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How Languages are Learned Third edition

Patsy M Lightbown and Nina Spada

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY rushbrookrathbone.co.uk

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Preface to the third edition Introduction 1 Language learning in early childhood The first three years: Milestones and developmental sequences Grammatical morphemes Negation Questions The pre-school years The school years Explaining first language acquisition The behaviourist perspective: Say what I say The innatist perspective: It's all in your mind lnreractionist/developmental perspectives: Learning from inside and out Language disorders and delays Childhood bilingualism Summary

2 Explaining second language learning Contexts for language learning Learner characteristics Learning conditions Behaviourism Second language applications: Mimicry and memorization The innatist perspective: Universal Grammar Second language applications: Krashen's 'monitor model' Current psychological theories: The cognitivist/developmental perspecuve Information processing Connectionism The competition model Second language applications: Interacting, noticing, and processing The sociocultural perspective Second language applications: Learning by talking Theory into practice

x1 xw xv 1 1 3 4 5 7 8 10 10 15

19 24 25 27

29 29 30 32 34 34 35 36 38 39

41 42 43 47 47 49

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Contents

3 Individual differences in second language learning Who is a 'good language learner'? Research on learner characteristics Inrelligence Aptitude Learning styles Personality Motivation and auirudes Identity and ethnic group affiliation Learner beliefs Age of acquisition and the Critical Period Hypothesis Summary

53 54 54 57 57 59 60 63 65 66 67 74

4 Learner language Studying the language of second language learners Contrastive analysis, error analysis, and inrerlanguage Developmenral sequences Grammatical morphemes Negation Questions Possessive determiners Relative clauses Reference to past Movemenr through developmenral sequences More about first language influence Vocabulary Pragmatics Phonology

77 77 78 82 83 85 86 88 90 91 92 93 96

5 Observing learning and teaching in the second language classroom Natural and instructional settings Observation schemes Classroom comparisons: Teacher-srudenr inreractions Classroom comparisons: Studenr-srudenr interactions Corrective feedback in the classroom Questions in the classroom Ethnography Summary 6 Second language learning in the classroom Six proposals for classroom teaching 1 Get it right from the beginning 2 Justlisten and read



Contents 3 Let's talk

4 Twoforone S Teach what is teachable 6 Get it right in the end The implications of classroom research for teaching Summary

ISO ISS 16S

7 Popular ideas about language learning revisited

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Glossary Bibliography Index

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INTRODUCTION

When new foreign language reaching methods and textbooks are inrroduced, rhey are ofren said ro be based on rhe latest research in psychology, linguistics, or pedagogy. Teachers are tald rhat rhey will be more effective than rhose rhat have gone before. In many cases, the new approaches are prescribed for immediate implementation in a school or region. Sometimes, the new materials come with opportunities for extensive training in their implementation. Sometimes, rhey are simply ordered and distributed tO reachers who have to do their best tO use them effectively. Teachers have seen many different approaches over the past fifry years. One approach requires students to learn rules of grammar and lists of vocabulary to use in translating literary texts. Another emphasizes the value of having students imitate and practise a set of correct sentences and memorize entire dialogues. Yet another stresses the importance of encouraging 'natural' communication between students as they engage co-operatively in tasks or projects while using the new language. In some classrooms, the second language is used as the medium to reach subject matter, with the assumption that the language itself will be learned incidentally as students focus on the academic content. How are teachers tO evaluate the potential effectiveness of new methods? To be sure, the most important influence on teachers' decisions is their own experience with previous successes or disappointments, as well as their understanding of the needs and abilities of their students. We believe that ideas drawn from research and theory in second language acquisition are also valuable in helping teachers evaluate claims made by proponents of various language reaching methods. The goal of this book is to introduce reachersboth novice and experienced-to some of the language acquisition research char may help them not only to evaluate existing textbooks and materials but also to adapt them in ways that are more consistent with our understanding of how languages are learned. The book begins with a chapter on language learning in early childhood. This background is important because both second language research and second language teaching have been influenced by changes in our understanding of how children acquire their first language. In fact, one significant research finding concerns the similarities between first and second language acquisition.

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Introduction In Chapter 2, several theories that have been advanced to explain second language learning are presented and discussed. In Chapter 3, we turn our attention to how individual learner characteristics may affect success. In Chapter 4, we look at second language learners' developing knowledge and their ability to use that knowledge. Chapter 5 begins with a comparison of natural and instructional environments for second language learning. We then examine some different ways in which classroom researchers have observed and described teaching and learning practices in second language classrooms. In Chapter 6, we examine some of the proposals that have been made for second language teaching. Examples of research related to each of the proposals are presented, leading to a discussion of the evidence available for assessing their effectiveness. The chapter ends with a discussion of what research findings suggest about the most effective ways to teach and learn a second language in the classroom. A Glossary provides a quick reference for a number of terms that may be new or have specific technical meanings in the context of language acquisition research. Glossary words are shown in small capital letters where they first appear in the text. For readers who would like to find out more, a list of suggestions for further reading is included at the end of each chapter. The Bibliography provides full reference information for the suggested readings and all the works that are referred to in the text. We have tried to present the information in a way that does not assume that readers are already familiar with research methods or theoretical issues in second language learning. Examples and case studies are included throughout the book to illustrate the research ideas. Many of the examples are taken from second language classrooms. We have included a number of opportunities for readers to practise some of the techniques of observation and analysis used in the research that we review in this book.

Before we begin It is probably true, as some have claimed, that most of us teach as we were taught or in a way that matches our ideas and preferences about how we learn. Take a moment to reflect on your views about how languages are learned and what you think this means about how they should be taught. The statements on the following pages summarize some popular views about language learning and teaching. Think about whether you agree or disagree with each opinion. Keep these statements and your reactions to them in mind as you read about current research and theory in second language learning. We will return to these opinions in Chapter 7.

Introduction

Popular opinions about language learning and teaching Indicate the extent to which you agree with each statement by marking an X at the appropriate point on the line between 'strongly agree' and 'strongly disagree'. Languages are learned mainly through imitation. strongly agree

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Parents usually correct young children when they make grammatical errors. strongly agree

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strongly disagree

Once learners know roughly I words and the basic structure of a language, they can easily participate in conversations with native speakers. strongly agree

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strongly disagree

It is essential for learners to be able to pronounce all the individual sounds in the second language. strongly agree

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strongly disagree

The best way to learn new vocabulary is through reading. strongly agree

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strongly disagree

Most of the mistakes that second language learners make are due to interference from their first language. strongly agree

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strongly disagree

The earlier a second language is introduced in school programmes, the greater the likelihood of success in learning. strongly agree

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strongly disagree

The most important predictor of success in second language acquisition is motivation. strongly agree

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strongly disagree

Highly intelligent people are good language learners. strongly agree

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strongly disagree

strongly disagree

Teachers should present grammatical rules one at a time, and learners should practise examples of each one before going on to another. strongly agree

strongly disagree

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Introduction II

Teachers should teach simple language structures before complex ones. strongly agree

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Learners' errors should be corrected as soon as they are made in order to prevent the formation of bad habits. strongly agree

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strongly disagree

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strongly disagree

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strongly disagree

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strongly disagree

Teachers should respond to students' errors by correctly rephrasing what they have said rather than by explicitly pointing out the error. strongly agree

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Students learn what they are taught. strongly agree

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When learners are allowed to interact freely (for example, in group or pair activities), they copy each other's mistakes. strongly agree

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Teachers should use materials that expose students to only those language structures they have already been taught. strongly agree

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strongly disagree

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strongly disagree

Students can learn both language and academic content (for example, science and history) simultaneously in classes where the subject matter is taught in their second language. strongly agree

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Photocoplable ©Oxford University Press

strongly disagree

1

LANGUAGE LEARNING IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION is one of rhe most impressive and fascinating aspects of human development. We listen with pleasure ro rhe sounds made by a three-month-old baby. We laugh and 'answer' the conversational 'ba-baba' babbling of older babies, and we share in rhe pride and joy of parents whose one-year-old has uttered rhe first 'bye-bye'. Indeed, learning a language is an amazing fear-one rhar has attracted rhe attention oflinguisrs and psychologists for generations. How do children accomplish rhis? What enables a child nor only ro learn words, bur ro pur them rogerher in meaningful sentences? What pushes children ro go on developing complex grammatical language even though their early simple communication is successful for most purposes? Does child language develop similarly around the world? How do bilingual children acquire more than one language?

