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113-502: The distinction between acquiring and learning was made by Stephen Krashen as part of his Monitor Theory . According to Krashen, the acquisition of a language is a natural process; whereas learning a language is a conscious one. In the former, the student needs to partake in natural communicative situations. In the latter, error correction is present, as is the study of grammatical rules isolated from natural language. Not all educators in second language agree to this distinction; however,

226-494: A basis for it, as seen in skill-based theories of second-language acquisition and the noticing hypothesis , to the idea that connections between the two are minimal and explicit learning has minimal relevance for true acquisition, as seen in the acquisition-learning hypothesis . Research on how exactly learners acquire a new language spans several different areas. Focus is directed toward providing proof of whether basic linguistic skills are innate (nature), acquired (nurture), or

339-430: A combination of the two attributes. Cognitive approaches to SLA research deal with the processes in the brain that underpin language acquisition, for example how paying attention to language affects the ability to learn it, or how language acquisition is related to short-term memory and long-term memory . Sociocultural approaches reject the notion that SLA is a purely psychological phenomenon and attempt to explain it in

452-408: A communication breakdown occurs and learners must negotiate for meaning. The modifications to speech arising from interactions like this help make input more comprehensible, provide feedback to the learner, and push learners to modify their speech. Stephen Krashen makes a distinction between language acquisition and language learning (the acquisition–learning distinction), claiming that acquisition

565-415: A desired speech response), morpheme studies, behaviourism, error analysis, stages and order of acquisition, structuralism (approach that looks at how the basic units of language relate to each other according to their common characteristics), 1st language acquisition studies, contrastive analysis (approach where languages are examined in terms of differences and similarities) and inter-language (which describes

678-442: A feature of a language they already know and a feature of the interlanguage they have developed. If this happens, the acquisition of more complicated language forms may be delayed in favor of simpler language forms that resemble those of the language the learner is familiar with. Learners may also decline to use some language forms at all if they are perceived as being too distant from their first language. Language transfer has been

791-461: A few of the researchers who have dedicated time to this subject. They have worked to determine what qualities make a "good language learner". Some of their common findings are that a good language learner uses positive learning strategies, is an active learner who is constantly searching for meaning. Also a good language learner demonstrates a willingness to practice and use the language in real communication. He also monitors himself and his learning, has

904-424: A first language and with few exceptions, they will be fully successful. For second language learners, success is not guaranteed. For one, learners may become fossilized or stuck as it were with ungrammatical items. ( Fossilization occurs when language errors become a permanent feature.) The difference between learners may be significant. As noted elsewhere, L2 learners rarely achieve complete native-like control of

1017-589: A greater value of explicit knowledge, awareness, and conscious noticing of features of the target language as a potential basis for implicit knowledge than what Krashen's theory assumes. Skill-based theories posit that explicit knowledge can be converted into implicit knowledge or skill by being automatized through practice. According to Ellis, explicit knowledge can aid the learning of implicit knowledge in three ways: 1. it can be converted directly into implicit knowledge if presented at an appropriate stage of development; 2. it can facilitate learners' noticing features in

1130-459: A language are acquired before or after certain others but the overall order of acquisition is less rigid. For example, if neither feature B nor feature D can be acquired until feature A has been acquired (feature B and D depend on A) and feature C depends on B, but D does not depend on B (or, therefore, on C), then acquisition orders (A, B, C, D) and (A, D, B, C) are possible, as they are both valid topological orderings . Learnability has emerged as

1243-407: A lot of languages like Finnish, Polish, Russian, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and many others (approx. 44 weeks, 1100 class hours). Determining a language's difficulty can depend on a few factors like grammar and pronunciation. For instance, Norwegian is one of the easiest languages to learn for English speakers because its vocabulary shares many cognates and has a sentence structure similar to English. Of

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1356-420: A matter of great debate among SLA researchers. One important difference between first-language acquisition and second-language acquisition is that the process of second-language acquisition is influenced by languages that the learner already knows. This influence is known as language transfer . Language transfer is a complex phenomenon resulting from the interaction between learners’ prior linguistic knowledge,

1469-401: A more balanced approach to teaching and helps students of a variety of learning styles succeed. The defining difference between a first language (L1) and a second language (L2) is the age the person learned the language. For example, linguist Eric Lenneberg used second language to mean a language consciously acquired or used by its speaker after puberty. In most cases, people never achieve

1582-427: A new language. Common affective factors that influence acquisition are anxiety, personality, social attitudes, and motivation. In the domain of personality, introversion and extroversion in particular can affect learning. Individuals may also lose a language through a process called second-language attrition . This is often caused by a lack of use or exposure to a language over time. The severity of attrition depends on

