Language, Learning, and Teaching Notes PDF

CH AP TER 1 LANGUAGE, LEARNING, AND TEACHING Carson, a native Californian, took Spanish as a foreign language for two years in high school and then had two more years in college. As a twenty-year-old, he spent one summer month in Costa Rica helping to build affordable housing for the...

CH AP TER 1 LANGUAGE, LEARNING, AND TEACHING Carson, a native Californian, took Spanish as a foreign language for two years in high school and then had two more years in college. As a twenty-year-old, he spent one summer month in Costa Rica helping to build affordable housing for the less fortunate in the city of San José. On arrival, his four years of classroom Spanish were self-described as “somewhat useful in giving me a head start, but for face- to-face conversation, pretty useless.” After one month in Costa Rica, making an effort to speak Spanish as much and as often as he could with Costa Rican friends, and as little English as possible, he felt like he came back to the United States with enough Spanish to “get along quite well” in a conversation. Sonia, from Sao Paulo, Brazil, took German classes all the way through high school, at the prodding of her German-born parents. After two years of college German, reaching an advanced-intermediate level, she dropped the course the next year. She described feeling little sense of ability beyond a lot of “knowledge about German grammar,” and a lack of motivation to continue studying German “just to please my mother and father.” Ten years later, when asked how her German was, she reported “okay” reading ability (but no practical reason to read in German), “fair” listening ability (with grandparents), “poor” speaking ability (a few phrases with family), and “almost non-existent” writing ability. What do these two learners tell you about learning a second language? Even without the “whole story” of each learner’s journey, can you see that language fluency doesn’t happen overnight? And that learning a second language also involves learning a second culture? And that it may mean a whole new way of thinking, feeling, and acting? And that commitment, motivation, and serious effort are involved? And finally, that language learning involves social interac- tion in a meaningful context? The two learners above may have benefited from their classroom instruc- tion, but did those classrooms provide optimal communicative opportunities to use 1 2 CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching their second language (L2)?1 This book is about both learning and teaching, and of course teaching is the facilitation of learning. And a major step in learning how to facilitate is understanding the intricate web of principles that are spun together to affect how and why people learn—or fail to learn—an L2. To begin the process of understanding principles of language learning and teaching, let’s ponder some of the questions that you could ask. QUESTIONS ABOUT SLA Any complex set of skills brings with it a host of questions. As a means to guide an exploration of second language acquisition2 (SLA), let’s look at some of the questions you might ask, sorted here into some commonly used topical categories. Learner Characteristics Who are the learners that you are teaching? What is their ethnic, linguistic, and religious heritage? What are their native languages, levels of education, and socioeconomic characteristics? What life experiences have they had that might affect their learning? What are their intellectual capacities, abilities, and strengths and weaknesses? How would you describe the personality of a stu- dent of yours? You can no doubt think of more questions, but these will suffice for starters. C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS In your learning of an L2, how did your own “life experiences” carry over to your SLA process? Among classmates of yours in an L2 class, what are some of their “life experiences” that might make a difference in how you teach your own students or in how well those students will learn the language? For each “experi- ence,” what could you do as a teacher to either capitalize on positives in learners’ backgrounds or minimize the negatives? 1, 2Throughout this book, “second language,” abbreviated as L2, refers generically to any additional language acquisition beyond the first (L1), including both “foreign” language learning and also subsequent (third, fourth, etc.) languages. Likewise “second language acquisition,” abbreviated as SLA, is a generic term referring to L2 acquisition in both natural and instructional settings, as well as to both “foreign” language learning (e.g., learning French in the United States, English in Japan) and “second” language learning (in the L2 culture, e.g., English in the United States and Chinese in China).  CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching 3 Linguistic Factors What is language? What is communication? What does it mean when we say someone knows how to use a language? What are the relevant differences (and similarities) between a learner’s first language (L1) and L2? What properties of the L2 might be difficult for a learner to master? These questions are, of course, central to the discipline of linguistics. Language teachers need to understand something about the linguistic system of the L2 and some of the possible dif- ficulties a learner might encounter. Learning Processes How does learning take place? Are there specific steps to successful learning? What mental or intellectual processes are involved in SLA? What kinds of strat- egies are available to a learner, and which ones are optimal? What is the optimal interrelationship of mental, emotional, and physical processes for suc- cessful SLA? Age and Acquisition One of the key issues in L2 research and teaching is a cluster of questions about differences between children and adults. Does the age of learning make a dif- ference? Common observation tells us that children are “better” language learners than adults. Are they, really? What does the research show? How do developmental changes that occur between childhood and adulthood affect SLA? C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Did you try to learn an L2 as a child? If so, how did that experi- ence differ from learning an L2 as an adult? Suppose you were asked to teach two foreign language classes, one to eight-year-old children and the other to secondary school seniors (about seven- teen years old). How would your teaching approach and your materials differ between those two classes? Classroom Instruction A good deal of SLA successfully takes place outside of any educational context or classroom. In such “natural” environments, do all people learn a language equally successfully? In what has come to be called “instructed” SLA, many questions arise. What are the effects of varying methodological approaches, 4 CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching textbooks, materials, teacher styles, and institutional factors? Is there an optimal length of time required for successful mastery? How can a student best put classroom instruction into action in the “real” world? Context Are the learners attempting to acquire the second language within the cultural and linguistic milieu of the second language, that is, in a “second” language situation in the technical sense of the term? Or are they focusing on a “foreign” language context in which the L2 is heard and spoken only in an artificial environment, such as in a language classroom, or an instructional video? How might the sociopolitical conditions of a particular country or its language policy affect the outcome of a learner’s mastery of a language? How do inter- cultural contrasts and similarities affect the learning process? Purpose Finally, the most encompassing of all questions: Why are learners attempting to acquire the second language? Are they motivated by the achievement of a successful career, or by passing a foreign language requirement, or by wishing to identify closely with the culture and people of the target language? C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Think back to a time when you were first learning an L2, and make a list of all the reasons (purposes) you had in beginning that process. If students in a classroom have many different such purposes, what could you as a teacher do either to refine or develop those purposes, or to redirect purposes that might not be facilitative? REJOICING IN OUR DEFEATS The above questions have been posed, in global terms, to give you an inkling of the diversity of issues involved in understanding the principles of language learning and teaching. By addressing such questions carefully and critically, you may actually achieve a surprising number of answers. And with the help of this book, you should be able to hone global questions into finer, subtler questions, which in itself is an important task, for often being able to ask the right questions is more valuable than possessing storehouses of knowledge.  CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching 5 At the same time, remember that you may not find final answers to all the questions. The field of SLA manifests all the methodological and theoretical problems that come with a developing discipline (Long, 2007; VanPatten & Williams, 2007; Hinkel, 2011; Gass, 2013). Therefore, many of these questions have somewhat tentative answers, or at best, answers that must begin with the phrase, “it depends.” Answers must be framed in a context that can vary from one learner to another, and from one moment to another. The wonderful intricacy of complex facets of human behavior will be very much with us for some time. Roger Brown’s (1966, p. 326) wry remark of five decades ago still applies: Psychologists find it exciting when a complex mental phenomenon— something intelligent and slippery—seems about to be captured by a mechanical model. We yearn to see the model succeed. But when, at the last minute, the phenomenon proves too much for the model and darts off on some uncapturable tangent, there is something in us that rejoices at the defeat. We can rejoice in our defeats because we know that it’s the very elusive- ness of the phenomenon of SLA that makes the quest for answers so exciting. Our field of inquiry is no simple, unidimensional reality. It’s “slippery” in every way. The chapters of this book are designed to give you a picture of both the slipperiness of SLA and the systematic storehouse of reliable knowledge that is now available to us. As you consider the issues, chapter by chapter, you will develop an integrated understanding of how people learn—and sometimes fail to learn—an L2. That understanding must be eclectic: no single theory or hypothesis will provide a magic formula for all learners in all contexts. Your conclusions will need to be enlightened: you’ll be urged to be as critical as you can in con- sidering the merit of various models and theories and research findings. And you’ll have to be a bit cautious: don’t accept every claim as truth just because someone fervently asserts it to be factual. By the end of the final chapter, with this cautious, enlightened, eclectic approach, you’ll no doubt surprise yourself on how many pieces of this giant puzzle you can actually put together! Thomas Kuhn (1970) referred to “normal science” as a process of puzzle solving in which part of the task of the scientist, in this case the teacher, is to discover the pieces and then to fit the pieces together. Some of the pieces of the SLA puzzle have been located and set in place. Others are not yet discov- ered, and the careful defining of questions will lead to finding those pieces. We can then undertake the task of fitting the pieces together into what Kuhn called a paradigm—an interlocking design, a model, or a theory of SLA. 6 CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS How would you describe, in your experience, the current accepted “paradigm,” or “approach” to language teaching? As you think about language classes you have taken (and perhaps taught), have you seen a “revolution” in language teaching, or is there one yet to come in the near future? In order to begin to ask further questions and to find answers to some of those questions, let’s first address a fundamental concern in problem-posing: defining the focus of our inquiry. Since this book is about language, learning, and teaching, let’s see what happens when we try to define those three terms. LANGUAGE A definition is a statement that captures the key features of a concept. Those features may vary, depending on your own understanding of the concept. And, most importantly, your understanding is essentially a “condensed” version of a theory that elaborates on all the facets of the concept. Conversely, a theory could be thought of as an “extended” definition. Defining, therefore, is serious business: it requires choices about which facets of a phenomenon are worthy of being included. Suppose you were stopped by a reporter on the street, and in the course of an interview about your field of study, you were asked, “Well, since you’re interested in second language acquisition, please tell me what language is, exactly.” You would no doubt probe your memory for a typical dictionary-type definition of language. What would such a definition look like? According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (2003, p. 699), lan- guage is “a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood mean- ings.” If you had read Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct (1994), you would find a little more elaboration: Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruc- tion, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelli- gently (p. 18). On the other hand, you might, with Ron Scollon (2004, p. 272), also have included some mention of the creativity of language, the presumed primacy  CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching 7 of speech over writing, and the universality of language among human beings. If we were to synthesize a number of definitions of language, we might come up with a composite definition represented in the eight items in the left- hand column of Table 1.1. These comprise a reasonably concise “25-word-or- less” definition of language. But the simplicity of the eightfold definition should not mask the sophistication of linguistic research underlying each concept. Enormous fields and subfields, yearlong university courses, and reams of research are suggested in each of the eight categories. Some of these fields of research are listed in the right-hand column of Table 1.1. Table 1.1 Language definition and related subfields of research Language Subfields of Research and Inquiry 1. …is systematic phonetics; phonology; morphology; syntax; discourse analysis; lexical analysis 2. …uses arbitrary symbols semiotics; semantics; philosophy & history of language; psycholinguistics 3. …uses symbols that are primarily vocal but phonetics; phonology; writing systems; may also be visual orthography; nonverbal communication 4. …uses symbols that have conventionalized semantics; pragmatics; sociolinguistics; meanings psycholinguistics; cognitive linguistics 5. …is used for communication sentence processing; pragmatics; discourse analysis; conversation analysis 6. …operates in a speech community sociolinguistics; sociocultural analysis; or culture pragmatics; dialectology; bilingualism 7. …is essentially human, but not limited to innateness; genetics; neurolinguistics; animal humans communication 8. …has universal characteristics Universal Grammar; innateness; emergentism; neurolinguistics; cross-cultural analysis Careful research and extensive study of these eight topics have involved a complex journey through a labyrinth of linguistic science—a maze that continues to be negotiated as many controversies have arisen within these basic concepts. Your understanding of the components of language determines to a large extent how you teach a language. If, for example, you believe that nonverbal communication is a key to successful second language learning, you will devote some attention in your curriculum to nonverbal systems and cues. If you per- ceive language as a phenomenon that can be dismantled into thousands of discrete pieces—such as grammar points—and those pieces programmatically taught one by one, you will attend carefully to an understanding of the discrete forms of language. If you think language is essentially cultural and interactive, 8 CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching your classroom methodology will be imbued with sociolinguistic strategies and communicative tasks. LEARNING AND TEACHING We can also ask questions about constructs like learning and teaching. Consider again some traditional definitions. A search in contemporary diction- aries reveals that learning is “acquiring knowledge of a subject or a skill by study, experience, or instruction.” Oddly, an educational psychologist would define learning even more succinctly as “a change in an individual caused by experience” (Slavin, 2003, p. 138). Similarly, teaching, which is implied in the first definition of learning, may be defined as “showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, giving instructions, guiding in the study of something, providing with knowl- edge, causing to know or understand.” Isn’t it curious that lexicographers seem to have such difficulty in devising a definition of something as universal as teaching? More than perhaps anything else, such definitions reflect the diffi- culty of defining complex concepts. Breaking down the components of the definition of learning, we can extract, as we did with language, domains of research and inquiry. Learning is: 1. Acquisition or “adding” 2. The retention of information or skills 3. The involvement of storage systems, memory, and cognitive organization 4. The application of active, conscious focus, and subconscious attention 5. Relatively permanent but subject to forgetting 6. The result of practice, perhaps reinforced practice 7. A change in behavior These concepts can also give way to a number of subfields within the dis- cipline of psychology: acquisition processes, perception, memory (storage) systems, short- and long-term memory, recall, motivation, conscious and sub- conscious attention, learning styles and strategies, theories of forgetting, rein- forcement, the role of practice. Very quickly the concept of learning becomes every bit as complex as the concept of language. Yet the second language learner brings all these (and more) variables into play in the learning of a second language. Teaching cannot be defined apart from learning. Teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling a person to learn, and setting the conditions for learning. Your understanding of how people learn will determine your philos- ophy of education, your teaching style, approach, lesson design, and classroom techniques. If, like B. F. Skinner (1953), you look at learning as a process of operant conditioning through a carefully paced program of reinforcement, you will teach accordingly. If you view second language learning as a deductive rather  CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching 9 than an inductive process, you will probably choose to present