In this chapter, we will look briefly at some of the characteristics of rhe language of young children. We will then consider several theories that have been offered as explanations for how language is learned. There is an immense body of research on child language. Although much research has been done in middle-class North American and European families, rhere is a rich body of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural research as well. Researchers have travelled all over rhe world ro observe, record, and study children's early language development. Our purpose in rhis chapter is ro touch on a few main points in this research, primarily as a preparation for the discussion of SECOND LANGUAGE acquisition, which is the focus of this book.

The first three years: Milestones and developmental sequences One remarkable thing about FIRST LAr-oGUAGE acqutsmon is rhe high degree of similaricy_in the; early language of children all over the world. Researcfiers have described DEVELOPMENTAL SEQUENCES for many aspects of first language acquisition. The earliest vocalizations are simply the involuntary crying rhar babies do when rhey are hungry or uncomfortable.

2

Language learning in early childhood Soon, however, we hear the cooing and gurgling sounds of contented babies, lying in their beds looking at fascinating shapes and movement around them. Even though they have little control over the sounds they make in these early weeks of life, infants are able to hear very subtle differences between the sounds of human languages. In cleverly designed experiments, Peter Eimas and his colleagues () demonstrated that tiny babies can hear the difference between 'pa' and 'ba', for example. And yet, it may be many months before their own vocalizations (babbling) begin to reflect the characteristics of the language or languages they hear. By the end of their first year, most babies understand quite a few frequently repeated words. They wave when someone says 'bye-bye'; they clap when someone says 'pat-a-cake'; they eagerly hurry to the kitchen when 'juice and cookies' are mentioned. At twelve months, most babies will have begun to produce a word or two that everyone recognizes. By the age of two, most children reliably produce at least fifty different words and some produce many more. About this time, they begin to combine words into simple sentences such as 'Mommy juice' and 'baby fall down'. These sentences are sometimes called 'telegraphic' because they leave out such thmgs as arttcies, preposmons, and auxiliary verbs. We recognize them as sentences because, ev~ though FUNCTION WORD_Land GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES missin , the word order reflects the word order Ian hearing an ecause the com me wor have a meaning relationshi m es t em more an JUSt a 1st o wor J· us, or an ng IS -speaking child, 'kiss baby' does not mean the same thing as 'baby kiss'. Remarkably, we also see evidence, even in these early sentences, that children are doing more than imperfectly imitating what they have heard. Their two- and threeword sentences show signs that they can creatively combine words. For example, 'more outside' may mean 'I want to go outside again.' Depending on the situation, 'Daddy uh-oh' might mean 'Daddy fell down' or 'Daddy dropped something' or even 'Daddy, please do that funny thing where you pretend to drop me off your lap.'

As children progress through the discovery of language in their first three years, there are predictable patterns in the emergence and development of many features of the language they are learning. For some language features, these patterns have been described in terms of developmental sequences or 'stages'. To some extent, these stages in language acquisition are related to children's cognitive development. For example, children do not use temporal adverbs such as 'tomorrow' or 'last week' until they develop some understanding of time. In other cases, the developmental sequences seem to reflect the gradual mastery of the linguistic elements for expressing ideas that have been present in children's cognitive understanding for a long time. For example, children can distinguish between singular and plural long before they reliably add plural endings to nouns. Mastering irregular plurals takes

Language learning in early childhood even more rime and may not be completely under control until the school years.

Grammatical morphemes In the s, several researchers focused on how children acquire grammatical morphemes in English. One of the best-known studies was carried out by Roger Brown and his colleagues and students. In a LONGITUDINAL study of the language development of three children (called Adam, Eve, and Sarah) they found that fourteen grammatical morphemes were acquired in a remarkably similar sequence. That research is reported in Brown's book. The list below (adapted from that book) shows some of the morphemes they studied. present progressive -ing(Mommy running) plural-s (Two books) irregular past forms (Baby went) possessive (Daddy hat) copula (Annie is happy) articles the and a regular past -ed (She walked) third person singular simple present -s (She runs) auxiliary be (He is coming)

s

s

Brown and his colleagues found that a child who had mastered the grammatical morphemes ar the bottom of the list was sure to have mastered those at the top, but the reverse was not true. Thus, there was evidence for a 'developmental sequence' or order of acquisition. However, the children did nor acquire rhe morphemes ar the same age or rate. Eve had mastered nearly all the morphemes before she was two-and-a-half years old, while Sarah and Adam were still working on them when they were three-and-a-half or four. Brown's longitudinal work was confirmed in a CROSS-SECTIONAL srudy of twenty-one children. Jill and Peter de Villiers ( ) found that children who correctly used rhe morphemes that Adam, Eve, and Sarah had acquired late were also able to use the ones that Adam, Eve, and Sarah had acquired earlier. The children mastered the morphemes at different ages, just as Adam, Eve, and Sarah had done, but the order of their acquisition was very similar. They were similar to each other and similar to Adam, Eve, and Sarah. Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain why these grammatical morphemes are acquired in the observed order. Researchers have studied the frequency with which the morphemes occur in parents' speech, the cognitive complexity of the meanings represented by each morpheme, and the difficulty of perceiving or pronouncing them. In the end, there has been no simple satisfactory explanation for the sequence, and most researchers agree

3

Language learning in early childhood that the order is determined by an interaction among a number of different factors. To supplement the evidence we have from simply observing children, some carefully designed procedures have been developed to further explore children's knowledge of grammatical morphemes. One of the first and best known is the so-called 'wug test' developed by Jean Berko Gleason in the s. In this 'test', children are shown drawings of imaginary creatures with novel names or people performing mysterious actions. For example, they are told, 'Here is a wug. Now there are two of them. There are two_'. or 'Here is a man who knows how to bod. Yesterday he did the same thing. Yesterday, he _ _ '. By completing these sentences with 'wugs' and 'bodded', children demonstrate that they know rules for the formation of plural and simple past in English. By generalizing these patterns to words rhey have never heard before, they show that their language is nor just a list of memorized word pairs such as 'book/books' and 'nod/nodded'. The acquisition of other language features also shows how children's language develops systematically, and how they go beyond what they have heard to create new forms and structures.

Negation Children learn rhe functions of negation very early. That is, they learn to comment on the disappearance of objects, to refuse a suggestion, or reject an assenion, even at the single word stage. However, as Lois Bloom's ( ) longitudinal studies show, even though children understand these functions and express rhem with single words and gestures, ir rakes some rime before rhey can express them in sentences, using the appropriate words and word order. The following stages in the development of negation have been observed in the acquisition of English. Similar stages have been observed in other languages as well (Wode ).

Stagel Negation is usually expressed by rhe word 'no', either all alone or as the first word in rhe utterance. No. No cookie. No comb hair.

Stage2 Utterances grow longer and the sentence subject may be included. The negative word appears just before the verb. Sentences expressing rejection or prohibition often use 'don't'. Daddy no comb hair. Don't touch that!

Language learning in early childhood Stage3 The negative element is inserted into a more complex sentence. Children may add forms of the negative orher than 'no', including words like 'can't' and 'don't'. These sentences appear to follow the correct English pattern of attaching the negative to rhe auxiliary or modal verb. However, children do not yet vary these forms for different persons or tenses: I can't do it. He don't want it.

Stage4 Children begin to attach the negative element to the correct form of auxiliary verbs such as 'do' and 'be': You didn't have supper. She doesn't want it. Even rhough their language system is by now quite complex, rhey may still have difficulty wirh some orher features related to negatives. I don't have no more candies.

Questions The challenge of learning complex language systems is also illustrated in the developmental stages rhrough which children learn to ask questions. There is a remarkable consistency in the way children learn to form questions in English. For one rhing, there is a predictable order in which the 'wh- words' emerge (Bloom ). 'What' is generally rhe first wh- question word to be used. It is often learned as part of a CHUNK ('Whassat?') and it is some time before the child learns rhat rhere are variations of the form, such as 'What is that?' and 'What are these?' 'Where' and 'who' emerge very soon. Identifying and locating people and objects are within the child's understanding of the world. Furrhermore, adults tend to ask children just these types of questions in rhe early days of language learning, for example, 'Where's Mommy?', or 'Who's that?' 'Why' emerges around the end of the second year and becomes a favourite for the next year or two. Children seem to ask an endless number of questions beginning with 'why', having discovered how effectively this little word gets adults to engage in conversation, for example, 'Why that lady has blue hair?' Finally, when the child has a better understanding of manner and time, 'how' and 'when' emerge. In contrast to 'what', 'where', and 'who' questions, children sometimes ask the more cognitively difficult 'why', 'when', and 'how' questions wirhout always understanding the answers they get, as rhe following conversation with a four-year-old clearly shows:

6

Language learning in early childhood Child When can we go outside? Parent In about five minutes. Child !! Can we go now? The ability to use these question words is at least partly tied to children's cognitive development. It is also predicted in part by the questions children are asked and the linguistic complexity of questions with different wh- words. Thus it does not seem surprising that there is consistency in the sequence of their acquisition. Perhaps more remarkable is the consistency in the acquisition of word order in questions. This development is not based on learning new meanings, but rather on learning different linguistic forms to express meanings that are already understood.