1695-435: A popular source in the linguistics field. See below Table 1. Collecting the number of second language speakers of every language is extremely difficult and even the best estimates contain guess work. The data below are from ethnologue.com as of June 2013. Stephen Krashen Stephen D. Krashen (born May 14, 1941) is an American linguist, educational researcher and activist, who is Emeritus Professor of Education at

1808-429: A second language differ from children learning their first language in at least three ways: children are still developing their brains whereas adults have mature minds, and adults have at least a first language that orients their thinking and speaking. Although some adult second-language learners reach very high levels of proficiency, pronunciation tends to be non-native. This lack of native pronunciation in adult learners

1921-531: A second language pronounced the /t/ sound in French differently from monolingual French speakers. This kind of change in pronunciation has been found even at the onset of second-language acquisition; for example, English speakers pronounced the English /p t k/ sounds, as well as English vowels, differently after they began to learn Korean. These effects of the second language on the first led Vivian Cook to propose

2034-460: A second language. The grammar structures or common grammatical patterns of one language may influence another. In a study, Singaporean elementary school students who were learning both English and Mandarin showed signs of language convergence. In this study, these students showed a preference for using grammatical patterns common in Mandarin when speaking English. Language convergence occurs because

2147-573: A social context. Some key social factors that influence SLA are the level of immersion, connection to the L2 community, and gender. Linguistic approaches consider language separately from other kinds of knowledge and attempt to use findings from the wider study of linguistics to explain SLA. There is also a considerable body of research about how SLA can be affected by individual factors such as age and learning strategies. A commonly discussed topic regarding age in SLA

2260-425: A strong drive to communicate, and has a good ear and good listening skills. Özgür and Griffiths have designed an experiment in 2013 about the relationship between different motivations and second language acquisition. They looked at four types of motivations—intrinsic (inner feelings of learner), extrinsic (reward from outside), integrative (attitude towards learning), and instrumental (practical needs). According to

2373-408: A theory explaining developmental sequences that crucially depend on learning principles, which are viewed as fundamental mechanisms of interlanguage language acquisition within learnability theory. Some examples of learning principles include the uniqueness principle and the subset principle. The uniqueness principle refers to learners' preference for a one-to-one mapping between form and meaning, while

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2486-629: A variety of factors including level of proficiency , age, social factors, and motivation at the time of acquisition. Finally, classroom research deals with the effect that language instruction has on acquisition. Second language refers to any language learned in addition to a person's first language ; although the concept is called second -language acquisition, it can also incorporate the learning of third, fourth, or subsequent languages . Second-language acquisition refers to what learners do; it does not refer to practices in language teaching , although teaching can affect acquisition. The term acquisition

2599-444: A very short time we will have nothing left to defend." Second-language acquisition Second-language acquisition ( SLA ), sometimes called second-language learning —otherwise referred to as L2 ( language 2 ) acquisition , is the process by which people learn a second language . Second-language acquisition is also the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process. This involves learning an additional language after

2712-430: Is a common measurement of linguistic productivity and language dominance in children. A crucial factor affecting language acquisition is the input that the learner receives. Learners become more advanced the longer they are immersed in the language they are learning and the more time they spend voluntarily reading. Stephen Krashen took a very strong position on the importance of input, asserting that comprehensible input

2825-440: Is a hypothesis that when a child is going through puberty, that is the time that accents start . Before a child goes through puberty, the chemical processes in the brain are more geared towards language and social communication. Whereas after puberty, the ability for learning a language without an accent has been rerouted to function in another area of the brain—most likely in the frontal lobe area promoting cognitive functions, or in

2938-510: Is a need for data showing how to support bilingual development in children with SLI. “Cumulative” refers to the combination of the effects of both internal deficits in language learning and external complications in input and experience caused by bilingualism, which could in turn overwhelm the learner with SLI. The theory predicts that bilingual children with SLI will be disadvantaged, falling behind both their monolingual peers with SLI and bilingual peers with TD. Paradis ' longitudinal study examined

3051-459: Is a subconscious process, whereas learning is a conscious one. According to this hypothesis, the acquisition process for L2 (Language 2) is the same as for L1 (Language 1) acquisition. Learning, on the other hand, refers to conscious learning and analysis of the language being learned. Krashen argues that consciously learned language rules play a limited role in language use, serving as a monitor that could check second language output for form—assuming

3164-437: Is advanced fluency, which is typically reached somewhere between five and ten years of learning the language. Learners at this stage can function at a level close to native speakers. Krashen has also developed several hypotheses discussing the nature of second language learners' thought processes and the development of self-awareness during second language acquisition. The most prominent of these hypotheses are Monitor Theory and

3277-402: Is all that is necessary for second-language acquisition. Krashen pointed to studies showing that the length of time a person stays in a foreign country is closely linked with their level of language acquisition. Further evidence for input comes from studies on reading: large amounts of free voluntary reading have a significant positive effect on learners' vocabulary, grammar, and writing. Input