rules, lists, and charts to your students rather than let them “discover” those rules inductively. C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Write your own brief definition of teaching. What are the compo- nents of your definition? Take each component and think of how that component was manifested in L2 classes that you took, or if you have taught, how aspects of your definition were apparent in your teaching approach. An extended definition—or theory—of teaching will spell out governing principles for choosing certain methods and techniques. A theory of teaching, in harmony with your integrated understanding of the learner and of the lan- guage to be learned, will point the way to successful procedures on a given day for given learners under the various constraints of the particular context of learning. In other words, your theory of teaching is your theory of learning “stood on its head.” THREE PERSPECTIVES ON SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION The general definitions of language, learning, and teaching offered frame a beginning of theory-building. However, points of disagreement become apparent after a little probing of details. For example, is L1 acquisition an innately determined process or much like the learning of many other skills? Is language primarily a “system of formal units” or a “means for social inter- action”? Can we attribute SLA success to, let’s say, simply a matter of compre- hensible input, or exposure to meaningful communicative contexts? Differing viewpoints emerge from equally knowledgeable scholars, who usually differ over the extent to which one perspective is more accurate than another. Yet with all the possible disagreements among applied linguists and SLA researchers, some historical patterns emerge that highlight trends in the study of SLA. These trends will be described here in the form of three different per- spectives, or schools of thought in the fields of linguistics and psychology. While each perspective shares historical chronology, bear in mind that such a sketch may risk some overgeneralization Structural Linguistics and Behavioral Psychology In the 1940s and 1950s, the structural, or descriptive, school of linguistics prided itself in a rigorous application of the scientific observation of human 10 CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching languages. Only “publicly observable responses” could be subject to investiga- tion. The linguist’s task, according to the structuralist, was to describe human languages and to identify their structural characteristics. An important axiom of structural linguistics was that languages can differ from each other without limit, and that no preconceptions should apply across languages. Freeman Twaddell (1935), among others, underscored the mandate for the structural linguist to examine only overtly observable data, and to ignore any mentalistic theorizing that might entertain unobservable guesses, hunches, and intuition about language. Of further importance to the structural or descriptive linguist was the notion that language could be dismantled into small pieces or units and that these units could be described scientifically, contrasted, and added up again to form the whole. From this principle emerged an unchecked rush of linguists, in the 1940s and 1950s, to the far reaches of the earth to engage in the rigorous production of detailed descriptions of the world’s languages, many of them labeled as “exotic.” Similar perspectives were shared by psychologists of this era. For example, B.F. Skinner (1957), Charles Osgood (1957), and others insisted on the rigors of the scientific method in studying human behavior. In their behavioral paradigm, any notion of “idea” or “meaning” was “explanatory fiction,” and in both language and other behavior, the only legitimate “responses” were those that could be objectively perceived, recorded, and measured. The unreliability of observation of states of consciousness, thinking, concept formation, or the acquisition of knowledge made such topics impossible to examine in a behav- ioral framework. C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Structural linguistics was best modeled in the classroom by Charles Fries (1945, 1952), whose “structural drills” and “pattern practices” eventually evolved into the Audiolingual Method (see Chapter 4). In your experience learning or teaching a language, what do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of pat- tern drills and rote memorization in the language classroom? If they should be used at all, how do you place limits on their use? Generative Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology In the decade of the 1960s, generative-transformational linguistics emerged through the influence of Noam Chomsky and a number of his colleagues. Chomsky was trying to show that human language cannot be scrutinized  CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching 11 simply in terms of observable stimuli and responses or the volumes of raw data gathered by field linguists. The generative linguist was interested not only in describing language (achieving the level of descriptive adequacy) but also in arriving at an explanatory level of adequacy in the study of language, that is, a “principled basis, independent of any particular language, for the selection of the descriptively adequate grammar of each language” (Chomsky, 1964, p. 63). Early seeds of the generative-transformational revolution were planted near the beginning of the twentieth century. Ferdinand de Saussure (1916) claimed that there was a difference between parole (what Skinner “observes,” and what Chomsky called performance), on the one hand, and langue (akin to the concept of competence, or our underlying and unobservable language ability). A few decades later, however, descriptive linguists chose largely to ignore langue and to study parole. The revolution brought about by generative linguistics broke with the descriptivists’ preoccupation with performance—the outward manifestation of language—and focused on the importance of the underlying (and nonobservable) levels of meaning and thought that give birth to and generate observable linguistic performance. Similarly, cognitive psychologists asserted that meaning, understanding, and knowing were significant data for psychological study. Instead of focusing mechanistically on stimulus-response connections, cognitivists tried to discover psychological principles of organization and functioning. David Ausubel (1965, p. 4), for example, felt that behaviorists “dangerously oversimplified highly complex psychological phenomena.” The growth of cognitivism in the 1960s and beyond signaled a distinct change in approaches to the study of human functioning, characterized by assertions that “the mind/brain is, for all intents and purposes, the necessary and sufficient locus of human thought and learning” (Atkinson, 2011b, p. 3). Cognitive psychologists, like generative linguists, sought to discover under- lying motivations and deeper structures of human behavior by using a rational approach. That is, they freed themselves from the strictly empirical study typ- ical of behaviorists and employed the tools of logic, reason, extrapolation, and inference in order to derive explanations for human behavior. For cognitive psychologists, going beyond merely descriptive adequacy to explanatory power took on the utmost importance. Both the structural linguist and the behavioral psychologist were interested in description, in answering what questions about human behavior by means of objective measurement in controlled circumstances. The generative linguist and cognitive psychologist were, to be sure, interested in the what question. But they were far more interested in a more ultimate question: why? What underlying factors—innate, psychological, social, or environmental circum- stances—caused a particular behavior in a human being? Suppose you’re blissfully enjoying a meal at a restaurant when another patron across the room starts screaming expletives, stands up from the table, 12 CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching throws his drink into the face of the waitperson, and stomps out of the restau- rant. A friend later wants to know what happened, and asks various what ques- tions. Which restaurant? What time of day was this? What did the person look like? What did the waiter do? What did the guy say as he walked quickly out of the restaurant? Another friend asks different questions, ones that require your inference about the incident. Was the guy angry? Was he mentally dis- turbed? Why did he throw his drink into the waitperson’s face? Were other people shocked? Was the waitperson embarrassed? The first friend asked objective questions, the answers to which were based on observable behavior. But did they probe ultimate answers? The second set of questions was richer, and obviously riskier. By daring to ask some diffi- cult questions about the unobserved, we may lose some objectivity but gain more profound insight into human behavior. Constructivism: A Multidisciplinary Approach Constructivism is hardly a new school of thought. Piaget and Vygotsky, names often associated with constructivism, are not by any means new to the scene of language studies. Yet, in a variety of post-structuralist theoretical positions, constructivism emerged as a paradigm of intense interest in the last part of the twentieth century. A refreshing characteristic of constructivism is its integration of linguistic, psychological, and sociological paradigms, in con- trast to the professional chasms that often divided those disciplines in the previous