Stagel Children's earliest questions are single words or simple two- or three-word sentences with rising intonation: Cookie? Mummy book? At the same time, they may produce some correct questions-correct because they have been learned as chunks: Where's Daddy? What's that?

Stage2 As they begin to ask more new questions, children use the word order of the declarative sentence, with rising intonation. You like this? I have some? They continue to produce the correct chunk-learned forms such as 'What's that?' alongside their own created questions.

Stage3 Gradually, children notice that the structure of questions is different and begin to produce questions such as: Can I go? Are you happy? Although some questions at this stage match the adult pattern, they may be right for the wrong reason. To describe this, we need to see the pattern from the child's perspective rather than from the perspective of the adult grammar. We call this stage 'fronting' because the child's rule seems to be that questions are formed by putting something-a verb form or question word-at the 'front' of a sentence, leaving the rest of the sentence in its statement form. Is the teddy is tired? Do I can have a cookie? Why you don't have one? Why you catched it?

Language learning in early childhood Stage4 At stage 4, some questions are formed by subject-auxiliary inversion. The questions resemble those of stage 3, but there is more variety in the auxiliaries that appear before the subject. Are you going to play with me? At this stage, children can even add 'do' in questions in which there would be no auxiliary in the declarative version of the sentence. Do dogs like ice cream? Even at this stage, however, children seem able to use either inversion or a w~ word, but not both. Therefore, we may find inversion in 'yes/no' questions but not in w~ questions, unless they are FORMULAIC units such as 'What's that?'

Stage5 At stage 5, both w~ and 'yes/no' questions are formed correctly. Are these your boots? Why did you do that? Does Daddy have a box? Negative questions may still be a bit too difficult. Why the teddy bear can't go outside? And even though performance on most questions is correct, there is still one more hurdle. When w~ words appear in subordinate clauses or embedded questions, children overgeneralize the inverted form that would be correct for simple questions and produce sentences such as: Ask him why can't he go out.

Stage6 At this stage, children are able to correctly form all question types, including negative and complex embedded questions. Passage through developmental sequences does not always follow a steady uninterrupted path. Children appear to learn new things and then fall back on old patterns when there is added stress in a new si tuarion or when they are using other new elements in their language. But the overall path takes them toward mastery of the language that is spoken around them.

The pre-school years By the age of four, most children can ask questions, give commands, report real events, and create stories about imaginary ones-using correct word order and grammatical markers most of the time. In fact, it is generally accepted that by age four, children have mastered the basic structures of the

Language learning in early childhood language or languages spoken to them in these early years. Three- and fouryear-aids continue to learn vocabulary at the rate of several words a day. They begin to acquire less frequent and more complex linguistic structures such as passives and relative clauses. Much of children's language acquisition effort in the late pre-school years is spent in developing their ability to use language in a widening social environment. They use language in a greater variety of situations. They interact more often with unfamiliar adults. They begin to talk sensibly on the telephone to invisible grandparents (younger children do not understand that their telephone partner cannot see what they see). They acquire the aggressive or cajoling language that is needed to defend their toys in the playground. They show that they have learned the difference between how adults talk to babies and how they talk to each other, and they use this knowledge in elaborate pretend play in which they practise using these different 'voices'. In this way, they explore and begin to understand how and why language varies. In the pre-school years, they also develop METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS, the ability to treat language as an object separate from the meaning it conveys. Three-year-old children can tell you that it's 'silly' to say 'drink the chair', because it doesn't make sense. However, although they would never say 'cake the eat', they are less sure that there's anything wrong with it. They may show that they know it's a bit odd, but they will focus mainly on the fact that they can understand what it means. Five year-olds, on the other hand, know that 'drink the chair' is wrong in a different way from 'cake the eat'. They can tell you that one is 'silly' but the other is 'the wrong way around'.

The school years Although pre-school children acquire complex knowledge and skills for language and language use, the school setting will require new ways of using language and bring new opportunities for language development. Children develop the ability to understand language and to use it to express themselves in the pre-school years. In the school years, these abilities expand and grow. Children also develop more sophisticated metalinguiscic awareness. Learning to read gives a major boost to this aspect of language development. Seeing words represented by letters and other symbols on a page leads children to a new understanding that language has form as well as meaning. Reading reinforces the understanding that a 'word' is separate from the thing it represents. Unlike three-year-olds, children who can read understand that 'the' is a word, just as 'house' is. They understand that

Language learning in early childhood 'caterpillar' is a longer word than 'train', even though the object it represents is substantially shorter! Metalinguistic awareness also includes the discovery of such things as ambiguity. Knowing that words and sentences can have muhiple meaning gives children access to word jokes, trick questions, and riddles, which they love to share with their friends and family. One of the most impressive language developments in the early school years is the astonishing growth of vocabulary. Many words are acquired in early childhood, when the repetition of ordinary events and experiences provides frequent exposure to a limited number of words. Children enter school with the ability to understand and produce hundreds or even a few thousand words. Many more are learned at school. In both the spoken and written language at school, some words (for example, 'homework', 'ruler', and 'workbook') appear frequently in situations where their meaning is either immediately or gradually revealed. Words like 'population' or 'latitude' occur less frequently, but they are made important by their significance in academic subject matter. Vocabulary grows at a rate between several hundred and more than a thousand words a year, depending mainly on how much and how widely children read (Nagy, Herman, and Anderson ). The kind of vocabulary growth required for school success is likely to come from both reading for assignments and reading for pleasure, whether narrative or non-fiction. Dee Gardner () suggests that reading a variety of text types is an essential part of vocabulary growth. His research has shown how the range of vocabulary in narrative texts is different from that in non-fiction. There are words in non-fiction texts that are unlikely to occur in stories or novels. In addition, non-fiction tends to include more opportunities to see a word in its different forms (for example, 'mummy', 'mummies', 'mummified'). The importance of reading for vocabulary growth is seen when observant parents report a child using a new word but mispronouncing it in a way that reveals it has been encountered only in written form. Another important development in the school years is the acquisition of different language REGISTERS. Children learn how written language differs from spoken language, how the language used to speak to the principal is different from the language of the playground, how the language of a science report is different from the language of a narrative. As Terry Piper ( ) and others have documented, some children will have even more to learn. They come to school speaking an ethnic or regional VARIETY of the school language that is quite different from the one used by the reacher. They will have to learn that anorher variety, often referred to as the STANDARD VARIETY is required for successful academic work. Other children arrive at school speaking a different language altogether. For these children, the work of language learning in the early school years presents additional opportunities and challenges. We will return to this topic when we discuss BILINGUALISM in early childhood.

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Language learning in early childhood

Explaining first language acquisition These descriptions oflanguage development from infancy through the early school years show rhar we have considerable knowledge of what children learn in their early language development. More controversial, however, are questions about how this remarkable development rakes place. Over the past fifty years, three main theoretical positions have been advanced to explain it: behaviourisr, innarisr, and interactional/developmental perspectives.

The behaviourist perspective: Say what I say was a theory of learning rhar was very influenrial in the s and s, especially in the United Stares. With regard to language learning, the best-known proponent of this psychological theory was B. F. Skinner. Traditional behaviourists hypothesized thar when children imitated the language produced by those around rhem, rheir attempts ro reproduce whar rhey heard received 'positive reinforcement'. This could rake the form of praise or just successful communication. Thus encouraged by their environment, children would continue to imitate and practise these sounds and patterns until they formed 'habits' of correct language use. According to this view, the quality and quantity of the language the child hears, as well as the consistency of rhe reinforcement offered by others in the environment, would shape the child's language behaviour. This theory gives great importance to the environmenr as the source of everything the child needs to learn. BEHAVIOURISM

Analysing children's speech: Definitions and examples The behaviourists viewed imitation and practice as the primary processes in language development. To clarify what is meant by these two terms, consider the following definitions and examples. Imitation: word-for-word repetition of all or part of someone else's utterance. Mother Shall we play with the dolls? Lucy Play with dolls. Practice: repetitive manipulation of form. Cindy

He eat carrots. The other one eat carrots. They both ear carrots.

Now examine the transcripts from Peter, Cindy, and Kathryn. They were all about twenty-four months old when they were recorded as they played with a visiting adult. Using the definitions above, notice how Peter imitates the adult in the following dialogue.

