Characteristics of learner’s interlanguage

Larry Selinker (1972) – introduced the term Interlanguage Intermediate states (or interim grammars) of a learner’s language as it

moves toward the target L2

Creative process, driven by inner forces in interaction with environmental factors, and influenced by input from TL

Characteristics: Systematic – governed by rules which constitute the learner’s internal

grammar

- these rules are discoverable by analyzing the language that is used

by the learner at that time Dynamic – the system of rules which learners have in their minds changes

- frequently, or is in the state of flux, resulting in a succession of interim

grammars

- discontinuous progression ‘’from stable plateau to stable plateau’’

Variable – different patterns of language use Reduced system – form: less complex grammatical structures (e.g.

Infinitive)

function: smaller range of communicative needs

Selinker – differences between IL development in SLA and L1 acquisition, include different cognitive processes:

Language transfer from L1 to L2

Transfer of training, or how L2 is taught

Strategies of L2 learning, or how learners approach the L2 materials and the task of L2 learning

Strategies of second language communication, or ways that learners try to communicate with others in L2

Overgeneralization of the target language linguistic material, in which L2 rules that are learned are applied too broadly

Fossilization – the probability that they will cease their IL development in some respect before they reach target language norms, in spite of continuing L2 input and passage time

Age of learning – older learners more likely to fossilize than younger ones

Social identity and communicative need

Why some learners are more successful than others?

Relative success – the level of IL development reached before learning stops

L1___Ι...............................Ι___L2

Interlanguage

The beginning and end of IL are defined respectively as whenever a learner first attempts to convey meaning in the L2 and whenever development ‘’permanently’’ stops – boundaries are not quite clear

Initial state of IL development: isolated L2 words and memorized routines inserted in an L1 structural frame for some period of time (naturalistic setting)

The endpoint of IL development is difficult to identify with complete certainty since additional time and different circumstances might always trigger some resumption in learning

Identification of fossilization – controversial

Should individuals be considered ‘’fossilized’’ in L2 development because they retain a foreign accent, in spite of productive fluency in other aspects of the TL?

The issue of what the concept of ‘’target language’’ entails as the goal of SLA

‘’Native-like’’ production is neither intended nor desired by many speakers, and that it is, or should be the ultimate goal for all L2 learners – may be considered imperialistic

Nature and development of interlanguage

Principles and Parameters: IL is defined as intermediate states of L2 development which is compatible with the notion of IL as ‘’interim grammars’’

‘’interim grammars’’ – introduced in the 1960s and 1970s

If at least some access to UG is retained by L2 learners, then the process of IL development is in large part one of resetting parameters on the basis of input in the new language

(e.g. speaker of Japanese who is learning English L2 needs to reset the Head Direction parameter from head-final to head-initial)

Learners change the parameter setting (usually unconsciously) because the L2 input they receive does not match the L1 setting they have

If access to UG is still available, then that will limit their choices and their IL grammars will never deviate from structures that are allowed by UG

If learning principles that are part of the language faculty are also still available, then sufficient information to make these changes is available from the positive evidence they receive

(e.g. the input that is provided from experiencing L2 use in natural use or formal instruction)

Negative evidence, including explicit correction, is often also provided to L2 learners (formal language instruction) and this probably plays a role in parameter resetting for older learners

Constructionism – an approach to SLA which has been formulated within Chomsky’s Minimalist Program

Constructionism – IL development as the progressive mastery of L2 vocabulary along with the morphological features that are part of lexical knowledge

‘’morphological paradigms must gradually be added to lexicon, just like words’’

(White 2003:194)

The stages and variability which characterize IL development are accounted for because of initially incomplete specification of these features in learners’ competence

Parameter setting and mastery of morphological features are linked in L1 acquisition – in L2 acquisition they are not necessary linked for older learners

Failure to reach a state of full feature specification in the lexicon – fossilization (intermediate level of development without attaining near-native competence)

Critical role of lexical acquisition in providing information for parameter (re)setting and other aspects of grammar in UG approach – important for L2 learners and teachers

No access position

Developmental sequences

Grammatical morphemes – obligatory contexts for each morpheme that takes place in a sentence - necessary to make the sentence grammatically correct

(e.g. Yesterday I played tennis for two hours)

Accuracy order – from highest to lowest

-ing (progressive) plural copula (to be)

auxiliary (progressive as in ‘He is going)

article

Irregular past

regular past –ed third person singular –s

possessive’s

Majority of researches: L1 does have an influence on acquisition sequences

Goldschneider & Dekeyser (2001): a number of variables that contribute to the order:

Salience (how easy it is to notice the morpheme) Linguistic complexity (how many elements you have to keep track of) Semantic transparency (how clear the meaning is) Similarity to L1 and frequency in the input

NEGATION 4 stages

Stage 1 e.g. No bicycle. I no like it. Not my friend The negative element is typically placed before the verb or the element

being negated and often occurs as the first word in the sentence because the subject is not here

Stage 2 ‘no’ or ‘not’ may alternate with ‘don’t’ that it is not marked for person,

number or tense and it may even be used before modals like ‘can’ and ‘should’

e.g. He don’t like it. I don’t can sing.