century. Now, with its emphasis on social interaction and the dis- covery, or construction, of meaning, the three disciplines have much more common ground. What is constructivism, and how does it differ from the other two viewpoints described above? First, it will be helpful to think of two branches of construc- tivism: cognitive and social. In cognitive constructivism, emphasis is placed on the importance of learners constructing their own representation of reality. “Learners must individually discover and transform complex information if they are to make it their own, [suggesting] a more active role for students in their own learning than is typical in many classrooms” (Slavin, 2003, pp. 257–258). Such claims are rooted in Piaget’s seminal work in the middle of the twentieth century, (Piaget, 1954, 1955, 1970; Piaget & Inhelder, 1969) but have taken a long time to become widely accepted views. For Piaget, “learning is a develop- mental process that involves change, self-generation, and construction, each building on prior learning experiences” (Kaufman, 2004, p. 304). Social constructivism emphasizes the importance of social interaction and cooperative learning in ultimate attainment. Spivey (1997, p. 24) noted that constructivist research tends to focus on “individuals engaged in social practices … on a collaborative group, [or] on a global community.” The cham- pion of social constructivism is Lev Vygotsky (1978), who advocated the view that “children’s thinking and meaning-making is socially constructed and  CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching 13 emerges out of their social interactions with their environment” (Kaufman, 2004, p. 304). C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Constructivists have championed social interaction, discovery learning, and the active role of a learner as necessary for effective learning. In your own L2 learning (or teaching) experiences, what are some examples of constructivism that successfully contributed to your process of learning (or teaching)? One of the most popular concepts advanced by Vygotsky was the notion of a zone of proximal development (ZPD): the distance between learners’ existing developmental state and their potential development. Put another way, the ZPD encompasses tasks that a learner has not yet learned but is capable of learning with appropriate stimuli. The ZPD is an important facet of social con- structivism because it involves tasks “that a child cannot yet do alone but could do with the assistance of more competent peers or adults” (Slavin, 2003, p. 44; see also Karpov & Haywood, 1998). A number of applications of Vygotsky’s ZPD have been made to foreign language instruction (Lantolf, 2000, 2011; Nassaji & Cumming, 2000; Marchenkova, 2005) in both adult and child second language learning contexts. Vygotsky’s concept of the ZPD contrasted rather sharply with Piaget’s theory of learning in that the former saw a unity of learning and development while the latter saw stages of development setting a precondition or readiness for learning (Dunn & Lantolf, 1998). Piaget stressed the importance of indi- vidual cognitive development as a relatively solitary act. Biological timetables and stages of development were basic; social interaction was claimed only to trigger development at the right moment in time. On the other hand, Vygotsky maintained that social interaction was foundational in cognitive development and rejected the notion of predetermined stages. Closely allied to a Vygotskian social constructivist perspective is that of Mikhail Bakhtin (1986, 1990), the Russian literary theorist who has now cap- tured the attention of SLA researchers and practitioners (Hall, Vitanova, & Marchenkova, 2005). Bakhtin contended that language is “immersed in a social and cultural context, and its central function is to serve as a medium of com- munication.” In this spirit, the early years of the new millennium have seen increasing emphasis on sociocultural dimensions of SLA, or what Watson- Gegeo (2004) described as a language socialization paradigm for SLA: a new synthesis that “involves a reconsideration of mind, language, and epistemology, and a recognition that cognition originates in social interaction and is shaped by cultural and sociopolitical processes” (Watson-Gegeo, 2004, p. 331). 14 CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS In your foreign language learning (or teaching), what “sociocul- tural dimensions” of the language did you learn? How did you learn them? How did they contrast with the sociocultural dimen- sions of your native language? We can see constructivist perspectives in the work of first and second lan- guage acquisition researchers who study conversational discourse, sociocul- tural factors in learning, and interactionist theories. In many ways, constructivist perspectives are a natural successor to cognitively based studies of universal grammar, information processing, memory, artificial intelligence, and interlan- guage systematicity. All three of the historical perspectives described in this section—structural/ behavioral, generative/cognitive, and constructivist—must be seen as important in creating balanced descriptions of second language acquisition. Consider for a moment the analogy of a very high mountain, viewed from a distance. From one direction the mountain may have a sharp peak, easily identified glaciers, and jutting rock formations. From another direction, however, the same moun- tain might appear to have two peaks (the second formerly hidden from view) and different configurations of its slopes. From a slightly different direction but this time with binoculars, yet further characteristics emerge—a forested ravine, rounded rocks, a winding trail. The study of SLA is very much like the viewing of such a mountain: we need multiple vantage points and tools in order to ascertain the whole picture. Table 1.2 summarizes concepts and approaches in the three perspectives just described. The chronology of the schools of thought illustrates what Kuhn (1970) described as the structure of scientific revolutions. A successful para- digm is followed by a period of anomaly (doubt, uncertainty, questioning of prevailing theory), then crisis (the “fall” of the existing paradigm) with all the Table 1.2 Three perspectives on second language acquisition Schools of Thought Typical Themes Structural Linguistics/ Behavioral Description, Observable performance, Empiricism, Psychology Scientific method, Conditioning, Reinforcement Generative Linguistics/ Cognitive Acquisition, Innateness, Language competence, Deep Psychology structure, Interlanguage, Systematicity, Variability Constructivism Interactive discourse, Sociocultural factors, Construction of identity, ZPD, Cooperative learning, Discovery learning  CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching 15 professional insecurity that comes with it; and then finally a new paradigm, a novel theory, is put together. However, that new paradigm is never unequivo- cally “new.” The “borrowing” from one paradigm to the next underscores the fact that no single paradigm is right or wrong. Some truth can be found in virtually every critical approach to the study of reality. NINETEEN CENTURIES OF LANGUAGE TEACHING A survey of research and theoretical trends in SLA could remain unfocused without its practical application to the language classroom. Since most readers of this book are ultimately interested in language pedagogy, I will offer occa- sional relevant historical commentaries on language teaching and link those descriptions to topics and issues being treated. In so doing, I hope to acquaint you progressively with some of the methodological trends and issues on the pedagogical side of the profession. So far in this chapter, the focus has been on research over the past century or so of linguistics and psychology. What do we know about language teaching in the two or three millennia prior? The answer is not very much. Louis Kelly’s (1969) informative survey of language teaching over “twenty- five centuries,” to borrow from his title, revealed interesting anecdotal accounts of L2 instruction, but few if any research-based language teaching methods. In the Western world, foreign language learning in schools was synonymous with the learning of Latin or Greek. Latin, thought to promote intellectuality through “mental gymnastics,” was until relatively recently held to be indispensable to an adequate education. Latin was taught by means of what has been called the Classical Method: focus on grammatical rules, memorization of vocabulary and grammatical forms, translation of texts, and performance of written exercises. As other languages began to be taught in educational institutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Classical Method was adopted as the chief means for teaching foreign languages. Little thought was given at the time to teaching oral use of languages; after all, languages were not being taught primarily to learn oral/aural communication, but to learn for the sake of being “scholarly” or, in some instances, for gaining a reading proficiency in a foreign language. Since there was little if any theoretical research on second language acquisition in general, or on the acquisition of reading proficiency, foreign lan- guages were taught as any other skill was taught. Language teaching before the twentieth century is best depicted as a “tra- dition” that, in various manifestations and adaptations, has been practiced in language classrooms worldwide even up to the present time. Late in the nine- teenth century, the Classical Method came to be known as the Grammar Translation