Language learning in early childhood Peter (24 months) is playing with a dump truck while rwo adults, Patsy and Lois, look on. Peter Lois Peter (later) Patsy Peter

Get more. You're gonna put more wheels in the dump truck? Dump truck. Wheels. Dump truck.

What happened to it (the truck)? (looking under chair for it) Lose it. Dump truck! Dump truck! Fall! Fall! Lois Yes, the dump truck fell down. Peter Dump truck fell down. Dump truck.

(Unpublished data from P. M. Lightbown) If we analysed a larger sample of Peter's speech, we would see that per cent of his sentences were imitations of what someone else had just said. We would also see that his imitations were not random. That is, he did nor simply imitate per cent of everything he heard. Derailed analyses of large samples of Peter's speech over about a year showed that he imitated words and sentence structures rhar were just beginning to appear in his spontaneous speech. Once these new elements became solidly grounded in his language system, he stopped imitating them and went on to imitate others. Unlike a parrot who imitates the familiar and continues to repeat the same things again and again, children appear to imitate selectively. The choice of what to imitate seems to be based on something new that they have just begun to understand and use, nor simply on what is 'available' in the environment. For example, consider how Cindy imitates and practises language in the following conversations. Cindy (24 months, 16 days) is looking at a picture of a carrot in a book and trying to get Patsy's attention. Cindy Patsy Cindy Patsy Cindy

Kawo? kawo? kawo? kawo? kawo? What are the rabbits eating? They eating kando? No, that's a carrot. Carrot. (pointing to each carrot on the page) The other carrot. The other carrot. The other carrot.

(A few minutes later, Cindy brings Patsy a stuffed roy rabbit.) Patsy What does this rabbit like to eat? Cindy (incomprehensible) eat the carrots. (Cindy gets another stuffed rabbit.) Cindy He (incomprehensible) eat carrots. The other one ear carrots. They both eat carrots.

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Language learning in early childhood (One week later, Cindy opens the book to the same page.) Cindy Patsy

Here's the carrors. (pointing) Is that a carrot? Yes.

(Unpublished data from P. M. Lightbown) Cindy appears to be working hard on her language acquisition. She practises new words and structures in a way that sounds like a student in some foreign language classes! Perhaps most interesting is that she remembers the 'language lesson' a week later and turns straight to the page in the book she had not seen since Patsy's last visit. What is most striking is that, like Peter, her imitation and practice appear to be focused on what she is currently 'working , on. The samples of speech from Peter and Cindy seem to lend some support to the behaviourist explanation oflanguage acquisition. Even so, as we saw, the choice of what to imitate and practise seemed determined by something inside the child rather than by the environment. Not all children imitate and 'practise' as much as Peter and Cindy did. The amount of imitation in the speech of other children, whose development proceeded at a rate comparable to that of Cindy and Peter, has been calculated at less than 10 per cent. Consider the examples of imitation and practice in the following conversation between Kathryn and Lois. Kathryn (24 months) Lois Kathryn Lois Kathryn

Did you see the toys I brought? I bring toys? Choo choo? Lois brought the choo choo train? Yes, Lois brought the choo choo train. (reaching for bag) I want play with choo choo train. I want play with choo choo train. (taking out slide) Want play. What's this? Lois Oh you know what that is. Kathryn Put down on floor. This. I do this.

(Kathryn purs the slide on the floor.) Kathryn (taking out two cars of train) Do this. I want do this. (trying to put train together) I do this. I do this. Lois OK. You can do it. You can do it. Look I'll show you how. (Lois puts it together.) Kathryn (searching in box) I get more. Get a more. No more choo choo train. Get truck. (taking out truck) Kathryn truck. Where? Where a more choo choo train?

Language learning in early childhood Inside. It's in the box. Lois Kathryn A chao chao? (taking out part of train) This is a chao chao train. (from Bloom and Lahey ) Like Cindy, Kathryn sometimes repeats herself or produces a series of related 'practice' sentences, but she rarely imitates the other speaker. Instead, she asks and answers questions and elaborates on the other speaker's questions or statements. Thus, children vary in the amount of imitation they do. In addition, many of the things they say show that they are using language creatively, not just repeating what they have heard. This is evident in the following examples.

Pattenzs in language The first example shows a child in the process of learning patterns in language, in this case the rules of word formation, and overgeneralizing them to new contexts. Randall (36 months) had a sore on his hand. Mother Maybe we need to take you to the doctor. Randall Why? So he can doc my little bump? Randall forms the verb 'doc' from the noun 'doctor', by analogy with farmers who farm, swimmers who swim, and actors who act.

U11fomiliar formulas Even older children have to work out some puzzles, for example, when familiar language is used in unfamiliar ways, as in the example below. When

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Language learning in early childhood David (5 years, l month) was at his older sister's binhday party, toasts were proposed with grape juice in stemmed glasses: Father I'd like to propose a toast. Several minutes later, David raised his glass: David I'd like to propose a piece ofbread. Only when laughter sent David slinking from the table did the group realize that he wasn't intentionally making a play on words! He was concentrating so hard on performing the fascinating new gesture and the formulaic expression 'I'd like to propose .. .' that he failed to realize that the word he thought he knew-'toasr'-was not the same toast and could not be replaced with its apparent near-synonym-'a piece ofbread'.

Question formation Randall (2 years, 9 months) asked the following questions in various situations over the course of a day. Are dogs can wiggle their tails? Are those are my boots? Are this is hot? Randall had concluded that the trick of asking questions was to put 'are' at the beginning of the sentence. His questions are good examples of Stage 3 in question development.

Order ofevents Randall (3 years, 5 months) was looking for a towel. You took all the towels away because I can't dry my hands. He meant 'I can't dry my hands because you took all the towels away', but he made a mistake about which clause comes first. Children at this stage of language development tend to mention events in the order of their occurrence. In this case, the towels disappeared before Randall attempted to dry his hands, so that's what he said first. He did not yet understand how a word like 'before' or 'because' changes the order of cause and effect. These examples of children's speech provide us with a window on the process of language learning. Imitation and practice alone cannot explain some of the forms created by the children. They are not merely repetitions of sentences that they have heard from adults. Rather, children appear to pick out patterns and generalize them to new contexts. They create new forms or new uses of words. Their new sentences are usually comprehensible and often correct. Behaviourism seems to offer a reasonable way of understanding how children learn some of the regular and routine aspects oflanguage, especially at the earliest stages. However, children who do little overt imitation acquire

Language learning in early childhood language as fully and rapidly as those who imitate a lot. And although behaviourism goes some way to explaining the sorts of OVERGENERALIZATION that children make, classical behaviourism is not a satisfactory explanation for the acquisition of the more complex grammar that children acquire. These limitations led researchers to look for different explanations for language acquisition.

The innatistperspective: It's all in your mind Noam Chomsky is one of the most influential figures in linguistics, and his ideas about how language is acquired and how it is stored in the mind sparked a revolution in many aspects of linguistics and psychology. including the study oflanguage acquisition. A central part of his thinking is that all human languages are fundamental! innate and that the same universal pnnc1p es un er 1e all of them. In his review of B. F. Skinner's t>ook ~~ihallteiJavlor, Chomsk}' challenged the behaviourist explanation for language acquisition. He argued that children are biologically programmed tor language and that language develo sin the child in · ust the same way that o er 10 og1 nctions eve op. For example, every child wil earn to wa:Ik as long as adequate nounshment and reasonable freedom of movement are provided. The child does not have to be taught. Most children learn to walk at about the same age, and walking is essentially the same in all normal human beings. For Choms , Ian uage acquisition is ve similar. The environment makes on a basic contn unon-in this case, the availability of people who speak to the chi . e c 1 , or rather, the child's biological endowment, will do the rest. Chomsky argued that the behaviourist theory failed to account for 'the logical problem of language acquisition'-the fact that children come to know more about the structure of their language than they could reasonably be expected to learn on the basis of the samples of language they hear. The language children are exposed to includes false starts, incomplete sentences, and slips of the tongue, and yet they learn to distinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. He concluded that children's minds are not blank slates to be filled by imitating language they hear in the envlrOI'l!lle~ Instead, he hypothesized, c~ldren are born with a specific innate ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules of a language )ystem on the basis of the sam les of a natural language they are exposed to. T is mnate en owmenr was seen as a sort o temp ate, containin e pnnciples t at are umvers to a uman anguages. This UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR (uG) would prevent the ch1ld From pursumg all sorts of wrong hypotheses about l'iow language systems m1ght work. If children are preequipped with UG, then what they have to learn is the ways in which the language they are acquiring makes use of these principles.