Stage 3 Learners begin to place the negative element after auxiliary verbs like

‘are’, ‘is’ and ‘can’. ‘Don’t’ form is still not fully analysed e.g. You can not go there. He was not happy. She don’t like rice.

Stage 4 ‘Do’ is marked for tense, person and number and most interlanguage

sentences appear to be just like those of the target language e.g. It doesn’t work. We didn't have supper.

QUESTIONS Pinemann, Johnston & Brindley (1988) – 6 stages (L1 influence)

Stage 1 Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments e.g. Dog? Four children?

Stage 2 Declarative word order, no invasion, no fronting e.g. It’s a monster in the right corner? The boys throw the shoes?

Stage 3 Fronting: do fronting; wh fronting, no inversion; other fronting e.g. Is the picture has two planets on top? Where the children are

playing?

Stage 4 Inversion in -wh + copula; ‘yes/no’ questions with other auxiliaries e.g. Where is the sun? Is there a fish in the water?

Stage 5 Inversion in wh- questions with both an auxiliary and a main verb e.g. What’s the boy doing?

Stage 6 Complex questions (question tag, negative and ebedded questions) e.g. It’s better, isn’t it? Why can’t you go? Can you tell me what the date is

today?

Progress to a higher stage does not always mean that learners produce fewer errors

Possessive determiners

Joanna White (1998) – 4 stages

Stage 1: Pre-emergence No use of ‘his’ and ‘her’. Definite article or ‘your’ used for all persons,

gender, and numbers e.g. The little boy play with the bicycle. There is one girl talk with your

dad.

Stage 2: Emergence Emergence of ‘his’ and/or ‘her’, with a strong preference to use only one

of the forms e.g. The mother is dressing her little boy, and she put her clothes, her

pant, her coat, and then she finish.

Stage 3: Post-emergence Differentiated use of ‘his’ and ‘her’ but not when the object possessed has

natural gender e.g. The girl fell on her bicycle. She look his father and cry.

Stage 4 Error free use of ‘his’ and ‘her’ in all contexts including natural gender and

body parts e.g. The little girl with her dad play together.

RELATIVE CLAUSES

Susan Gass (1982) – SLA learner who can use the structures at the bottom of the table would probably be able to use any that precede it, while the learner who can produce structures at the beginning of the table would not necessarily be able to use them in any of the positions further down the list

PART OF SPEECH RELATIVE CLAUSE

Subject The girl who was sick went home.

Direct object The story that I read was long.

Indirect object The man who(m) Susan gave the present to was happy.

Object of preposition

I found the book that John was talking about.

Possessive I know the woman whose father is visiting.

Object of comparison

The person that Susan is taller than is Mary.

Several types of L1 influence

For learners whose L1 doesn’t have a particular clause type it is more difficult to learn to use that type in English

Learners with a substantially different way of forming relative clauses in their L1, may avoid using relative clauses even when their interlanguage is fairly advanced

L1 influence is seen in the errors that learners make e.g. Arabic speakers: The man who I saw him was very angry.

REFERENCE TO PAST

Researches: learners from different first language backgrounds, acquire the language for referring to past events in a similar pattern

Learners with limited language may simply refer to event in order in which they occurred or mention a time or place to show that the event occurred in the past

e.g. My son come. He work in restaurant.

Next phase: learners start to attach a grammatical morpheme marking the verb for past, although it may not be the one that the TL uses for that meaning

e.g. Me working long time. Now stop.

Past tense forms of irregular verbs may be used before the regular past is used reliably

e.g. We went to school every day. We spoke Spanish.

Learners may overgeneralize – ed ending or the use of the wrong past tense form

e.g. My sister catched a big fish.