3390-441: Is also closely related to psychology and education. To separate the academic discipline from the learning process itself, the terms second-language acquisition research , second-language studies , and second-language acquisition studies are also used. SLA research began as an interdisciplinary field; because of this, it is difficult to identify a precise starting date. However, two papers in particular are seen as instrumental to

3503-483: Is also difficult for L1 speakers of languages without articles, such as Korean and Russian. One study compared learner judgments of a syntactic feature, V2 , and a morphological property, subject-verb agreement , using an acceptability judgment task . Researchers found that while Norwegian speakers who are intermediate and advanced learners of English could successfully assess the grammaticality of V2, they had significantly more difficulty with subject-verb agreement, which

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3616-437: Is also not to be contrasted with the acquisition of a foreign language ; rather, the learning of second languages and the learning of foreign languages involve the same fundamental processes in different situations. The academic discipline of second-language acquisition is a sub-discipline of applied linguistics . It is broad-based and relatively new. As well as the various branches of linguistics , second-language acquisition

3729-405: Is also the mechanism by which people learn languages according to the universal grammar model. The type of input may also be important. One tenet of Krashen's theory is that input should not be grammatically sequenced. He claims that such sequencing, as found in language classrooms where lessons involve practicing a "structure of the day", is not necessary, and may even be harmful. While input

3842-450: Is an example of positive language transfer. Not all errors occur in the same ways; even two individuals with the same native language learning the same second language still have the potential to utilize different parts of their native language. Likewise, these same two individuals may develop near-native fluency in different forms of grammar. Another error that can occur is called language convergence . This can occur for children acquiring

3955-448: Is based on the idea that there is a hierarchy of stages of acquisition and instruction in SLA should be compatible with learners' current acquisitional status. Recognizing learners' developmental stages is important as it enables teachers to predict and classify learning errors. This hypothesis predicts that L2 acquisition can only be promoted when learners are ready to acquire given items in a natural context. One goal of learnability theory

4068-407: Is explained by the critical period hypothesis . When a learner's speech plateaus, it is known as fossilization . Some errors that second-language learners make in their speech originate in their first language. For example, Spanish speakers learning English may say "Is raining" rather than "It is raining", leaving out the subject of the sentence. This kind of influence of the first language on

4181-474: Is learned and many issues are still unresolved. There are many theories of second-language acquisition, but none are accepted as a complete explanation by all SLA researchers. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the field of SLA, this is not expected to happen in the foreseeable future. Although attempts have been made to provide a more unified account that tries to bridge first language acquisition and second language learning research. Stephen Krashen divides

4294-432: Is not a deficient version of the language being learned filled with random errors, nor is it a language purely based on errors introduced from the learner's first language. Rather, it is a language in its own right, with its own systematic rules. It is possible to view most aspects of language from an interlanguage perspective, including grammar , phonology , lexicon , and pragmatics . Three different processes influence

4407-637: Is of vital importance, Krashen's assertion that only input matters in second-language acquisition has been contradicted by more recent research. For example, students enrolled in French- language immersion programs in Canada still produced non-native-like grammar when they spoke, even though they had years of meaning-focused lessons and their listening skills were statistically native-level. Output appears to play an important role, and among other things, can help provide learners with feedback, make them concentrate on

4520-758: Is predicted by the bottleneck hypothesis. Cognitive and scientific reasons for the importance of this theory aside, the bottleneck hypothesis can also be of practical benefit as educators can maximize their time and focus on difficult problems in SLA classroom settings rather than placing attention on concepts that can be grasped with relative ease. This hypothesis claims that second-language acquisition may impose extra difficulties on children with specific language impairment (SLI), whose language delay extends into their school years due to deficits in verbal memory and processing mechanisms in comparison to children with typical development (TD). Existing research on individuals with SLI and bilingualism has been limited and thus there

4633-502: Is speech emergence. Learners' vocabularies increase to around 3000 words during this stage, and they can communicate using simple questions and phrases. They may often make grammatical errors. The fourth stage is intermediate fluency. At this stage, learners have a vocabulary of around 6000 words and can use more complicated sentence structures. They are also able to share their thoughts and opinions. Learners may make frequent errors with more complicated sentence structures. The final stage

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4746-473: Is the critical period hypothesis , which suggests that individuals lose the ability to fully learn a language after a particular age in childhood. Another topic of interest in SLA is the differences between adult and child learners. Learning strategies are commonly categorized as learning or communicative strategies and are developed to improve their respective acquisition skills. Affective factors are emotional factors that influence an individual's ability to learn