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Language learning in early childhood Consider the following sentences, taken from a book by Lydia White (). These English sentences contain the reflexive pronoun 'himself'. Both the pronoun and the noun it refers to {the antecedent) are printed in italics. An asterisk at the beginning of a sentence indicates that the sentence is ungrammatical. a john saw himself. b * Himse/fsaw john. In (a) and (b), it looks as if the reflexive pronoun must follow the noun it refers to. Bur (c) disproves this: c Looking after himselfbores john. If we consider sentences such as: d John said that Fred liked himself. e *John said that Fred liked himself. f John told Bill to wash himself. g *John rold Bill ro wash himself. we might conclude that the noun closest to the reflexive pronoun is the antecedent. However, (h) shows that this rule won't work either: h john promised Bill to wash himself. And it's even more complicated than that. Usually the reflexive must be in the same clause as the antecedent as in (a) and (d), bur not always, as in {h). Furthermore, the reflexive can be in the subject position in (i) but not in (j). i john believes himselfto be intelligent (non-finite clause). j *John believes that himself is intelligent (finite clause). In some cases, more than one antecedent is possible, as in (k) where the reflexive could refer to either John or Bill: k John showed Bill a picture of himself. When we look at this kind of complexity, it seems it would be very hard to learn. And yet, most school age children would be able to correctly interpret the grammatical sentences and recognize the ungrammaticaliry of the others. Researchers who study language acquisition from the innatist perspective argue that such complex grammar could never be learned purely on the basis of imitating and practising sentences available in the input. They hypothesize that since all children acquire the language of their environment, they must have some innate mechanism or knowledge that allows them to discover such complex syntax in spite of limitations of the input. They hypothesize furthermore that the innate mechanism is used exclusively for language acquisition.

Language learning in early childhood The innatist perspective emphasizes the fact that all children successfully acquire their native language (or languages if they live in a multilingual community). Children who are profoundly deaf will learn sign language if they are exposed to it in infancy, and their progress in the acquisition of that language system is similar to hearing children's acquisition of spoken language. Even children with very limited cognitive ability develop quite complex language systems if they are brought up in environments in which people interact with them. Children master the basic syntax and morphology of the language spoken to them in a variety of conditions-some which would be expected to enhance language development (for example, caring, attentive parents who focus on the child's language), and some which might be expected to inhibit it (for example, abusive or rejecting parents). Children achieve different levels of vocabulary, creativity, social grace, and so on, bur vircually all achieve mastery of the struccure of the language or languages spoken to them. This is seen as support for the hypothesis that language is somehow separate from other aspects of cognitive development and may depend on a specific module of the brain.

The Critical Period Hypothesis Chomsky's ideas are often linked to the CRITICAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS ICPH)-the h othesis that animals, includin humans, are enetically programmed to acquire certain kinds of knowledge an s · at s ecific times · e. eyo ose c~~eri~s', it is eit er i cu t or imP-ossible to acqwre t ose abiliri~ With regard to language, the CPH suggests char ch1ldren who are not given access to language in infancy and early childhood 1 because of deafness or extreme isolation) will never acquire language if these deprivations go on for too long. It is difficult to find evidence for or against the CPH, since nearly all children are exposed to language at an early age. However, history has documented a few 'nacural experiments' where children have been deprived of contact with language. Two of the most famous cases are those ofVictor and Genie. In , a boy who became known as Victor was found wandering naked in the woods in France. When he was captured, he was about twelve years old and completely wild, apparently having had no contact with humans. Jean.\1arc-Gaspard lrard, a young doctor accustomed to working with deaf children, devoted five years to socializing Victor and trying to reach him language. Although he succeeded to some extent in developing Victor's sociability, memory, and judgement, there was little progress in his language ability. Victor responded only to sounds that had had meaning for him in the to rest, such as the cracking of a nut, animal sounds, or the sound of rain. He e'\'entually spoke only two words, his favourite food 'lair' (milk) and his governess's frequent exclamation '0 Dieu!' (Oh, God!). He said 'lait' only when he saw a glass of milk. He never used the word to ask for it.

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Language learning in early childhood Nearly two hundred years later, Genie, a thirteen-year-old girl who had been isolated, neglected, and abused, was discovered in California (Rymer ). Because of the irrational demands of a disturbed father and the submission and fear of an abused mother, Genie had spent more than eleven years tied to a chair or a crib in a small, darkened room. Her father had forbidden his wife and son to speak to Genie and had himself only growled and barked at her. She was beaten when she made any kind of noise, and she had long since resorted to complete silence. Genie was undeveloped physically, emotionally, and intellectually. She had no language. After she was discovered, Genie was cared for and educated with the participation of many reachers and therapists, including Susan Curtiss (). After a brief period in a rehabilitation centre, she lived in a foster home and attended special schools. Genie made remarkable progress in becoming socialized and cognitively aware. She developed deep personal relationships and strong individual tastes and traits. Nevertheless, after five years of exposure to language, Genie's language was nor like that of a typical five-year old. There was a larger than normal gap between comprehension and producr,Wn. She used grammatical forms inconsistently and -ov~ed fo~mulaic and rourine speech. Although Victor and Genie appear to provide evidence in support of the CPH, it is difficult to argue that the hypothesis is confirmed on the basis of evidence from such unusual cases. We cannot know with certainty what other factors besides biological maturity might have contributed to their inability to learn language. It is not possible to determine whether either of them suffered from brain damage, developmental delays, or a specific language impairment, even before they were separated from normal human interaction. However, there are some children who come from ordinary homes, yet do nor have access to language at the usual time. This is the case for some profoundly deaf children who have hearing parents. Hearing parents may not realize that their child cannot hear because the child uses other senses to interact in .,. apparently normal way. Thus, the early childhood period may be normal and loving bur devoid of language that the children can access. These children's later experience in learning sign language has been the subject of some important research related to the critical period. Elissa rushbrookrathbone.co.uk ( ) and her colleagues studied deaf users of AMERICAN Only percentofthe profoundly deaf are born to deaf parents, and only these children are likely to be exposed to AS L from birth. The remainder of the profoundly deaf population begin learningASL at different ages, often when they start attending a residential school where sign language is used for day-to-day communication.

SIGN LANGUAGE (AsL).

Like oral and written languages, AS L makes use of grammatical markers to indicate such things as time (for example, past tense) and number. These

Language /earning in early childhood markers are expressed through specific hand or body movements. The researchers studied rhe abiliry to produce and comprehend grammatical markers in Native signers (who were exposed ro ASL from birrh), Early learners (who began using ASL berween four and six years of age), and Late learners (who began learning AS L afrer age rwelve). They found no difference berween the groups in some aspects of their use of ASL. However, on tests focusing on grammatical markers, the Native group used the forms more consistently than the Early group who, in turn, used them more consistently rhan the Late group. The researchers concluded rhat their study supports the hypothesis that rhere is a critical period for first language acquisition, whether that language is oral or gestural. We will return to a discussion of the CPH in Chapter 3 when we look at the age issue in second language acquisition. The innarist perspective is rhus pardy based on evidence for a critical period. Ir is also seen as an explanation for 'the logical problem of language acquisition', rhat is, the question of how adult speakers come to know the complex structure of their first language on the basis of language that they actually hear.

lnteractionistldevelopmentalperspectives: Learningfrom inside and out Cognitive and developmental psychologists argue that the innatists place roo much emphasis on the 'final state' (the COMPETENCE of adult NATIVE SPEAKERS) and not enough on the developmental aspects of language acquisition. In their view, language acquisition is but one example of the human child's remarkable abiliry to learn from experience, and rhey see no need to assume that there are specific brain structures devoted ro language acquisition. They hypothesize that what children need to know is essentially available in the language they are exposed to as they hear it used in thousands of hours of interactions with the people and objects around them. Developmental psychologists and psycholinguists have focused on the interplay berween the innate learning abiliry of children and the environment in which they develop. These researchers attribute considerably more importance to the environment than the innatists do even though they also recognize a powerful learning mechanism in the human brain. They see language acquisition as similar to and influenced by the acquisition of other kinds of skill and knowledge, rather than as something that is different from and largely independent of the child's experience and cognitive development. Indeed, researchers such as Dan Slobin ( ) have long emphasized the close relationship berween children's cognitive development and their acquisition oflanguage.