Learners seem to find it easier to mark past tense on verbs that refer to something whose end point can easily be determined – ‘accomplishments’ and ‘achievements’

For ‘activities’ that may continue for some period, or ‘states’ that may be perceived as constants, learners use simple past markers less frequently

Laura Collins (2002): ‘’The (first language) influence does not appear to override the effect of lexical aspect; rather it occurs within it.’’ (p.85)

Learners, at a given point in time, may use sentences typical of several different stages

Progress to a higher stage does not always mean that learners produce fewer errors

Wode (1978) & Zobl (1980) – ‘crucial similarity’ between learner’s L1 and their interlanguage pattern

Difficulty moving beyond that stage or generalization of their L1 pattern – more errors

First language influence

When learners reach a certain stage and perceive a similarity to their first language, they may linger longer at that stage or add a substage to the sequence which is very similar across learners , regardless of their first language – they may learn a second language rule but restrict its application

The phenomenon of ‘avoidance’ – a feature in the target language is so distant and different from their L1 that learners prefer not to try it

Learners seem to know that idiomatic or metaphorical uses of words are often unique to a particular language

L1 can affect L2 in making it difficult for learners to notice that something they are saying is not a feature of the language as it is used by more proficient speakers

The patterns in the development of syntax and morphology are similar among learners from different language backgrounds

Communicative competence: vocabulary, pragmatics & pronunciation Researches: learners who receive instruction exhibit similar developmental

sequences and error patterns

VOCABULARY In contrast to L1 acquisition, learners of L2 are likely to be exposed to far

smaller samples of the language The contexts in which second language learners encounter new vocabulary

may not be helpful, may be more difficult (meanings that are not easily guessed form context)

First step: recognizing of the word Paul Meara & his colleagues (2005b) developed tests – simple word lists

Another factor: frequency The ability to understand the meaning of most words without focused attention

is essential for fluent reading as well as for fluent speaking

Cognates – words that look similar and have the same meaning in two languages

The presence of cognates and borrowed words can also be exploited for vocabulary development

Some cognates are identical in form and meaning, while others may require some knowledge of how spelling patterns are related in two languages

e.g. English: water German: wasser

Even with different spelling words are likely to be easier to recognize in their written form than they are in the spoken language

Krashen (1985,1989) – best source of vocabulary growth is reading for pleasure

Different researches: vocabulary is very important

PRAGMATICS Pragmatics is the study of how language is used in context to express

such things as directness, politeness and deference

Learners need to acquire skills for interpreting requests, responding politely to compliments or apologies, recognizing humour and managing conversations

Learners need to learn to recognize the many meanings that the same sentence can have in different situations

The study of how L2 learners develop the ability to express their intentions and meanings through different speech acts (requesting, refusing, apologizing etc.) is referred to as interlanguage pragmatics

Longitudal and cross-sectional studies

Kasper & Rose (2002) – 5 stages

Stage 1 – minimal language that is often incomplete and highly context-dependent

Stage 2 – primarily memorized routines and frequent use of imperatives

Stage 3 – marked by less use of formulas, more productive speech and some mitigation of requests

Stage 4 – more complex language and increased use of mitigation, especially supportive statements

Stage 5 – marked by more refinement of the force of requests

Mitigation: Softening. In pragmatics, a phrase or tone of voice to reduce the possible negative impact of what is said

PHONOLOGY

Central component in language teaching during the Audiolingual era Several techniques for teaching pronunciation - focused on getting

learners to perceive and to produce distinctions between single sounds (segmentals) in minimal pair drills (e.g. ship, sheep)

Critical Period Hypothesis – native-like pronunciation was an unrealistic goal for SLA learners, particularly older learners

Communicative language teaching – introduction of pronunciation Emphasis on rhythm, stress and intonation – areas more likely to affect

communication

Contrastive Analysis – influence of L1 on L2 phonological development

Learners may substitute th sound with t or d – overgeneralization errors

The degree of difference between the learner’s native language and the target language can lead to greater difficulty – it takes learners longer to reach a high level of fluency in L2 if that language is substantially different from the language they already know

Several factors that influence on pronunciation: stress and rhythm, learners’ L1, amount and type of exposure to the L2 and the degree of use of the L1

Researches: grater periods of exposure to L2 can lead to improved pronunciation and adults who continue largely use their L1 may have stronger accents in the L2

Reasons: ethnic affiliation and sense of their identity

Controversial issue: whether intelligibility rather than native-like ability is the standard that learners should strive forward

In some situations, accent still serves as a marker of group membership and is used as the basis for discrimination

Some learners motivated to approximate a particular TL accent in their pronunciation , while others consider this goal irrelevant

Current views of L2 development: interaction between the L1, cognitive processes and the samples of the target language that learners encounter in the input

SOCIAL CONTEXT OF INTERLANGUAGE

Social factors in the native culture, in the case of formality/informality distinction as well as NL prestige forms influence the form learners use in a second language

Prestigious form is being transferred to a TL context

Variation in L2 use may have a basis in the social norms of the NL

Other sources of variation: interlocutor, task type and conversational topic

Adjusting our speech style according to the situation and the speaker with whom we are talking

Speech Accommodation Theory (Giles & Smith) Speech patterns tend to converge/diverge in social interaction

Giles, Thakerar & Cheshire (1982, p. 207): ‘’Convergence… a linguistic strategy whereby individuals adapt to each

other’s speech by means of a wide range of linguistic features including speech rates, pause and utterance lengths, pronunciation, etc. … whereas divergence refers to the manner by which speakers accentuate vocal differences between themselves and others.’’

