SLA-errors & correction

The term SLA, or Second Language Acquisition, refers to the study of how second or additional languages are acquired. Researchers look not only at classroom settings. Their work involves studying how people pick up languages when, for example, settling in another country. They are interested in the way learners acquire their target language (the mental and environmental factors that affect the success or otherwise of acquisition), and in the language itself, as seen at different stages in the process of learning.

A relatively new field of study, the discipline emerged from what was known as the CA or Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. a core belief of which is that when conflict occurs between L1 and L2 rules, then predictable errors would occur. This meant that there were identifiable characteristic errors exhibited by speakers of any particular language or language family. The implication being that these could be readily identified and then be corrected. This was believed to assist learners to produce the 'correct' version in future.

These ideas fitted well with behaviourism, a psychological theory of learning very influential in the 1940s and 50s. According to this view, the student who answers ‘Yes, we do’ to the question ‘Do we need any milk?’ and gets an approving look from the teacher will, after a suitable number of repititions of this process, have learnt this item.  Learning as a process of habit formation has had an enormous influence in our profession, on both classroom practice and on course design, most clearly seen in audio-lingualism, learners were ‘drilled’ and errors were seen as something to be avoided. They might, after all, lead to bad habits!

In the mid 60s cognitive psychologists began to challenge the view that language learning is no different from any other kind of stimulus-response reinforcement cycle.

The linguist Noam Chomsky, in particular, claimed that human beings are biologically pre-programmed for language acquisition. He cited as evidence for this the fact the the language environment is one of false starts, incomplete sentences and generally confusing information. Not only this, evidence suggested that correction of language errors is at best inconsistent and often non-existent for children learning their first language. An even more telling criticism was that our remarkable ability to invent novel and highly complex sentences simply cannot be accounted for by habit formation.

One major innatist theory which had lasting effect on practice is to be found in the work of Stephen Krashen who argued that ALL that was necessary for acquisition to take place was comprehensible input. Krashen believed that there was a fundamental difference between acquisition and learning. Acquisition being the non-conscious internalization of rules and patterns, and learning the conscious attending to rules, usually in the formal setting of the classroom. For Krashen input must contain grammatical forms which are one step ahead of the learner’s current interlanguage (see below). This would mean that no overt teaching would be necessary since the learner’s own internal acquisition processes would be set in action to integrate new items.

Another important development in the 60s came with the realisation that errors were in fact a part of the learning process itself. Studies of learners’ errors revealed that there were systematic errors not predicted by the CA hypothesis and that learners seemed to move through a series of stages on their way to achieving competence in their target language. Just like child language, learner language was claimed to be a dynamic system in its own right. This came to be known as the interlanguage (the term itself coined by Larry Selinker in 1972). This developing and rule governed system was shown to have characteristics of the learner’s own language, the second language and other general characteristics common to most, if not all, interlanguages.

Cognitive psychologists see the elements of language like the building blocks used to construct an edifice. Learners need to pay attention to features of the target language in order to build up knowledge which they can eventually, after practice (note that here this does not imply the mechanical practice associated with approaches based on behaviourist theories of learning) they can call on automatically. This in turn frees up mental space for them to attend to new features of the language.

According to Richard Schmidt, the role of noticing in this is crucial to the learning process. (Like the cognitive psychologists, Schmidt made no distinction between learning and acquisition). Almost everything we know about a language is at first noticed consciously. So we should probably be shifting our focus, and the learner's attention, from what the learner can't do towards features or patterns of the language as it actually is. Schmidt's ideas are neatly extended by Jane Willis, in her ‘Framework for Task Based Learning’ where she claims that there are four conditions for successful language acquisition. (Willis pp11-13) These are exposure to a rich variety of language as it is used in the real world, in both spoken and written forms, use of language to achieve concrete ends, that is, in the exchange of meaning, and motivation, either intrinsic or extrinsic, to ‘process and use’ the language. These three are essential-or in logical terms-'necessary conditions'. Bringing up the rear is instruction. This is deemed merely desirable-or, in conjunction with the other three, a .'sufficient condition.

SLA is an area about which many teachers are often indifferent, and it is certainly true that many fail to see the relevance of much research to their daily teaching lives. But it is in the interests of professionals to know something about how to provide the best conditions in which acquisition can take place.  The case of the use or non-use of overt correction is a case in point. Perhaps more focus on the external linguistic world of text and pattern and lesson on chastisement under the guise of a necessary evil will get learners much further.

References

P Lightbown & N Spada          How Languages are Learned              OUP                2000

J Willis                                     A Framework for Task Based Learning               Longman     2000

S Thornbury                            An A-Z of ELT                                      MacMillan       2006

D Nunan                                  ‘Second Language Acquisition’

In The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

CUP                  2001

R Schmidt                                ‘The role of consciousness in second language learning’

                                                                                    Applied Linguistics 11:17-46