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Language learning in early childhood

Piaget and Vygotsky One of the earliest proponents of the view that children's language is built on their cognitive development was the Swiss psychologist/epistemologist, Jean Piaget (/). In the early decades of the twentieth century, Piaget observed infants and children in their play and in their interaction with develo ment of their cognitive objects and people. He was able to tra understanding of such thin s as knowin t · hidden from si ht are sti

Cross-cultural research Since the s, researchers have studied children's language learning environments in a great many different cultural communities. The research has focused not only on the development oflanguage itself, but also on the ways in which the environment provides what children need for language acquisition. Starting in the mids, Dan Slobin has edited a series of

Language /eaming in early childhood volumes devoted to international research on language acquisition, providing examples and analyses of child language and the language learning ~nvironment from communities around the world. One of the most remarkable resources for child language researchers is the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES), where researchers have contributed millions of words of child language data in dozens of languages in recorded and transcribed forms (MacWhinney ; rushbrookrathbone.co.uk). One result of the crosscultural research is the description of the differences in childrearing patterns. Catherine Snow () and others have studied the apparent effects on language acquisition of the ways in which adults talk to and interact with young children. In middle-class North American homes, researchers observed that adults often modify the way they speak when talking to little children. This CHILD-DIRECTED SPEECH may be characterized by a slower rate of delivery, higher pitch, more varied intonation, shorter, simpler sentence patterns, stress on key words, frequent repetition, Jnd paraphrase. Furthermore, topics of conversation emphasize the child's immediate environment, the 'here and now', or experiences that the adult knows the child has had. Adults often repeat rhe content of a child's rushbrookrathbone.co.uk, bur they expand or RECAST ir into a grammatically correct sentence. For example, when Peter says, 'Dump truck! Dump truck! Fall! Fall!', Lois n:sponds, 'Yes, the dump truck fell down.'

Researchers working in a 'language socialization' framework have studied language acquisition in children from a variety of cultural groups. They have ~·ound that rhe kind of child-directed speech observed in middle-class .-\merican homes is by no means universal. In some societies, adulrs do not engage in conversation or verbal play with very young children.

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Language learning in early childhood For example, Bambi Schieffelin ( ) found that Kaluli mothers in Papua New Guinea did not consider their children ro be appropriate conversational partners. Martha Crago ( ) observed that in traditional Inuit society, children are expected ro watch and listen ro adults. They are not expected or encouraged ro participate in conversations with adults until they are older and have more developed language skills. Other researchers have observed that in some societies, young children interact primarily with older siblings who serve as their caregivers. Even within the United States, Shirley Brice Heath ( ) and others have documented substantial differences in the ways in which parents in different socioeconomic and ethnic groups interact with their children. Thus, the patterns of parent-child interaction and child-directed speech that were first observed in middle-class North American families are far from universal. Nevertheless, in every society, children are in situations in which they hear language that is meaningful ro them in their environment. And they achieve full competence in the community language. Thus, it is difficult to judge the long-term effect of the modifications that some adults make in speech addressed ro children.

The importance of interaction The role of interaction between a language-learning child and an INTERLOCUTOR who responds in some way to the child is illuminated by cases where such imeraction is missing. Jacqueline Sachs and her colleagues ( ) studied the language development of a child they called Jim. He was a hearing child of deaf parents, and his only contact with oral language was through television, which he watched frequently. The family was unusual in that the parents did not use sign language with Jim. Thus, although in other respects he was well cared for, Jim did not begin his linguistic development in a normal environment in which a parent communicated with him in either oral or sign language. A language assessment at three years and nine months indicated that he was well below age level in all aspects oflanguage. Although he attempted to express ideas appropriate to his age, he used unusual, ungrammatical word order. When Jim began conversational sessions with an adult, his expressive abilities began to improve. By the age of four years and two months most of the unusual speech patterns had disappeared, replaced by structures more typical of his age. Jim's younger brother Glenn did not display the same type of language delay. Glenn's linguistic environmem was different in that he had his older brother as a conversational partner. Jim showed very rapid acquisition of the structures of English once he began to interact with an adult on a one-ro-one basis. The fact that he had failed ro acquire language normally prior ro this experience suggests that impersonal sources oflanguage such as television or radio alone are not sufficient. One-

Language learning in early childhood to-one interaction gives the child access to language that is adjusted to his or her level of comprehension. When a child does not understand, the adult · may repeat or paraphrase. The response of the adult may also allow children ' to find out when their own utterances are understood. Television, for \ obvious reasons, does not provide such interaction. Even in childreV's programmes, where simpler language is used and topics are relevant to younger viewers, no immediate adjustment is made for the needs of an individual child. Once children have acquired some language, however, television can be a source oflanguage and cultural information.

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Connectionism Another recentviewoflanguageacquisition comes from CONNECTIONISM. Connectionists differ sharply from the Chomskyan innatists becaus~ hypothesize that language acquisition does not require a separa~e'module of e mm ut can e ex ame m terms o earmng m genera . urt ermor , connect1omsts argue that what children nee to ow IS esse tia avaJ a e em m t e anguage t ey are expose to. orne o the research has inVolved computer s1mUlanons m wh1ch language samples are provided as input to a fairly simple program. The goal is to show that the computer program can 'learn' certain things if it is exposed to them enough. The program can even generalize beyond what it has actually been exposed to and make the same kinds of creative 'mistakes' that children make, such as putting a regular -ed ending on an irregular verb, for example, eated Researchers such as Jeffrey Elman and his colleagues ( ) explain language acquisition in terms of how children acquire links or 'connections' between words and phrases and the situations in which they occur. They claim that when children hear a word or phrase in the context of a specific object, event, or person, an assoctanon 1s created m the chlld·s mmd between{~ the word or phrase and what It represents. I fius, heanng a word bnngs to It mmd the obJect, and seemg the object brings to mind the word or phrase:' 'f:Ventua11y any oF th~ arne researchers saw this as strong evidence against the CAH. However, .o orough review of all the 'morpheme acquisition' studies shows that the ~:1ers' first language does have an influence on acquisition sequences. For =:.L"Tiple, learners whose first language has a possessive form that resembles -= English (such as German and Danish) seem to acquire the English =• .._;cssive earlier than those whose first language has a very different way of T.~ing the possessive (such as French or Spanish). And even though 'article' ~-=.us early in the sequence, learners from many language backgrounds =~uding Slavic languages and Japanese) continue to struggle with this ~ct of English, even at advanced levels. For example, learners may do well IZ ;:-'pplying articles in cenain obligatory contexts but nor others. If the

s

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Learner language

-ing (progressive) plural copula ('to be')

~ auxiliary (progressive as in 'He is going') article

~ irregular past

~ regular past -ed third person singular -s possessive 's

Figure 4. 1 Krashen's (1 ) summary ofsecond language grammatical morpheme acquisition sequence language sample that is analysed contains only the 'easier' obligatory contexts, the learner may have a misleadingly high accuracy score. Another reason why something as difficult as English articles appears to be acquired early is that the order in the diagram is based on the analysis of correct use in obligatory contexts only. It does not take into account uses of grammatical morphemes in places where they do not belong, for example, when a learner says, 'The France is in Europe'. These issues have led researchers to question the adequacy of obligatory context analyses as the sole basis for understanding developmental sequences. The morpheme acquisition literature raises other issues, not least of them the question of why there should be an order of acquisition for these language features. Some of the similarities observed in different studies seemed to be due to the use of particular tasks for collecting the data, and researchers found that different tasks tended to yield different results. Nevertheless, a number of studies have revealed similarities that cannot be explained by the data collection procedures alone. As with first language acquisition, researchers have not found a single simple explanation for the order. Jennifer Goldschneider and Robert DeKeyser () reviewed this research and identified a number of variables that contribute to the order.

Learner language Salience (how easy it is to notice the morpheme), linguistic complexity (for c:xample, how many elements you have to keep track of), semantic trans?Mency (how clear the meaning is), similarity to a first language form, and frequency in the input all seem to play a role.

Negation The acquisition of negative sentences by second language learners follows a ?ath that looks nearly identical to the stages we saw in Chapter 1 for first rnguage acquisition. However, second language learners from different first rnguage backgrounds behave somewhat differently within those stages. This was illustrated in John Schumann's () research with Spanish speakers learning English and Henning Wode's ( ) work on German >peakers learning English.

Stage 1 The negative element (usually 'no' or 'not') is typically placed before the verb ·:>r the element being negated. Often, it occurs as the first word in the sentence because the subject is not there. No bicycle. I no like it. Not my friend. ~o' is preferred by most learners in this early stage, perhaps because it is the ;,egative form that is easiest to hear and recognize in the speech they are ~posed to. Italian- and Spanish-speaking learners may prefer 'no' because it .:orresponds to the negative form in Italian and Spanish (No tienen muchos ;.ibros). They may continue to use Stage 1 negation longer than other learners :Xcause of the similarity to a pattern from their first language. Even when :hey produce negative sentences at more advanced stages, they may also use 5rage 1 negatives in longer sentences or when they are under pressure. Thus, ~imilarity to the first language may slow down a learner's progress through a particular developmental stage.