Method. There was little to distinguish Grammar Translation from what had gone on in foreign language classrooms for centuries: explanations of grammar points, memorization of lists, and exercises in translation (Prator & Celce-Murcia, 1979). But the Grammar Translation Method remarkably 16 CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching withstood attempts at the outset of the twentieth century to “reform” language teaching methodology, and to this day it remains a standard methodology for language teaching in many educational institutions. C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Have you ever taken a foreign language that was taught through the Grammar Translation Method? How much of the language did you learn? How did you feel, emotionally, about the class? What, if anything, would you change about that class if you had to take it again (or teach it)? It is remarkable, in one sense, that this method has been so stalwart among many competing models. It does virtually nothing to enhance a student’s com- municative ability in the language. It is, according to Jack Richards and Ted Rodgers, “remembered with distaste by thousands of school learners, for whom foreign language learning meant a tedious experience of memorizing endless lists of unusable grammar rules and vocabulary and attempting to produce perfect translations of stilted or literary prose” (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, p. 4). In another sense, however, one can understand why Grammar Translation has been so popular. It requires few specialized skills on the part of teachers. Tests of grammar rules and of translations are easy to construct and can be objectively scored. Many standardized tests of foreign languages still do not attempt to tap into communicative abilities, so students have little motivation to go beyond grammar analogies, translations, and rote exercises. And it is some- times successful in leading a student toward a reading knowledge of an L2. In the final analysis, as Richards and Rodgers (2001, p. 7) pointed out, “It is a method for which there is no theory. There is no literature that offers a rationale or justification for it or that attempts to relate it to issues in linguistics, psychology, or educational theory.” As you continue to examine theoretical principles in this book, I’m sure you will understand more fully the “theoryless- ness” of the Grammar Translation Method. LANGUAGE TEACHING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Against the backdrop of the previous nineteen centuries, a glance through the past century or so of language teaching gives us a refreshingly colorful picture of varied interpretations of the “best” way to teach a foreign language. Perhaps beginning with François Gouin’s (1880) Series Method, foreign language teaching witnessed some revolutionary trends, all of which in one way or another came under the scrutiny of scientific (or observational) research. As schools of thought have come and gone, so have language teaching trends waxed and waned in popularity. Albert Marckwardt (1972, p. 5) saw these  CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching 17 “changing winds and shifting sands” as a cyclical pattern in which a new para- digm (to use Kuhn’s term) of teaching methodology emerged about every quarter of a century, with each new method breaking from the old, but at the same time taking with it some of the positive aspects of the previous paradigm. We might also describe trends across the decades as swings in a pendulum: focus on accuracy vs. focus on fluency, separation of skills vs. integration of skills, and teacher-centered vs. learner-centered approaches. More vividly, we could adopt Mitchell and Vidal’s (2001, p. 27) metaphor to depict our journey across time as “that of a major river, constantly flowing, fed by many sources of water—rivers, streams, springs in remote territories, all fed by rain on wide expanses of land.” One of the best examples of both the cyclical (and fluvial) nature of methods is seen in the revolutionary Audiolingual Method (ALM) of the late 1940s and 1950s. The ALM, with its overemphasis on oral production drills, bor- rowed tenets from its predecessor by almost half a century, the Direct Method, but had essentially sprung from behavioral theories of learning of the time. The ALM rejected its classical predecessor, the Grammar Translation Method, by diminishing if not obliterating the need for metacognitive focus on the forms of language. Within a short time, however, with the increasing popularity of cogni- tive psychology, ALM critics were advocating more attention to rules and to the “cognitive code” of language, which, to some, smacked of a return to Grammar Translation. Shifting sands indeed, and the ebb and flow of paradigms! C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Have you ever taken a class that used the ALM or pattern drills? If so, was the drilling effective? In what circumstances do you think it is effective to use drills in the classroom? Since the early 1970s, the symbiotic relationship of theoretical disciplines and teaching methodology has continued to manifest itself (Thomas, 1998). The field of psychology (as noted in this chapter in outlining tenets of construc- tivism) has witnessed a growing interest in interpersonal relationships, the value of group work, and the use of numerous cooperative strategies for attaining desired goals. The same era has seen linguists searching ever more deeply for answers to the nature of communication and communicative competence and for explanations of the interactive, sociocultural process of language acquisition. The language teaching profession has mirrored these theoretical trends with approaches and techniques that have stressed the importance of self-efficacy, construction of identity, students cooperatively learning together, developing individual strategies for constructing meaning, and above all of focusing on the communicative process in language learning. Some of these methodological innovations will be described in subsequent chapters of this book. 18 CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Teaching Today, many of the pedagogical springs and rivers of the last few decades are appropriately captured in the term Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), now a catchphrase for language teachers. CLT, to be discussed further in Chapter 8, is an eclectic blend of previous methods into the best of what a teacher can provide in authentic uses of the L2 in the classroom. Indeed, the single greatest challenge in the profession is to move significantly beyond the teaching of rules, patterns, definitions, and other knowledge “about” language to the point that we are teaching our students to communicate genuinely, spon- taneously, and meaningfully in the L2. A significant difference between current language teaching practices and those of, perhaps a half a century ago, is the absence of proclaimed “orthodoxies” and “best” methods. We are well aware that methods, as they were conceived of forty or fifty years ago, are too narrow and too constrictive to apply to a wide range of learners in an enormous number of situational contexts. There are no instant recipes. No quick and easy method is guaranteed to provide success. Brown (2001), Kumaravadivelu (2001), and Bell (2003) have all appropriately shown that pedagogical trends in language teaching now spur us to develop a principled basis on which teachers can choose particular designs and techniques for teaching an L2 in a specific context. Mellow (2002) calls this “principled eclec- ticism,” while Richards & Rodgers (2001) refer to an approach in which every learner, every teacher, and every context is unique. Your task as a teacher is to understand the properties of those contexts. Then, using a cautious, enlightened, eclectic approach, you can build a set of foundation stones—a theory, or set of coherent perspectives—based on principles of L2 learning and teaching. SUGGESTED READINGS Ritchie, W., & Bhatia, T. (2009). (Eds.) The new handbook of second language acquisition. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group. Hinkel, E. (Ed.). (2011). Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning: Volume II. New York: Routledge. Both of these useful research tools offer comprehensive surveys of dozens of different subfields of SLA, written by well-known scholars in their respective fields. The volumes offer a wealth of bibliographic references within each chapter. Kaufman, D. (2004). Constructivist issues in language learning and teaching. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 303–319. A readable summary and synopsis of constructivism in language that a novice in the field can understand. Modern Language Journal, Fall 2000 (vol. 84, no. 4) and Spring 2001 (vol. 85, no. 1). An informative picture of the last century of language teaching. Attention is given to the teaching of many different foreign languages  CH AP TER 2 FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Stefanie, a five-year-old monolingual speaker of English, is excitedly retelling the story of The Wizard of Oz, just seen on video. Let’s listen in.... and, and then after that she dreamed, um, and then she was in her sleep when she woke up and, know what? she was, she was on her bed but she woke up, and, I didn’t see her on her bed cause was dreaming about she woking up, then she dreamed about her, uh, then, know what? she saw [laughing] this is the funny part [laughing gleefully] when the tornado, the tornado blew her mother up she was sewing in a chair [still laughing] that’s the funny part, and then, then a witch... What wonderful verbal dynamos children can be! And what a vivid narrative of an amazing scene from a classic American film. Think about all the com- plexity embedded in her enthusiastic description, the syntactic sophistication, and the threads of discourse being spun into the tale. Oh sure, you can find an oddity here and there, a mish-mash of exploding ideas, but the excitement in Stefanie’s story is sheer joy! Listen carefully the next time you hear a small child speak. You’ll hear wonderful examples of a creative mind at work. “Daddy, erase the window!” said a three-year-old child, on seeing a frosted window early in a midwinter morning. Daddy knew exactly what she meant. So did her five-year-old brother, when he declared, “My friend Morgan, she gots a smart phone,” and his envious wide-eyed audience understood without blinking an eye. Yes, kids are creative, but they are systematic as well. How do they do this? The amazing capacity for acquiring one’s native language within the first few years of life has been a subject of interest for centuries. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, German philosopher Dietrich Tiedemann recorded his observations of the psychological and linguistic development of his young son. At the end of the nineteenth century, François Gouin observed the lan- guage acquisition of his nephew, and from those insights derived what came to be known as the Series Method of foreign language teaching. But it was not until the second half of the twentieth century that researchers began to analyze child language systematically and to try to discover the nature of the psycholinguistic process that enables children to gain fluent control of an exceedingly complex system of communication. In a matter of a few 21 22 CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition decades, some giant strides were taken, especially in the generative and cogni- tive models of language, in describing the acquisition of particular languages as well as in probing universal aspects of acquisition. Such research soon led language teachers and teacher educators to draw analogies between L1 and L2 acquisition, and even to justifying certain teaching methods and techniques on the basis of L1 learning principles. On the surface, it’s entirely reasonable to make the analogy. All children, given a typical devel- opmental environment, acquire their native languages fluently and efficiently. And they acquire them “naturally,” without special instruction, although not without significant effort and attention to language. However, direct comparisons between first and second language acquisi- tion must be treated with caution. There are dozens of salient differences between L1 and L2 learning. The most obvious difference, in the case of adult SLA, is the tremendous cognitive and affective contrast between adults and children. A detailed examination of these differences is made in Chapter 3. This chapter will outline issues in L1 learning as a foundation on which you can build an understanding of principles of L2 learning. Let’s begin with theoretical models of L1 acquisition. THEORIES OF FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Everyone at some time has witnessed the remarkable ability of children to communicate. Small babies, babble, coo, and cry, sending an extraordinary number of messages and, of course, receiving even more messages. As they reach the end of their first year, children make specific attempts to imitate words and speech sounds they hear around them, and about this time they utter their first “words.” By about eighteen months of age, these words have multiplied considerably and are beginning to appear in two-word and three- word “sentences”—commonly referred to as “telegraphic” utterances—such as the following (Clark, 2003): all gone milk shoe off baby go boom bye-bye Daddy Mommy sock put down floor gimme toy there cow this one go bye The production tempo now begins to increase as more and more words are spoken every day and more and more combinations of multiword sentences are uttered. By two years of age, children comprehend more sophisticated lan- guage and their production repertoire is mushrooming, even to forming ques- tions and negatives (Clark, 2003): where my mitten? that not rabbits house what Jeff doing? I don’t need pants off why not me sleeping? that not red, that blue  CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition 23 By about age three, children can comprehend an amazing quantity of lin- guistic input. Their speech and comprehension capacity increases daily as they become the generators of nonstop chattering and incessant conversation. Language thereby becoming a mixed blessing for those around them! Their creativity alone brings smiles to parents and older siblings (O’Grady, 2005; Clark, 2009): Who deaded that fly? [two-year-old] Headlights... are lights that go on in the head. [three-year-old] Will you climb me up there and hold me? [three-year-old] Is this where you get safe? [three-year-old in a “Safeway” supermarket] We have two kinds of corn. Popcorn... it crunches. And corn... it doesn’t crunch, its eats. [three-year-old] This fluency and creativity continues into school age as children internalize increasingly complex structures, expand their vocabulary, and sharpen commu- nicative skills. At school age, children not only learn what to say but what not to say as they become more aware of the situated functions of their language. How can we explain this fantastic journey from that first anguished cry at birth to adult competence in a language? From the first word to tens of thou- sands? From telegraphese at eighteen months to the complex, cognitively pre- cise, socioculturally appropriate sentences just a few short years later? These are the sorts of questions that research on language acquisition attempts to answer. One could adopt one of two polarized positions in the study of L1 acquisi- tion. Using the schools of thought referred to in the previous chapter, an extreme behaviorist position would claim that children come into the world with a tabula rasa, a clean slate, bearing no preconceived notions about the world or about language. Children are then shaped by their environment and slowly conditioned through various rewards. At the other extreme is the position that relies on two hypotheses: (1) chil- dren come into this world with very specific innate knowledge, predispositions, and biological timetables, and (2) children learn to function in a language chiefly through interaction and discourse. These perspectives represent opposites on a continuum, with many pos- sible positions in between. Three points are explained in this chapter. The first (behavioral) position is set in contrast to the second (nativist) and third (func- tional) positions. Behavioral Approaches Daddy walks into his house, and his nine-month-old child gleefully exclaims, “Da da!” Daddy grins widely, gives his daughter a big hug, and responds, “Hi, sweetie!” The process of reinforcement of linguistic utterances is once again played out. A behavioral perspective of course easily explains such exchanges as the result of an emitted or stimulated “response” (utterance) that is immediately 24 CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition rewarded (reinforced), thereby encouraging (stimulating) further linguistic attempts from the child. In examining language “behavior” in children, behavioral psychologists look at immediately perceptible aspects of linguistic behavior—what they might call “publicly observable responses”—and the associations between those responses and perceived rewards in the world surrounding them. “Effective” language behavior is seen as the production of desired responses to stimuli. If a particular response is rewarded, it then becomes habitual, or conditioned. The model works for comprehension as well as production, although cor- rect comprehension is not, strictly speaking, publicly observable. One must observe context and nonverbal behavior to confirm comprehension. A behav- ioral view claims that a child demonstrates comprehension of an utterance by responding appropriately to it, and then upon reinforcement of that appro- priate response, internalizes (or learns) linguistic meanings. “Want some milk?” asks the mother of an eight-month-old child. The child holds out his cup and says “mi--.” Conclusion? The child’s verbal and nonverbal response demon- strates correct comprehension of the initial offer. One of the earliest attempts to construct a behavioral model of language acquisition was embodied in B.F. Skinner’s classic, Verbal Behavior (1957). Skinner was commonly known for his experiments with animal behavior, but he also gained recognition for his contributions to education through teaching machines and programmed learning (Skinner, 1968). Skinner’s theory of verbal behavior was an extension of his general theory of learning by operant conditioning. Operant conditioning refers to conditioning in which the organism (in this case, a human being) emits a response, or operant (a sentence or utter- ance), without necessarily observable stimuli; that operant is maintained (learned) by reinforcement (for example, a positive verbal or nonverbal response from another person). If a child says “want milk” and a parent gives the child some milk, the operant is reinforced and, over repeated instances, is conditioned. According to Skinner, verbal behavior, like other behavior, is con- trolled by its consequences. When consequences are rewarding, behavior is maintained and is increased in strength and perhaps frequency. When conse- quences are punishing, or when there is a total lack of reinforcement, the behavior is weakened and eventually extinguished. C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS What are some examples of operant conditioning techniques that you have experienced in learning or teaching an L2? (Examples include repetition of modeled language, drills of various kinds.) For each technique that you can think of, what is the reinforce- ment given? How effective was the technique, in your experience?  CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition 25 Challenges to Behavioral Approaches Skinner’s theories attracted a number of critics, not the least among them Chomsky (1959), who penned a highly critical review of Verbal Behavior. Some years later, however, MacCorquodale (1970) published a reply to Chomsky’s review in which he eloquently defended Skinner’s points of view. The controversy raged on. Today virtually no one would agree that Skinner’s model of verbal behavior adequately accounts for the capacity to acquire language, for language develop- ment itself, for the abstract nature of language, or for a theory of meaning. A theory based on conditioning and reinforcement is hard-pressed to explain the fact that every sentence you speak or write—with a few trivial exceptions—is novel, never before uttered either by you or by anyone else! These novel utterances are never- theless created by very young children as they “play” with language, and that same creativity continues into adulthood and throughout one’s life. C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Children are excellent at “playing” with language, experimenting with words and combinations of words. Language play seems to have a positive effect for long-term acquisition. Have you ever played with a language you have taken in a classroom? What kinds of “games” might be useful in teaching a second language to adults? In an attempt to broaden the base of behavioral theory, some psychologists proposed modified theoretical positions. One of these positions was mediation theory, (Osgood, 1953, 1957) in which meaning was accounted for by the claim that the linguistic stimulus (a word or sentence) elicits a “mediating” response that is covert and invisible, acting within the learner. Mediation theories were criticized on several fronts. There was too much “mentalism” (speculating about unobservable behavior) involved for some, and others saw little relationship between meaning and utterance. Jenkins and Palermo (1964), for example, attempted to synthesize generative and media- tional approaches to child language by asserting that the child acquires frames and patterns of sentence elements, and then learns the stimulus-response equiv- alences that can be substituted within each frame. But this approach also fell short of accounting for the abstract nature of language, for the child’s creativity, and for the interactive nature of language acquisition. Oddly, a recent revival of mediation theory (Lantolf, 2000, 2011) is enjoying considerable attention! As interest in behaviorism waned, generative and cognitive research opened the doors to new approaches that emphasized the presumed innate 26 CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition properties of language, and subsequently the importance of social interaction in child first language acquisition. The Nativist Approach The term nativist is derived from the fundamental assertion that language acquisition is innately determined, that we are born with a genetic capacity that predisposes us to a systematic perception of language around us, resulting in the construction of an internalized system of language. Innateness hypotheses spawned several proposals about human language acquisition. Eric Lenneberg (1967) suggested that language is a “species-specific” behavior and that certain modes of perception, categorizing abilities, and other language-related mechanisms are biologically determined. Chomsky (1965) similarly claimed that innate properties of language explained the child’s mas- tery of a native language in such a short time despite the highly abstract nature of the rules of language. This innate knowledge, according to Chomsky, was embodied in a metaphorical “little black box” in the brain, a language acquisi- tion device (LAD). David McNeill (1966) described the LAD as consisting of four innate linguistic properties: 1. The ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in the environment 2. The ability to organize linguistic data into various classes that can later be refined 3. Knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system is possible and that other kinds are not 4. The ability to engage in constant evaluation of the developing linguistic system so as to construct the simplest possible system out of the avail- able linguistic input McNeill and others in the Chomskyan tradition composed eloquent argu- ments for the appropriateness of the LAD proposition, especially in contrast to behavioral stimulus-response (S-R) theory, which could not account for the creativity present in child language. The notion of linguistically-oriented innate predispositions fit perfectly with generative theories of language: children were presumed to use innate abilities to generate a potentially infinite number of utterances. Aspects of meaning, abstractness, and creativity were accounted for more adequately. Even though it was readily recognized that the LAD was not literally a cluster of brain cells that could be isolated and neurologically located, such inquiry on the cognitive side of the linguistic-psychological continuum stimulated a great deal of fruitful research. More recently, researchers in the nativist tradition continued this line of inquiry through a genre of child language acquisition research that focuses on what has come to be known as Universal Grammar (Cook, 1993; Mitchell & Myles, 1998; Gass & Selinker, 2001; White, 2003, 2012; Bhatia & Ritchie, 2009).  CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition 27 This line of research expanded the LAD notion by positing a system of universal linguistic rules that went well beyond what was originally proposed for the LAD. Universal Grammar (UG) research attempts to discover what it is that children, regardless of their environmental stimuli (the language[s] they hear around them) bring to the language acquisition process. Such studies have looked at question formation, negation, word order, discontinuity of embedded clauses (The ball that’s on the table is blue), subject deletion (“Es mi hermano” —He is my brother), and other grammatical phenomena. (More details about UG are covered in a later section of this chapter.) One of the more practical contributions of nativist theories is evident if you look at the kinds of discoveries that have been made about how the system of child language works. Research has shown that the child’s language, at any given point, is a legitimate system in its own right. The child’s linguistic development is not a process of developing fewer and fewer “incorrect” structures—not a lan- guage in which earlier stages have more “mistakes” than later stages. Rather, the child’s language at any stage is systematic in that the child is constantly forming hypotheses on the basis of the input received and then testing those hypotheses in speech (and comprehension). As the child’s language develops, those hypoth- eses are continually revised, reshaped, or sometimes abandoned. Before generative linguistics came into vogue, Jean Berko (1958) demon- strated that children learn language not as a series of separate discrete items but as an integrated system. Using a simple nonsense-word test, Berko discov- ered that English-speaking children as young as four years of age applied rules for the formation of plural, present progressive, past tense, third singular, and possessives. She found, for example, that if children saw a drawing of an object labeled as a “wug” they could easily talk about two “wugs,” or if they were presented with a person who knows how to “gling,” children could talk about a person who “glinged” yesterday, or sometimes who “glang.” C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS In your experience learning an L2, do you think you have made “systematic” extrapolations of perceived rules as children do? Do you remember any instances of regularizing irregular verbs? Forming questions with logical but incorrect forms? Using a new word or phrase in what you thought was the appropriate con- text—but it turned out that you overgeneralized? If so, try to recall them, and analyze the origin of these errors. If you have taught (or are teaching) a second language, in what ways have you seen or heard your students being “creative” with language? And if so, what has been your response? 