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107-462: Preparation for the DLAB includes a number of study guides and practice tests. These resources give one the appropriate means by which to prepare for the test and gauge a possible outcome. However, a study guide for the DLAB is not like traditional studying - one will not learn content that will be on the DLAB, but rather the style of the DLAB. Someone who fails the test or gets a low score can always retake

214-510: A noun -noun- verb (=NNV) order but which are interpreted differently in both languages: German example: Das Mädchen, das die Frau küsst, ist blond If translated word for word with word order maintained, this German relative clause is equivalent to English example: The girl that (or whom ) the woman is kissing is blonde. The German and the English examples differ in that in German

321-671: A service member who receives a score of 115 (good enough for Category IV) may be placed in Russian (Category III). Previously, the maximum score on the DLAB was 176, but as of 2016 has been lowered to 164. As of 2010, Category I languages had 26 weeks of study, Cat II had 35 weeks, Cat III had 48 weeks, and Cat IV had 64 weeks. By 2022, Cat I and II had 36 weeks of courses, Cat III had 48 weeks, and Cat IV had 64 weeks. Difficulty of learning languages Second-language acquisition ( SLA ), sometimes called second-language learning —otherwise referred to as L2 ( language 2 ) acquisition ,

428-610: A 110 or better. The Army National Guard is able to waive a score of 90 into a Cat. IV language. The DLAB is typically administered to new and prospective recruits at the United States Military Entrance Processing Command sometime after the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is taken but before a final job category (NEC, MOS, AFSC) is determined. Individuals may usually take

535-408: 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

642-442: 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

749-589: 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

856-459: 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

963-745: A level of proficiency in L1 literacy skills for the skills to transfer over into L2. In other words, there must be some prior knowledge of literacy skills in L1 to assist with acquiring literacy skills in  L2. The acquisition of L2 literacy skills can be facilitated and gained with greater ease by having more time, access, and experience  with L1 literary skills. Over time, through formal exposure and practice with literacy skills, L2 learners have been able to catch up with their monolingual peers. However, literacy skills acquired in L2 can also be used to assist with literacy skills in L1 because cross-language transfer

1070-407: 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

1177-420: 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,

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1284-420: A new language spans several different areas. Focus is directed toward providing proof of whether basic linguistic skills are innate (nature), acquired (nurture), or 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

1391-472: A preposition the definite article is used: "Voy a la playa el viernes." Novice Spanish students who are native English-speakers may produce a transfer error and use a preposition when it is not necessary because of their reliance on English. According to Whitley, it is natural for students to make such errors based on how the English words are used. Another typical example of negative transfer concerns German students trying to learn English, despite being part of

1498-445: A process in which a child experiences negative effects (more mistakes and slower language learning) on their language acquisition due to interference from their other language. Language transfer is often referred to as cross-language transfer , the ability to use skills acquired in one language and to use those skills to facilitate learning of a new language. Cross-language transfer has been researched and analyzed by many scholars over

1605-429: 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

1712-476: 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

1819-460: 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

1926-537: A similar orthography system (English uses letters, and Korean uses symbols ). Cross-language transfer can also occur with deaf bilinguals who use sign language and read written words. People may think that both American Sign Language (ASL) and English are the same language, but they are not. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders  “ASL is a language completely separate and distinct from English. It contains all

2033-408: 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

2140-437: A unique process different from other types of learning. Language transfer Language transfer is the application of linguistic features from one language to another by a bilingual or multilingual speaker. Language transfer may occur across both languages in the acquisition of a simultaneous bilingual , from a mature speaker's first language (L1) to a second language (L2) they are acquiring, or from an L2 back to

2247-498: Is 105, but the recommended grade is at least 122 or above. Military personnel interested in retraining into a linguist field typically also must pass the DLAB. In a few select cases, the DLAB requirement may be waived if proficiency in a foreign language is already demonstrated via the DLPT . While these scores are required to enter a language program of that category, often placement is based upon need rather than score . For example,

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2354-562: Is Spanish or French may have a certain influence on native English speakers' use of language when the native speakers are in the minority. Locations where this phenomenon occurs frequently include Québec , Canada , and predominantly Spanish-speaking regions in the US. For details on the latter, see the map of the Hispanophone world and the list of U.S. communities with Hispanic majority populations . The process of translation can also lead to

2461-430: 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

2568-510: 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

2675-459: 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

2782-437: 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

2889-402: 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

2996-441: 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

3103-483: 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

3210-437: 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

3317-405: 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

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3424-450: 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

3531-497: 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

3638-676: Is bidirectional. Most studies have indicated that literacy cross-language transfer can occur regardless of the L1 and the L2 languages, but Chung et al. (2012 ) state that cross-language transfer is less likely to occur when the languages do not share similar orthography systems. For example, using literacy skills acquired in English may be accessed and used with more ease in Spanish because English and Spanish follow similar orthography (they use letters). Whereas, using literacy skills acquired in English to facilitate ease of learning Korean would be more difficult because those languages do not follow