Stage2 _\t this stage, 'no' and 'not' may alternate with 'don't'. However, 'don't' is not marked for person, number, or tense and it may even be used before modals like 'can' and 'should'. He don't like it. I don't can sing.

Stage3 Learners begin to place the negative element after auxiliary verbs like 'are', ·is', and 'can'. But at this stage, the 'don't' form is still not fully analysed: You can not go there. He was not happy. She don't like rice. _\.t this stage, German speakers, whose first language has a structure that places the negative after the verb may generalize the auxiliary-negative pattern to verb-negative and produce sentences such as:

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Learner language They come not [to] home. (Sie kommen nicht nach Hause)

Stage4 In this stage, 'do' is marked for tense, person, and number, and most interlanguage sentences appear to be just like those of the target language: It doesn't work. We didn't have supper. However, some learners continue to mark tense, person, and number on both the auxiliary and the verb: I didn't went there.

Questions In the s, Manfred Pienemann and his colleagues undertook studies that related the second language acquisition of German and English. Pienemann, Johnston, and Brindley () described a sequence in the acquisition of questions by learners ofEnglish from a variety of first language backgrounds. An adapted version of the sequence is shown in Stages below. The examples come from French speakers who were playing a game in which they had to ask questions in order to find out which picture the other player was holding. As we saw for negation, the overall sequence is similar to the one observed in first language acquisition. And again, there are some differences thar are attributable to first language influence.

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

Stage2 Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting. It's a monster in the right corner? The boys throw the shoes? Declarative order with rising intonation is common in yes/no questions in informal spoken French. French speakers may hypothesize that in English, as in French, inversion is optional.

Stage3 Fronting: dtrfronting; wh-fronting, no inversion; other fronting. Do you have a shoes on your picture? Where the children are playing? Does in this picture there is four astronauts? Is the picture has rwo planets on top?

Learner language French has an invariant form 'est-ce que' rhat can be placed before a declarative sentence to make a question, for example, jean aime le cinema becomes Est-ce que jean aime le cinema?-'[is it rhat] John likes movies?' French speakers may think rhat 'do' or 'does' is such an invariant form and ontinue to produce Stage 3 questions for some time.

Stage4 Inversion in wlr + copula; 'yes/no' questions with orher auxiliaries. Where is the sun? Is rhere a fish in the water? .~r

Stage 4, German speakers may infer rhat if English uses subject-auxiliary inversion, it may also permit inversion with full verbs, as German does, leading rhem to produce questions such as 'Like you baseball?'-Magst du

baseball? Stage5 Inversion in wlr questions wirh borh an auxiliary and a main verb. How do you say proche? What's the boy doing? French-speaking learners may have difficulty using Stage 5 questions in ·hich the subject is a noun rarher than a pronoun. They may say (and accept grammatical) 'Why do you like chocolate?' but not 'Why do children like .:hocolate?' In this, they are drawing on French, where it is often ungrammatical to use inversion with a noun subject (* Pourquoi aiment les enfonts le

.-hocolat?). Stage6 Complex questions. question tag: It's better, isn't it? negative question: Why can't you go? embedded question: Can you tell me what the date is today? Pienemann's developmental sequence for questions has been the basis for a number of studies, some of which will be discussed in Chapter 6. Alison \fackey and her colleagues have done a number of rhese studies, and she provided rhe data in Table These examples come from three adult Japanese learners of English as a second language who were interacting wirh a native speaker in a 'spot rhe differences' task. In rhis task, learners have similar but not identical pictures and rhey have to ask questions until they work out how rhe picture they can see is different from the one their interlocutor has. Note that progress to a higher stage does not always mean that learners produce fewer errors.

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Lramer languagr Using the information about the developmental sequence for questions in the stages above, circle the stage of second language question development that best corresponds to each question. Hint: Read all of each Ieamer's questions before you begin. Learner I I Where is he going and what is he saying? 2 Is the room his room? 3 Is he taking out his skate board? 4 What is he thinking? 5 The girl, what do you, what does she do, what is she doing?

Stage I 2 I 2 I 2 2 I

3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5

6 6 6 6

2

3

4

5

6

Learner2 6 Are they buying some things? 7 Is they bought present? 8 Is they're retirement people? 9 Is this perfume or I don't know. 10 And it is necktie?

2 2 2 2 2

3 3 3 3 3

4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 5

6 6 6 6 6

Learner] I I Are there any shuttle? Space shuttle? 12 Inside, is there any girl? 13 You don't see? 14 What are, what the people wearing? IS And they are carrying pink box?

2 2 2 2 2

3 3 3

4 4 4 4 4

5 5 5 5 5

6 6 6 6 6

3 3

Answer key Leamer I: Questions I, 4, and 5 are Stage 5 questions. Question 5 is interesting because it shows the speaker self-correcting, suggesting that Stage 5 is still a level that requires some greater effort. Questions 2 and 3 are Stage 4 questions. Learner 2: Questions 6 and 9 could be Stage 4 questions. However, the fact that questions 7 and 8 are Stage 3 questions suggests that this speaker has not actually progressed from 'fronting' to 'inversion', particularly since question I0 is a Stage 2 question. Leamer 3: Questions I I and 12 are Stage 4 questions. Questions 13 and 15 are Stage 2 questions. Question 14 shows the speaker apparently on the verge of a Stage 5 question, then retreating to a Stage 3 question.

Table Qurstions by ]apanesr-speaking learnrrs ofEnglish

Possessive determiners A developmenral sequence for the English possessive forms 'his' and 'her' has been observed in the inrerlanguage of French- and Spanish-speaking learners. In English, the choice of'his' or 'her' (or 'irs') is determined by the

Learner language natural gender of the possessor. In French and Spanish (and many other languages), the correct form of the possessive determiner matches the grammatical gender of the object or person that is possessed. This can be illustrated with the following translation equivalents for French and English:

Sa mere= his mother or her mother Son chien = his dog or her dog Ses enfonts= his children or her children Note that when the object possessed is a body part, French often uses a definite article rather than a possessive determiner.

II s'est casse /e bras-He broke the [his] arm. Joanna White () studied the acquisition of possessive determiners by French-speaking students, adapting a developmental sequence that was first proposed by Helmut Zobl (). White found a total of eight steps in the sequence, but they can be grouped into four main stages. The examples shown in Stages below come from French-speaking students learning English, describing cartoon drawings of family events and interactions.

Stage 1: Pre-emergence No use of 'his' and 'her'. Definite article or 'your' used for all persons, genders, and numbers. The linle boy play with the bicycle. He have band-aid on the arm, the leg, the stomach. This boy cry in the arm of your mother. There is one girl talk with your dad.

Stage 2: Emergence Emergence of'his' and/or 'her', with a strong preference to use only one of the forms. The mother is dressing her little boy, and she put her clothes, her pant, her coat, and then she finish. The girl making hisself beautiful. She put the make-up on his hand, on his head, and his father is surprise.

Stage 3: Post-emergence Differentiated use of 'his' and 'her' but not when the object possessed has natural gender. The girl fell on her bicycle. She look his father and cry. The dad put her little girl on his shoulder, and after, on his back.

Stage4 Error-free use of 'his' and 'her' in all contexts including natural gender and body parts.

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Learner language The little girl with her dad play together. And the dad take his girl on his shoulder and he hurt his back. English speakers learning French, or other languages that use grammatical gender as the basis for choosing possessive determiners, also have to learn a new way of determining the gender of the possessive determiner. Learning the grammatical gender of each and every noun further adds to the challenge.

Relative clauses Second language learners first acquire relative clauses that refer to nouns in the subject and direct object positions, and only later {and in some cases, never) learn to use them to modify nouns in other sentence roles {for example, indirect object and object of preposition). A summary of the observed pattern of acquisition for relative clauses is shown in Table It is referred to as the 'accessibility hierarchy', and it reflects the apparent ease with which learners have 'access' to certain structures in the target language. Part of speech

Relative clause

Subject

The girl who was sick went home.

Direct object

The story that I read was long.

Indirect object

The man who[m] Susan gave the present to was happy.

Object of preposition

I found the book that John was talking about.

Possessive

I know the woman whose father is visiting.

Object of comparison

The person that Susan is taller than is Mary.