4859-447: Is the bottleneck of language acquisition, meaning that it is more difficult than other linguistic domains such as syntax, semantics, and phonology because it combines syntactic, semantic, and phonological features that affect the meaning of a sentence. For example, knowledge of the formation of the past tense in English requires both phonological patterns such as allomorphs at the end of the verb and irregular verb forms. Article acquisition

4972-434: Is to figure out which linguistic phenomena are susceptible to fossilization, wherein some L2 learners continue to make errors despite the presence of relevant input. Although second-language acquisition proceeds in discrete sequences, it does not progress from one step of a sequence to the next in an orderly fashion. There can be considerable variability in features of learners' interlanguage while progressing from one stage to

5085-453: Is usually very short, with a small lexicon of nouns and no verbs. The basic stage sees the introduction of verbs in their basic form not marked for finiteness (like participles ). In the third stage functional morphology starts to appear, with the flection of nouns and verbs. The time taken to reach a high level of proficiency can vary depending on the language learned. In the case of native English speakers, some estimates were provided by

5198-534: Is widely used in a variety of contexts in these countries, and signs are normally printed in both Arabic and French. A similar phenomenon exists in post-Soviet states such as Ukraine , Uzbekistan , Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan , where Russian can be considered a second language, and there are large Russophone communities . However, unlike in Hong Kong , English is considered a foreign language in China due to

5311-607: The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the U.S. Department of State —which compiled approximate learning expectations for several languages for their professional staff (native English speakers who generally already know other languages). Category I Languages include e.g. Italian and Swedish (24 weeks or 600 class hours) and French (30 weeks or 750 class hours). Category II Languages include German, Haitian Creole, Indonesian, Malay, and Swahili (approx. 36 weeks or 900 class hours). Category III Languages include

5424-571: The Nordic countries and the Netherlands is considered a second language by many of its speakers, because they learn it young and use it regularly; indeed in parts of South Asia it is the official language of the courts, government and business. The same can be said for French in Algeria , Morocco and Tunisia , although French is not an official language in any of them. In practice, French

5537-685: The University of Southern California . He moved from the linguistics department to the faculty of the School of Education in 1994. Stephen Krashen received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1972. Krashen has among papers (peer-reviewed and not) and books, more than 486 publications, contributing to the fields of second-language acquisition , bilingual education , and reading. He introduced various hypotheses related to second-language acquisition, including

5650-552: The acquisition-learning hypothesis , the input hypothesis , the monitor hypothesis , the affective filter , and the natural order hypothesis . Most recently, Krashen promotes the use of free voluntary reading during second-language acquisition, which he says "is the most powerful tool we have in language education , first and second." As education policy in Krashen's home state of California became increasingly hostile to bilingualism , he responded with research critical of

5763-543: The 63 languages analyzed, the five most difficult languages to reach proficiency in speaking and reading, requiring 88 weeks (2200 class hours, Category IV Languages ), are Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. The Foreign Service Institute and the National Virtual Translation Center both note that Japanese is typically more difficult to learn than other languages in this group. There are other rankings of language difficulty as

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5876-759: The Affective Filter hypothesis. From the early 1980s, a large research project into SLA was carried over at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics , headed by Wolfgang Klein and coordinated by Clive Perdue , which studied Second Language Acquisition by Adult Immigrants coming into Europe. The results, published in the early 1990s, proposed that second language acquisition proceeds along three stages: pre-basic variety (or nominal utterance organization ), basic variety (or infinite utterance organization ), and post-basic variety (or finite utterance organization ). The pre-basic stage

5989-658: The Andaman Association and creator of the encyclopedic andaman.org Web site, made a report in December 1997 about the number of secondary speakers of the world's leading languages. Weber used the Fischer Weltalmanach of 1986 as his primary and only source for the L2-speakers data, in preparing the data in the following table. These numbers are here compared with those referred to by Ethnologue,

6102-459: The L1 group. The inability of some subjects to achieve native-like proficiency must be seen in relation to the age of onset (AO). Later, Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson modified their age cut-offs to argue that after childhood, in general, it becomes more and more difficult to acquire native-like-ness, but that there is no cut-off point in particular. As we are learning more and more about the brain, there

6215-407: The L2 learner's language as a rule-governed, dynamic system). These theories have all influenced second-language teaching and pedagogy. There are many different methods of second-language teaching, many of which stem directly from a particular theory. Common methods are the grammar-translation method , the direct method , the audio-lingual method (clearly influenced by audio-lingual research and

6328-450: The acquisition of human languages and that of computer languages (e.g. Java) by children in the 5 to 11-year age window, though this has not been widely accepted amongst educators. Significant approaches in the field today are systemic functional linguistics, sociocultural theory, cognitive linguistics, Noam Chomsky 's universal grammar , skill acquisition theory and connectionism . There has been much debate about exactly how language