3745-500: Is dominant. When the relevant unit or structure of both languages is the same, linguistic interference can result in correct language production called positive transfer : here, the "correct" meaning is in line with most native speakers' notions of acceptability. An example is the use of cognates . However, language interference is most often discussed as a source of errors known as negative transfer , which can occur when speakers and writers transfer items and structures that are not

3852-407: 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

3959-474: 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

4066-432: 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

4173-637: 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

4280-758: 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

4387-422: 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 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

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4494-605: Is some evidence that any transfer from the first language can result in a kind of technical, or analytical, advantage over native (monolingual) speakers of a language. For example, L2 speakers of English whose first language is Korean have been found to be more accurate with perception of unreleased stops in English than native English speakers who are functionally monolingual because of the different status of unreleased stops in Korean from English. That "native-language transfer benefit" appears to depend on an alignment of properties in

4601-502: 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

4708-447: 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

4815-422: 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 a new language. Common affective factors that influence acquisition are anxiety, personality, social attitudes, and motivation. In

4922-412: 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 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

5029-434: 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

5136-453: 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

5243-607: 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

5350-420: The subject role can be taken by das Mädchen (the girl) or die Frau (the woman) while in the English example only the second noun phrase (the woman) can be the subject. In short, because German singular feminine and neuter articles exhibit the same inflected form for the accusative as for the nominative case, the German example is syntactically ambiguous in that either the girl or the woman may be doing

5457-543: 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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5564-759: 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

5671-703: The DLAB if they score high enough on the ASVAB for linguist training and are interested in doing so. The DLAB is also administered to ROTC cadets while they still attend college. The DLAB was also used for the Australian Defence Force from 1998 to 2013. The DLAB is a required test for officers looking to either join the Foreign Area Officer program or the Olmsted Scholar Program . The required grade for these programs

5778-498: The DLAB, but only after a wait of 6 months. For most service members, this is too long and will cause them to miss the deadline for submitting their scores. Adequate preparation is thus a near-necessity. The languages are broken into tiers based on their difficulty level for a native English speaker as determined by the Defense Language Institute . The category into which a language is placed also determines

5885-517: The L1. Language transfer (also known as L1 interference , linguistic interference , and crosslinguistic influence ) is most commonly discussed in the context of English language learning and teaching , but it can occur in any situation when someone does not have a native-level command of a language, as when translating into a second language. Language transfer is also a common topic in bilingual child language acquisition as it occurs frequently in bilingual children especially when one language

5992-450: 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

6099-401: 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

6206-477: 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

6313-417: 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

6420-407: 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

6527-443: The disadvantage of making the learner more subject to the influence of " false friends ", words that seem similar between languages but differ significantly in meaning . This influence is especially common among learners who misjudge the relation between languages or mainly rely on visual learning . In addition to positive transfer potentially resulting in correct language production and negative transfer resulting in errors, there

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6634-626: 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

6741-454: 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 a variety of factors including level of proficiency , age, social factors, and motivation at the time of acquisition. Finally, classroom research deals with

6848-471: 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

6955-446: 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

7062-443: The first and the second languages that favors the linguistic biases of the first language, rather than simply the perceived similarities between two languages. Language transfer may be conscious or unconscious . Consciously, learners or unskilled translators may sometimes guess when producing speech or text in a second language because they have not learned or have forgotten its proper usage. Unconsciously, they may not realize that

7169-550: The first noun phrase is the subject (subject-object-verb order). This is because they have transferred their parsing preference from their first language English to their second language German. With sustained or intense contact between native and non-native speakers, the results of language transfer in the non-native speakers can extend to and affect the speech production of the native-speaking community. For example, in North America, speakers of English whose first language

7276-448: 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

7383-736: The fundamental features of language, with its own rules for pronunciation, word formation, and word order" . Because sign languages are considered to be their own language, most deaf people are considered to be bilingual because they speak in one language (sign language) and read in other (English, Spanish, Arabic, etc.). It should also be noted that not all sign languages are the same. The sign languages are American Sign Language (ASL), Mexican Sign Language (LSM), British Sign Language (BSL), Spanish Sign Language (LSE), and many more .   Transfer can also occur in polyglot individuals when comprehending verbal utterances or written language. For instance, German and English both have relative clauses with

7490-412: 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

7597-433: 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

7704-502: The kissing. In the English example, both word-order rules and the test of substituting a relative pronoun with different nominative and accusative case markings ( e.g. , whom / who *) reveal that only the woman can be doing the kissing. The ambiguity of the German NNV relative clause structure becomes obvious in cases where the assignment of subject and object role is disambiguated. This can be because of case marking if one of

7811-400: The known norms of monolingual acquisition. These theories come from comparisons of bilingual children's acquisition to that of their monolingual peers of similar backgrounds. Acceleration is a process similar to that of bootstrapping , where a child acquiring language uses knowledge and skills from one language to aid in, and speed up their acquisition of the other language. Deceleration is