Table Accessibility hierarchy for relative clauses in English (adaptedfrom Doughty )

Learner language ;pite the similarity of the general pattern that has been found, g,veral · nc v been observed in the ac f .rive claus First, ·t has been observed that for learners whose first ~age does not aye a oarticular clause rype (for example, ob · t of 11parison), it is more difficult to learn to use that e in En lis econ ~ learners have a firsr lang.•age wjrb a St&bstantially different ay of ning relative clause({FQr example, Japanese and Chinese, where the u. ve clause precedes' cknoun ic rushbrookrathbone.co.uk)"Jrhey ma avoid usin relative ses even en their interlangua e isfair a . u ~ ~age influence is seen in e errors learners make For examp e, Arabic lkers often produce both the relative marker and the pronoun it replaces example, 'The man who I saw him was very angry'), as they would in )JC.

Ference to past tmber of researchers, indudingJilrgen Meisel {), have observed the :loping ability to use language to locate events in time. The research has \'0 that learners from different first language backiJP''nds apd 3CQUiring riety of second languages, acquire the language for referring to past Its in a similar pattern · young children, learners with limited language may simply refer to Its in the order in which they occurred or mention a time or place to \' that the event occurred in the past.

My son come. He work in restaurant. VietNam. We work too hard. ·r, learners start to attach a grammatical morpheme marking the verb for , although it may not be the one that the target language uses for that nmg. Me working long time. Now stop. tense forms of irregular verbs may be used before the regularpast is used .bly. We went to school every day. We spoke Spanish. :r they begin marking past tense on regular verbs, learners may over:ralize the regular -ed ending or the use of the wrong past tense form, for nple, the present perfect rather than the simple past.

My sister catched a big fish. She has lived here since fifteen years.

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Learner language Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig () and others have found that learners are. more likel to mark ast tense on some verbs than on others. For example, earners are more likely to mark past tense in sentences such as 'I broke the vase' and 'My sister fixed it with glue' than in sentences such as 'She seemed happy last week' or 'My father swam in that lake'. These differences appe~ to be due ro the 'lexical Mpecr', that is, the kinds of meanings expressed buhe different verbs Learners seem to find it easier to mark past tense on ver~ that refer ro so:Cerh ing whose end poi or can easily be determmed. These are rer;-red to as 'accom lishments' and 'achievements' ('I ran three miles. My brother took an aspirin and wentto be . or ~tivities' thaunay coorinue f~ some__period ('I swam all afternoon') or :stares' that .may be perceived as constants ('He seemed happy to sit by the lake'), learners use simple ~t less fre uendy. First languag can have an influence here roo. Laura Collins () investigated the different English verb forms used by French speakers. The past tense that is most commonly used in spoken French and that is usually a translation of a simple past form in English is a form that resembles the present perfect in English. Thus, the equivalent of'Yesterday he ate an apple' is Hier il a mange une pomme-literally, 'Yesterday he has eaten an apple'. Teachers often comment on Frencb 5peakeFs' reAaeAcy to overuse the present erfect. In Collins' srudy, learners completed passages by filling in blan with the appropriate form of a verb. In places where English speakers would have used the simple past, French speakers did sometimes use the perfect (either present perfect or past perfect) forms. Furthermore, they used them more frequently than a comparison group of Japanese speakers. However, the French speakers were more likely to use perfect forms for achievement and accomplishment verbs than for the states and activities. Collins observes, 'The [first language] influence does not appear ro oyerridc. rhe effect oflexical' peer; rather It occurs rushbrookrathbone.co.uk' (p. 85).

\

Movement through developmental sequences We have seen in this section that, as in first language acquisition, there are ~ stematic and redictable developmencil se uences m second Ian ~ . Ho ever, 't is-important to emp asize that developmental stages are n ike closed rooms. Learners do not leave one behind mhen they ~ter another. In examining a language sample from an individual learner, one shoUld not expect to find behaviours from only one stage. 0~ contrary. at a given point in rime. learners may use sentences typical of s(;"eral different st~es. It is perhaps better to think of a stage as being characterized by the emergence and increasing frequency of new forms rather than by the complete disappearance ofearlier ones. Even when a more advanced stage comes to dominate in a learner's speech, conditions of stress

Learner language :~~

complexity in a communicative interaction can cause the learner to 'slip sck' ro an earlier stage. Note rhar progress ro a higher stage does nor always ~~an rhar learners produce fewer errors. For example, a learner may produce ~orrecr questions at Stage 1 or Stage 3, bur those correct forms are nor based underlying knowledge of subject-verb inversion. Correct questions at ~~~e 1 are chunks, nor sentences rhar have been constructed from rhe words ~r make them up. At Stage 2, learners have advanced, in the sense that rhey i:e forming original questions, bur rhe word order of those questions is the '.arne as that of declarative sentences. At Stage 3, questions are formed by acing a question form (most often a wh- word or a form of the verb 'do') at -_,e beginning of a sentence wirh declarative word order. -\norher important observation abour developmental sequences is rhe way ,ey interact with first language influence. Leamers do not appeauo assume e · · ly transfer the structures of rheir fir :nat rhe () Zobl Helmut and ) e o Henning as owever ~.:on . oint at which the encounter a -;sse~e , when they reach a develo erween their first language and rheir interlanguage .:ruci ~o, rhey may have difficulty movmg beyond that srage or they may £cneralize their first language pattern and end up making errors that speakers' of other languages are less likely to make.

More about first language influence Researchers rejected the interpretation of contrastive analysis rhat made ·rransfer' or 'interference' the explanation for all of a learner's difficulties wirh the target language. This was due in part to the fact rhar contrastive analysis was closely associated wirh behaviourist views of language acquisition. In rejecting behaviourism, some researchers also discarded contrastive analysis as a source of valuable informacion about learners' language. Researchers at rhe European Science Foundation carried out a study that created some valuable opportunities to examine the influence of rhe first language. Adult language learners, most of whom had little or no formal second language instruction, were followed as they learned particular European languages. For each target language, groups oflearners from two different first language backgrounds were compared. Also, for each group oflearners, rheir progress towards rwo target structures was studied. As Wolfgang Klein and Clive Perdue ( ) report, rhere were substantial similarities in rhe interlanguage patterns of the learners, in spire of the great variety in rhe first and second language combinations. The similarities were greatest in the earliest stages of second language acquisition. Despite the similarities, rhere is no doubt in the minds of most researchers and reachers that learners draw on their knowledge of orher languages as

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Learner language they try to discover the complexities of the new language they are learning. We have seen some ways in which the first language interacts with developmental sequences. When learners reach a certain stage and perceive a similarity to their first language, they may linger longer at that stage (for example, rhe extended use of preverbal 'no' by Spanish speakers) or add a substage (for example, the German speaker's inversion of subject and lexical verbs in questions) to the sequence which, overall, is very similar across learners, regardless of their first language. They may learn a second language rule but restrict its application (for example, the French speaker's rejection of subject-auxiliary inversion with noun subjects). The first language may in8uence learners' interlanguage in other ways as well. The phenomenon of 'avoidance' that Jacquelyn Schachter ( ) described appeared to be caused at least in part by learners' perception that a feature in the target language was so distant and different from their first language that they preferred not to try it. Other researchers have also found evidence oflearners' sensitivity to degrees of distance or difference and a reluctance to attempt a transfer over too great a distance. In one very revealing study, Hakan Ringbom () found that the 'interference' errors made in English by both Finnish-Swedish and SwedishFinnish bilinguals were most often traceable to Swedish, not Finnish. The fact that Swedish and English are closely related languages that actually do share many characteristics seems to have led learners to take a chance that a word or a sentence structure that worked in Swedish would have an English equivalent. Finnish, on the other hand, belongs to a completely different language family, and learners used Finnish as a source of possible transfer far less often, whether their own first language was Swedish or Finnish. The risk-taking associated with this perception of similarity has its limits, however. As we noted earlier, learners seem to know that idiomatic or metaphorical uses of words are often unique to a particular language. Eric Kellerman ( ) found that Dutch learners of English were often reluctant to accept certain idiomatic expressions or unusual uses of words such as 'The wave broke on the shore' but accepted 'He broke the cup' even though both are straightforward translations of sentences with the Dutch verb breken. Another way in which learners' first language can affect second language acquisition is in making it difficult for them to notice that something they are saying is not a feature of the \anguage as i.t i.s used by more proficient speakers. Lydia White (\) gave the example of adverb placement in French and English. Both languages allow adverbs in several positions in simple sentences. However, as the examples in Table show, there are some differences. English, bur not French, allows SAVO order; French, bur not English, allows SVAO.

Learner language

S =Subject

V= Verb

0 =Object

A=Adverb

ASVO Often, Mary drinks tea. Souvem, Marie boit du the. SVOA Mary drinks tea often. Marie boit du the souvent. SAVO Mary often drinks tea. ·Marie souvent boit du the. SVAO ·Mary drinks often tea . .\1arie boit souvent du the . .Vou: The asterisk (•) means that the: sc:mc:ncc: is not grammatical.