6441-401: The acquisition of tense morphology over time in children with SLI who are learning English as a second language. The study found that the acquisition profile for children with SLI is similar to those reported for monolinguals with SLI and TD, showing inconsistencies with CEH. This has provided evidence that SLA will not negatively harm children with SLI and could be beneficial. Adults who learn

6554-399: The age of 5 have more or less mastered their first language with the exception of vocabulary and a few grammatical structures, and the process is relatively very fast because language is a very complex skill. Moreover, if children start to learn a second language when they are seven years old or younger, they will also be fully fluent with their second language in a faster speed comparing to

6667-538: The behaviourist approach), the Silent Way , Suggestopedia , community language learning , the Total Physical Response method , and the communicative approach (highly influenced by Krashen's theories). Some of these approaches are more popular than others, and are viewed to be more effective. Most language teachers do not use one singular style, but will use a mix in their teaching. This provides

6780-435: The capacity to figure out the grammatical rules. Error correction does not seem to have a direct influence on learning a second language. Instruction may affect the rate of learning, but the stages remain the same. Adolescents and adults who know the rule are faster than those who do not. In the learning of a second language the correction of errors remains a controversial topic with many differing schools of thought. Throughout

6893-477: The children are not only acquiring the grammar of the new language but still developing the grammar of their native language, so the two grammars converge. Also, when people learn a second language, the way they speak their first language changes in subtle ways. These changes can be with any aspect of language, from pronunciation and syntax to the gestures the learner makes and the language features they tend to notice. For example, French speakers who spoke English as

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7006-430: The classroom than the cognitive processing of the students. He contested that the affective side of students and their self-esteem were equally important to the teaching process. In the 1980s, the strict grammar and corrective approach of the 1950s became obsolete. Researchers asserted that correction was often unnecessary and that instead of furthering students' learning it was hindering them. The main concern at this time

7119-781: The corrective processes. According to Noam Chomsky , children will bridge the gap between input and output by their innate grammar because the input (utterances they hear) is so poor but all children end up having complete knowledge of grammar. Chomsky calls it the Poverty of Stimulus . And second language learners can do this by applying the rules they learn to the sentence-construction, for example. So learners in both their native and second language have knowledge that goes beyond what they have received, so that people can make correct utterances (phrases, sentences, questions, etc) that they have never learned or heard before. Bilingualism has been an advantage to today's world and being bilingual gives

7232-410: The country, by 2006 it was estimated that Krashen had submitted well over 1,000 letters to editors. Krashen has been an advocate for a more activist role by researchers in combating what he considers the public's misconceptions about bilingual education. Addressing the question of how to explain public opposition to bilingual education, Krashen queried, "Is it due to a stubborn disinformation campaign on

7345-417: The creation of interlanguages: The concept of interlanguage has become very widespread in SLA research and is often a basic assumption made by researchers. In the 1970s, several studies investigated the order in which learners acquired different grammatical structures. These studies showed that there was little change in this order among learners with different first languages. Furthermore, it showed that

7458-407: The development of the modern study of SLA: Pit Corder's 1967 essay The Significance of Learners' Errors and Larry Selinker's 1972 article Interlanguage . The field saw a great deal of development in the following decades. Since the 1980s, SLA has been studied from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and theoretical perspectives. In the early 2000s, some research suggested an equivalence between

7571-626: The dog" and ungrammatical English-like reversed possessive structures e.g. " chien chapeau " (dog hat) significantly more than their monolingual peers. Though periphrastic constructions are expected as they are grammatical in both English and French, reversed possessives in French are ungrammatical and thus unexpected. In a study exploring cross-linguistic influence in word order by comparing Dutch-English bilingual and English monolingual children, Unsworth found that bilingual children were more likely to accept incorrect V2 word orders in English than monolinguals with both auxiliary and main verbs. Dominance

7684-446: The errors that learners made when in the process of learning a second language. For example, Serbo-Croat speakers learning English may say "What does Pat doing now?", although this is not a valid sentence in either language. Additionally, Yip found that ergative verbs in English are regularly mis-passivized by L2 learners of English whose first language is Mandarin. For instance, even advanced learners may form utterances such as "what

7797-407: The field of second language learning are those between language input (i.e. listening, reading or seeing) and language output (i.e. speaking, writing or signing ) and between explicit knowledge of a language (conscious awareness of rules) and their implicit knowledge (automatic use of the rules in practice). Many debates center on the relative importance of these factors in language acquisition. On

7910-463: The first language is established, typically through formal instruction or immersion. A central theme in SLA research is that of interlanguage : the idea that the language that learners use is not simply the result of differences between the languages that they already know and the language that they are learning, but a complete language system in its own right, with its own systematic rules. This interlanguage gradually develops as learners are exposed to