7918-512: 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

8025-476: The length of its basic course as taught at DLI. To qualify to pursue training in a language, one needs a minimum score of 95. The Marines will waive it to 90 for Cat I and Cat II languages, and the Navy will waive it to 85 for Cat I languages, 90 for Cat II languages, and 95 for Cat III languages. The Air Force does not currently offer a waiver and requires all applicants to qualify for Cat IV languages, requiring

8132-409: 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

8239-467: 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

8346-419: The more similar the two languages are and the more the learner is aware of the relation between them, the more positive transfer will occur. For example, an Anglophone learner of German may correctly guess an item of German vocabulary from its English counterpart, but word order , phonetics , connotations , collocation , and other language features are more likely to differ. That is why such an approach has

8453-441: 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

8560-417: 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

8667-549: The nouns is grammatically male as in Der Mann, den die Frau küsst... (The man that the woman is kissing...) vs. Der Mann, der die Frau küsst (The man that is kissing the woman...) because in German the male definite article marks the accusative case . The syntactic ambiguity of the German example also becomes obvious in the case of semantic disambiguation . For instance in Das Eis, das die Frau isst... (The ice cream that

8774-480: 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

8881-433: 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

8988-407: 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

9095-408: The other hand, can be illustrated in the principle developed by Roger Andersen called "transfer-to-somewhere," which holds that "a language structure will be susceptible to transfer only if it is compatible with natural acquisitional principles or is perceived to have similar counterpart (a somewhere to transfer to) in the recipient language." This is interpreted as a heuristic designed to make sense of

9202-529: 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,

9309-413: The process of learning a new one. This influence is known as language transfer . Two important distinctions made in 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

9416-556: 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

9523-559: 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 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

9630-412: The rules in practice). Many debates center on the relative importance of these factors in language acquisition. On 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

9737-610: The same Germanic language family . Since the German noun "Information" can also be used in the plural – "Informationen" – German students will almost invariably use "informations" in English, too, which would break the rules of uncountable nouns . From a more general standpoint, Brown mentions "all new learning involves transfer based on previous learning". That could also explain why initial learning of L1 will impact L2 acquisition. The results of positive transfer go largely unnoticed and so are less often discussed. Nonetheless, such results can have an observable effect. Generally speaking,

9844-484: The same in both languages. Within the theory of contrastive analysis , the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities, the greater the differences between the two languages, the more negative transfer can be expected. For example, in English , a preposition is used before a day of the week: "I'm going to the beach on Friday." In Spanish , instead of

9951-423: 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

10058-498: The speaker conceptualizes experience , with the principle describing the process as an unconscious assumption that is subject to between-language variation. Kellerman explained that it is difficult for learners to acquire the construal patterns of a new language because "learners may not look for the perspectives peculiar to the [target/L2] language; instead they may seek the linguistic tools which will permit them to maintain their L1 perspective." The conscious transfer of language, on

10165-514: 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

10272-551: The structures and internal rules of the languages in question are different. Such users could also be aware of both the structures and internal rules, yet be insufficiently skilled to put them into practice, and consequently often fall back on their first language. The unconscious aspect to language transfer can be demonstrated in the case of the so-called "transfer-to-nowhere" principle put forward by Eric Kellerman, which addressed language based on its conceptual organization instead of its syntactic features. Here, language determines how

10379-523: 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

10486-513: 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

10593-565: The target language input by assuming a form of awareness on the part of the learner to map L1 onto the L2. An analogy that can describe the differences between the Kellerman's and Anderson's principles is that the former is concerned with the conceptualization that fuels the drive towards discovering the means of linguistic expression whereas Andersen's focused on the acquisition of those means. The theories of acceleration and deceleration are bilingual child language acquisition theories based on

10700-418: 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

10807-453: The two, views range from the notion that explicit learning is crucial for implicit learning and to some degree can serve as 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

10914-411: 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 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

11021-548: The woman is eating...) and Die Frau, die das Eis isst... (The woman that is eating the ice cream...) only die Frau (the woman) is a plausible subject. Because in English relative clauses with a noun-noun-verb structure (as in the example above) the first noun can only be the object , native speakers of English who speak German as a second language are likelier to interpret ambiguous German NNV relative clauses as object relative clauses (= object-subject-verb order) than German native speakers who prefer an interpretation in which

11128-596: The years, but the focus on cross-language transfer in literacy research expanded in the 1990s. It is a topic that has been gaining lots of interest from scholars due to the increasing number of bilingual and multilingual people, especially students, around the world. In the USA alone, English Language Learners (ELL) account for over 10% of the students enrolled in public schools. The Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis claims that language transfer can occur from L1 ( First language ) to L2 ( Second language ), but there first must be

11235-507: 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

11342-441: 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

11449-570: 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

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