and think of the new word you learnt in
your new language.
= Theory of SLA must account for all these differences + similarities
Theories of SLA
1 – Behaviourist Theory
- Language = something that we do; habitual behaviour
- All we need to do it imitate what speakers of the language do
- Imitation, habits, contrastive analysis
- Contrastive analysis (CA) hypothesis – try and make assumptions about what differs
in L1 and L2. If German has same principles as Afrikaans of subject-verb inversion,
but English has no s-v inversion. Thus, the prediction is that German speakers will
not make inversion mistakes, but English will. The finding, though, is that both
speakers make inversion mistakes. Characteristics of simple structures learners
produce tend to be the same, regardless of L1 background
2 – Nativism
- Universal grammar; logical problem of language acquisition. Equipped with some
prior knowledge of language. Able to produce more than what is made available to
us in our environment = innate
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