8023-495: The fluency, it is better to do foreign language education at an early age, but being exposed to a foreign language since an early age causes a "weak identification". Such issue leads to a "double sense of national belonging," that makes one not sure of where they belong to because, according to Brian A. Jacob, multicultural education affects students' "relations, attitudes, and behaviors". And as children learn more and more foreign languages, children start to adapt, and get absorbed into

8136-517: The foreign culture that they "undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made". Due to such factors, learning foreign languages at an early age may incur one's perspective of his or her native country. Acquiring a second language can be a lifelong learning process for many. Despite persistent efforts, most learners of a second language will never become fully native-like in it, although with practice considerable fluency can be achieved. However, children by around

8249-448: The form of what they are saying, and help them to automatize their language knowledge. These processes have been codified in the theory of comprehensible output . Researchers have also pointed to interaction in the second language as being important for acquisition. According to Long's interaction hypothesis the conditions for acquisition are especially good when interacting in the second language; specifically, conditions are good when

8362-412: The idea of multi-competence , which sees the different languages a person speaks not as separate systems, but as related systems in their mind. Learner language is the written or spoken language produced by a learner. It is also the main type of data used in second-language acquisition research. Much research in second-language acquisition is concerned with the internal representation of a language in

8475-414: The initial stage of foreign language education. Gauthier and Genesee have done research which mainly focuses on the second language acquisition of internationally adopted children and results show that early experiences of one language of children can affect their ability to acquire a second language, and usually children learn their second language slower and weaker even during the critical period. As for

8588-433: The input; 3. it can help them notice differences between the input and their output and take steps to amend their output. A somewhat similar distinction is the one between procedural knowledge and declarative knowledge . Much modern research in second-language acquisition has taken a cognitive approach. Cognitive research is concerned with the mental processes involved in language acquisition, and how they can explain

8701-421: The issue of the relative significance of input and output, competing views are the comprehensible input hypothesis , the comprehensible output hypothesis , and the interaction hypothesis . On the issue of the relative significance of explicit and implicit knowledge and the connection between the two, views range from the notion that explicit learning is crucial for implicit learning and to some degree can serve as

8814-479: The lack of opportunities for use, such as historical links, media, conversation between people, and common vocabulary. Likewise, French would be considered a foreign language in Romania and Moldova , even though both French and Romanian are Romance languages , Romania's historical links to France, and all being members of la Francophonie . George H. J. Weber, a Swiss businessman and independent scholar, founder of

8927-581: The last century much advancement has been made in research on the correction of students' errors. In the 1950s and 60s, the viewpoint of the day was that all errors must be corrected at all costs. Little thought went to students' feelings or self-esteem in regards to this constant correction. In the 1970s, Dulay and Burt's studies showed that learners acquire grammar forms and structures in a pre-determined, inalterable order, and that teaching or correcting styles would not change that. In 1977, Terrell"s studies showing that there were more factors to be considered in

9040-472: The latter is being learned for use in an area where that language is originally from another country and not spoken in the native country of the speakers. And in other words, foreign language is used from the perspective of countries; the second language is used from the perspective of individuals. For example, English in countries such as India , Pakistan , Sri Lanka , Bangladesh , the Philippines ,

9153-512: The learner has time, sufficient knowledge, and inclination (the monitor hypothesis). Other researchers, such as Rodd Ellis , refer to the relevant phenomena as the acquisition of ex plicit knowledge about a language and of implicit knowledge of a language, respectively, and see them as more connected to each other than Krashen does. Researchers working within frameworks such as skill-based theories of second-language acquisition or Richard Schmidt 's noticing hypothesis have found evidence for

9266-664: The learning of the majority language by minority language children and adults." SLA has been influenced by both linguistic and psychological theories. One of the dominant linguistic theories hypothesizes that a device or module of sorts in the brain contains innate knowledge. Many psychological theories, on the other hand, hypothesize that cognitive mechanisms , responsible for much of human learning, process language. Other dominant theories and points of research include 2nd language acquisition studies (which examine if L1 findings can be transferred to L2 learning), verbal behaviour (the view that constructed linguistic stimuli can create

9379-409: The linguistic context, such as whether the subject of a sentence is a pronoun or a noun; they can vary depending on social contexts, such as using formal expressions with superiors and informal expressions with friends; and also, they can vary depending on the psycholinguistic context, or in other words, on whether learners have the chance to plan what they are going to say. The causes of variability are

9492-423: The meaning of words clearly. The emotional distinction between L1 and L2 indicates that the "effective valence" of words is processed less immediate in L2 because of the delayed vocabulary/lexical access to these two languages. Success in language learning can be measured in two ways: likelihood and quality. First language learners will be successful in both measurements. It is inevitable that all people will learn