Speaking like others – to gain the approval of others and identification of one as a member of the same social group, class or ethnic background

Studies that consider IL variation from this perspective in general find convergence among speakers

Labov – different forms are likely to occur depending on the speech situation

Tarone (1979, 1983) – extended Labov’s work

Tarone (‘’Interlanguage as chameleon’’)

Learner’s grammatical system exhibits more systematicity or consistency in the vernacular style and less in superordinate style

Defined in terms of the amount of attention paid to speech

Vernacular system – system in which the least attention is paid to the form of one’s speech

Superordinate system – system in which the most attention is paid to the speech form

The two of them reflect the outer boundaries of a continuum of styles , the use of which is partially determined by attention to form, which in turn is at least partially determined by the social setting of a speech event

Dickerson & Dickerson

Systematicity – the least ‘’invasion’’ from other systems

Vernacular style is less likely to be influenced by the TL system, but also least accurate

Superordinate style appears to be the most influence from the TL and also most accurate, but possibly the least systematic system

TASK TYPE

Each task that a learner performs will place different demands on the learner

Tarone: one cannot simply say that the type of task will dictate what forms will be used, one needs to look at the function of those for within a discourse context

DISCOURSE

Numerous studies with following results:

Eisenstein & Starbuck (1989) – low accuracy on those topics in which there was emotional involvement (great attention to the meaning and less to the form)

Woken and Swales (1989), Zuengler (1989) – conversational dominance is not conditioned by linguistic knowledge alone, because NS did not uniformly dominate the conversation – dominance was better understood in terms of content knowledge – there is a complex interaction of many factors that shape the nature of conversational and linguistic behaviors

Selinker & Douglas (1985) – the notion of context as an internal construct

Two aspects of context: variation and discourse domain which is defined as: ‘’internally-created contexts, within which … IL structures are created differentially’’

Learners create discourse domains that relate to various parts of their lives and are important to them

IL forms are created within particular contexts or particular discourse domains (e.g. transfer, fossilization, avoidance)

Variation: free and systematic

When forms vary systematically , there are a number of determining factors: linguistic, sociolinguistic or situational

Ellis (1987) – proposed a role for free and systematic variation in L2 development

Free variation occurs as an initial stage when two or more forms are involved

Next stage is systematic variation - involves consistency of form/meaning relationships with overlapping forms and meanings

Final stage or categorical use stage is the correct form/meaning assignment

Matter of dispute: appropriate way of representing linguistic knowledge Different views Kormos (1999) – context is important in understanding what is and what

is not learned Study by Tarone and Liu (1995) – different contexts push the learner to

produce new forms to a greater extent than other contexts

Acquisition is a fundamentally psycholinguistic process and the question is: To what extent is that psycholinguistic process affected by social context?

Misleading term: acquisition

Acquisition is used in the true sense of acquisition (the process of obtaining new knowledge), as a product and as language use

Distinction proposed by Seliger (1983) - Second Language Studies and Second Language Acquisition

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

A communication strategy is a deliberate attempt to express meaning when faced with difficulty in the second language

Three components:

Problematicity – the learner in using communicative strategy must have first recognized that there is a problem of communication that must be overcome

Consciousness – the learners must be aware that they have encountered a problem and be aware of the fact that they are doing something to overcome that problem

Intentionality – learners have control over various options and make choices about which option will have a particular effect

There are difficulties with all of the components of communicative strategies

Bialystok: communication difficulties are solved with a small set of strategies

Learners do not confront each new problematic situation with conscious choices, but rather pull from a small set of regularly used strategies – closely tied with the idea of intentionality

Bialystok: communication strategies do not have a privileged status , they are part of the same process involved in nonstrategic language use

‘’They are adjustments to the ongoing processes responsible for language acquisition and use that allow processing to be maintained. They are the means by which a system can perform beyond its formal limitations and communication can proceed from a limited linguistic system’’ (1990a, p.147)

Conclusion:

By understanding what a learner transfers and does not transfer from the NL, we gain insight into the organizational structure that humans impose on their NL

Knowledge of that structure is gained through the window of L2 data

Using L2 data provides researches with the means of viewing humans in an active dynamic situation of language use