9605-467: The mind of the learner, and how those representations change over time. It is not yet possible to inspect these representations directly with brain scans or similar techniques, so SLA researchers are forced to make inferences about these rules from learners' speech or writing. Originally, attempts to describe learner language were based on comparing different languages and on analyzing learners' errors . However, these approaches were unable to predict all

9718-441: The nature of learners' language knowledge. This area of research is based in the more general area of cognitive science and uses many concepts and models used in more general cognitive theories of learning. As such, cognitive theories view second-language acquisition as a special case of more general learning mechanisms in the brain. This puts them in direct contrast with linguistic theories, which posit that language acquisition uses

9831-410: The neural system of hormone allocated for reproduction and sexual organ growth. As far as the relationship between age and eventual attainment in SLA is concerned, Krashen, Long, and Scarcella, say that people who encounter foreign language in early age, begin natural exposure to second languages and obtain better proficiency than those who learn the second language as an adult. However, when it comes to

9944-533: The new policies, public speaking engagements, and with letters written to newspaper editors. During the campaign to enact an anti-bilingual education law in California in 1998, known as Proposition 227 , Krashen campaigned aggressively in public forums, media talk shows, and conducted numerous interviews with journalists writing on the subject. After other anti-bilingual education campaigns and attempts to enact regressive language education policies surfaced around

10057-417: The next. For example, in one study by Rod Ellis , a learner used both "No look my card" and "Don't look my card" while playing a game of bingo. A small fraction of variation in interlanguage is free variation , when the learner uses two forms interchangeably. However, most variation is systemic variation , a variation that depends on the context of utterances the learner makes. Forms can vary depending on

10170-480: The one by The British Foreign Office Diplomatic Service Language Centre which lists the difficult languages in Class I (Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin); the easier languages are in Class V (e.g. Afrikaans, Bislama, Catalan, French, Spanish, Swedish). The bottleneck hypothesis strives to identify components of grammar that are easier or more difficult to acquire than others. It argues that functional morphology

10283-407: The opportunity to understand and communicate with people with different cultural backgrounds. However, a study done by Optiz and Degner in 2012 shows that sequential bilinguals (i.e. learn their L2 after L1) often relate themselves to the emotions more when they perceive these emotions by their first language/native language/L1, but feel less emotional when by their second language even though they know

10396-433: The order in which all learners learned second-language grammar, there were still some differences between individuals and learners with different first languages. It is also difficult to tell when exactly a grammatical structure has been learned, as learners may use structures correctly in some situations but not in others. Thus it is more accurate to speak of sequences of acquisition, in which specific grammatical features in

10509-407: The order was the same for adults and children and that it did not even change if the learner had language lessons. This supported the idea that there were factors other than language transfer involved in learning second languages and was a strong confirmation of the concept of interlanguage. However, the studies did not find that the orders were the same. Although there were remarkable similarities in

10622-400: The part of newspapers and other news media to deliberately destroy bilingual education? Or is it due to the failure of the profession to present its side of the story to reporters? There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence in support of the latter." Continuing, Krashen wrote, "Without a serious, dedicated and organized campaign to explain and defend bilingual education at the national level, in

10735-529: The process of language attrition, in which some L2 skills begin to match or even overtake those of L1. Research suggests a correlation between amount of language exposure and cross-linguistic influence; language dominance is considered to have an impact on the direction of transfer. One study found that transfer is asymmetrical and predicted by dominance, as Cantonese dominant children showed clear syntactic transfer in many areas of grammar from Cantonese to English but not vice versa. MLU , mean length of utterance,

10848-556: The process of second-language acquisition into five stages: preproduction, early production, speech emergence, intermediate fluency, and advanced fluency. The first stage, preproduction, is also known as the silent period . Learners at this stage have a receptive vocabulary of up to 500 words, but they do not yet speak their second language. Not all learners go through a silent period. Some learners start speaking straight away, although their output may consist of imitation rather than creative language use. Others may be required to speak from

10961-442: The relationship between age and rate SLA , "Adults proceed through early stages of syntactic and morphological development faster than children (where time and exposure are held constant)". Also, "older children acquire faster than younger children do (again, in early stages of morphological and syntactic development where time and exposure are held constant)". In other words, adults and older children are fast learners when it comes to

11074-497: The same level of fluency and comprehension in their second languages as in their first language. These views are closely associated with the critical period hypothesis . In acquiring an L2, Hyltenstam found that around the age of six or seven seemed to be a cut-off point for bilinguals to achieve native-like proficiency. After that age, L2 learners could get near-native-like-ness but their language would, while consisting of few actual errors, have enough errors to set them apart from

11187-478: The second is known as negative language transfer . French speakers learning English, however, do not usually make the same mistake of leaving out "it" in "It is raining." This is because pronominal and impersonal sentence subjects can be omitted (or in this case, are not used in the first place) in Spanish but not in French. The French speaker knowing to use a pronominal sentence subject when speaking English

11300-559: The second language. For L2 pronunciation, there are two principles that have been put forth by Levis. The first is nativeness which means the speaker's ability to approximately reach the speaking pattern of the second language of speakers; and the second, understanding, refers to the speaker's ability to make themselves understood. Being successful in learning a second language is often found to be challenging for some individuals. Research has been done to look into why some students are more successful than others. Stern, Rubin and Reiss are just

11413-406: The speed of learning by adults who start to learn a second language later in their life. In the first language, children do not respond to systematic correction. Furthermore, children who have limited input still acquire the first language, which is a significant difference between input and output. Children are exposed to a language environment of errors and lack of correction but they end up having

11526-514: The start as part of a language course. For learners that do go through a silent period, it may last around three to six months. The second of Krashen's stages of acquisition is early production, during which learners can speak in short phrases of one or two words. They can also memorize chunks of language, although they may make mistakes when using them. Learners typically have both an active and receptive vocabulary of around 1000 words. This stage normally lasts for around six months. The third stage

11639-424: The study of how a second language is learned/acquired is referred to as second-language acquisition (SLA). Research in SLA "...focuses on the developing knowledge and use of a language by children and adults who already know at least one other language... [and] a knowledge of second-language acquisition may help educational policy makers set more realistic goals for programmes for both foreign language courses and

11752-523: The subject of several studies, and many aspects of it remain unexplained. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain language transfer, but there is no single widely accepted explanation of why it occurs. Some linguists prefer to use cross-linguistic influence to describe this phenomenon. Studies on bilingual children find bidirectional cross-linguistic influence; for example, Nicoladis (2012) reported that bilingual children aged three to four produce French-like periphrastic constructions e.g. "the hat of

11865-513: The subset principle posits that learners are conservative in that they begin with the narrowest hypothesis space that is compatible with available data. Both of these principles have been used to explain children's ability to evaluate grammaticality despite the lack of explicit negative evidence. They have also been used to explain errors in SLA, as the creation of supersets could signal over-generalization, causing acceptance or production of ungrammatical sentences. Pienemann's teachability hypothesis

11978-418: The target language input they encounter, and their cognitive processes. Language transfer is not always from the learner’s native language; it can also be from a second language or a third. Neither is it limited to any particular domain of language; language transfer can occur in grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, discourse, and reading. Language transfer often occurs when learners sense a similarity between

12091-424: The targeted language. The order in which learners acquire features of their new language stays remarkably constant, even for learners with different native languages and regardless of whether they have had language instruction. However, languages that learners already know can significantly influence the process of learning a new one. This influence is known as language transfer . Two important distinctions made in

12204-417: The teacher repeating a student's incorrect utterance with the correct version, are not always the most useful because students do not notice the correction. His studies in 2002 showed that students learn better when teachers help students recognize and correct their own errors. Mackey, Gas and McDonough had similar findings in 2000 and attributed the success of this method to the student's active participation in

12317-404: The test results, the intrinsic part has been the main motivation for these student who learn English as their second language. However, students report themselves being strongly instrumentally motivated. In conclusion, learning a second language and being successful depend on every individual. In pedagogy and sociolinguistics , a distinction is made between second language and foreign language,

12430-507: Was a predictor of this phenomenon; Dutch-dominant children showed less sensitivity to word order than English-dominant ones, though this effect was small and there was individual variation. The term language dominance can be defined in terms of differences in frequency of use and differences in proficiency in bilinguals. How basic or advanced a speaker's L2 level will be is determined by a complex range of environmental, individual and other factors. Language dominance may change over time through

12543-441: Was happened?" even though this construction has no obvious source in either L1 or L2. This could be because L2 speakers interpret ergatives as transitive , as these are the only types of verbs that allow passivization in English. To explain this kind of systematic error, the idea of the interlanguage was developed. An interlanguage is an emerging language system in the mind of a second-language learner. A learner's interlanguage

12656-570: Was originally used to emphasize the non-conscious nature of the learning process, but in recent years learning and acquisition have become largely synonymous. SLA can incorporate heritage language learning , but it does not usually incorporate bilingualism . Most SLA researchers see bilingualism as being the result of learning a language, not the process itself, and see the term as referring to native-like fluency. Writers in fields such as education and psychology, however, often use bilingualism loosely to refer to all forms of multilingualism . SLA

12769-468: Was relieving student stress and creating a warm environment for them. Stephen Krashen was a big proponent in this hands-off approach to error correction. The 1990s brought back the familiar idea that explicit grammar instruction and error correction was indeed useful for the SLA process. At this time, more research started to be undertaken to determine exactly which kinds of corrections are the most useful for students. In 1998, Lyster concluded that "recasts",

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