28 CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition Nativist studies of child language acquisition were free to construct hypo- thetical grammars (that is, descriptions of linguistic systems) of child language, although such grammars were still solidly based on empirical data. Linguists began to examine child language from early one-, two-, and three-word forms of “telegraphese” (like “allgone milk” and “baby go boom” mentioned earlier) to the complex language of five- to ten-year-olds. Borrowing one tenet of struc- tural and behavioral paradigms, they approached the data with few precon- ceived notions about what the child’s language ought to be, and probed the data for internally consistent systems, in much the same way that a linguist describes a language in the “field.” A generative framework turned out to be ideal for describing such pro- cesses. The early grammars of child language were referred to as pivot gram- mars. It was commonly observed that the child’s first two-word utterances seemed to manifest two separate word classes, and not simply two words thrown together at random. Consider the following utterances: “my cap”; “that horsie”; “bye-bye Jeff”; “Mommy sock.” Linguists noted that the words on the left-hand side seemed to belong to a class that words on the right-hand side generally did not belong to. That is, my could co-occur with cap, horsie, Jeff, or sock, but not with that or bye-bye. Mommy is, in this case, a word that belongs in both classes. The first class of words was called “pivot,” since they could pivot around a number of words in the second, “open” class. Thus the first rule of the generative grammar of the child was described as follows: Sentence ∞ pivot word 1 open word Research data gathered in the generative framework yielded a multitude of such rules. Some of these rules appear to be grounded in the UG of the child. As the child’s language matures and finally becomes adult like, the number and complexity of generative rules accounting for language competence, of course, boggles the mind. Challenges to Nativist Approaches In subsequent years the generative rule-governed model in the Chomskyan tradition was challenged. The assumption underlying this tradition was that those generative rules, or “items” in a linguistic sense, are connected serially, with one connection between each pair of neurons in the brain. A “messier but more fruitful picture” (Spolsky, 1989, p. 149) was provided by what has come to be known as the parallel distributed processing (PDP) model, based on the notion that information is processed simultaneously at several levels of attention. As you read the words on this page, your brain is attending to let- ters, word juncture and meaning, syntactic relationships, textual discourse, as well as background experiences (schemata) that you bring to the text. A child’s (or adult’s) linguistic performance may be the consequence of many levels of  CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition 29 simultaneous neural interconnections rather, than a serial process of one rule being applied, then another, then another, and so forth. A simple analogy to music may further illustrate this complex notion. Think of an orchestra playing a symphony. The score for the symphony may have, let’s say, twelve separate parts that are performed simultaneously. The “symphony” of the human brain enables us to process many segments and levels of language, cognition, affect, and perception all at once—in a parallel configuration. And so, according to the PDP model, a sentence—which has phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic, discourse, sociolin- guistic, and strategic properties—is not “generated” by a series of rules (Ney & Pearson, 1990; Sokolik, 1990). Rather, sentences are the result of the simulta- neous interconnection of a multitude of brain cells. C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Take yourself back to a classroom hour during the first weeks of learning (or attempting to learn) a foreign language. Try to remember a set of sentences that were presented to you (greetings, for example). How many levels, or perceptions—in parallel—was your brain attending to in a simple exchange of greetings? At what point might there be an “overload” at this beginning level, one that would create so many neural interconnections that you would be overwhelmed? Closely related to the PDP concept is a branch of psycholinguistic inquiry called connectionism (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986), in which neurons in the brain are said to form multiple connections: each of the 100 billion nerve cells in the brain may be linked to thousands of its counterparts. In this approach, experience leads to learning by strengthening particular connections—some- times at the expense of weakening others. For example, the L1 acquisition of English regular past tense forms by children may proceed as a series of connections. First, a child may confidently connect the form went with the verb go. Then, children will often perceive another connection, the regular -ed suffix attached to a verb, and start using the word goed. Later, with more complex connections, children will perceive goed as incorrect, and maintain both connections: the -ed form connected to most verbs, and the went form as a “special” connection. “According to such accounts, there are no ‘rules’ of grammar. Instead, the systematicities of syntax emerge from the set of learned associations between language functions and base and past tense forms, with novel responses generated by ‘online’ general- izations from stored examples” (N. Ellis, 2003, p. 88). 30 CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition Finally, in recent years a further development of connectionist models of language acquisition is seen in a position that hearkens back to the spirit of behavioral approaches. Emergentism, a perspective, espoused by William O’Grady (1999, 2003, 2012), O’Grady, Lee and Kwak (2009), MacWhinney (1999), and others essentially makes the following claim: The complexity of language emerges from a relatively simple developmental process being exposed to a massive and complex environment. The interactions that constitute language are asso- ciations, billions of connections, which co-exist within a neural system as organisms co-exist within an eco-system. And systema- ticities emerge as a result of their interactions and mutual con- straints (N. Ellis, 2003, p. 81). This perspective disagrees sharply with earlier nativist views by suggesting that “this “strategy [the search for an ‘acquisition device’] is misguided and that language acquisition is a secondary effect of processing amelioration” (O’Grady, 2012, p. 116). Emergentism represents a more cautious approach to a theory of language acquisition than was evident in the early nativist claims, some arguments (Schwartz, 1999) notwithstanding. First, we must give due attention to the importance of input in acquisition (Ellis, 2006b; O’Grady, Lee & Kwak, 2009). Because a child is exposed to a limited sample of language, we are spurred to carefully examine observable linguistic performance in the child’s environment. We are also reminded of the crucial role of frequency of input (Ellis, 2006b). And further, by attending to the identification of neurolinguistic components of language acquisition (Schumann et al., 2004), researchers can be more cautious about making overly “mentalistic” claims about the psychological reality of rule construction in language acquisition. Research from within the nativist framework, including the challenges just outlined above, has made several important contributions to our understanding of the L1 acquisition process: 1. Freedom from the restrictions of the “scientific method” to explore the unseen, unobservable, underlying, abstract linguistic structures being developed in the child 2. The construction of a number of potential properties of Universal Grammar, through which we can better understand not just language acquisition but the nature of human languages in general 3. Systematic description of the child’s linguistic repertoire as either rule- governed, or operating out of parallel distributed processing capacities, or the result of experiential establishment of connections Functional Approaches More recently, with an increase in constructivist perspectives on the study of language, we have seen a shift in patterns of research. The shift has not been  CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition 31 so much away from the generative/cognitive side of the continuum, but rather a move more deeply into the essence of language. Two emphases have emerged: (1) Researchers began to see that language was just one manifesta- tion of the cognitive and affective ability to deal with the world, with others, and with the self. (2) Moreover, the generative rules that were proposed under the nativist framework were abstract, formal, explicit, and quite logical, yet they dealt specifically with the forms of language and not with the deeper functional levels of meaning constructed from social interaction. Examples of forms of language are morphemes, words, sentences, and the rules that govern them. Functions are the meaningful, interactive purposes within a social (prag- matic) context that we accomplish with the forms. Cognition and Language Development Lois Bloom (1971) cogently illustrated the first issue in her criticism of pivot grammar when she pointed out that the relationships in which words occur in telegraphic utterances are only superficially similar. For example, in the utter- ance “Mommy sock,” which nativists would describe as a sentence consisting of a pivot word and an open word, Bloom found at least three possible underlying relations: agent-action (Mommy is putting the sock on), agent-object (Mommy sees the sock), and possessor-possessed (Mommy’s sock). By examining data in reference to contexts, Bloom concluded that children learn underlying struc- tures, and not superficial word order. Thus, depending on the social context, “Mommy sock” could mean a number of different things to a child. C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Why don’t we present “telegraphese” sentences to beginning learners in a foreign language class? Imagine some telegraphic utterances in a foreign language you have learned. How plausible (or ridiculous) would it be to practice those utterances? Would you sound too childlike, or would they work as interim commu- nication strategies? Bloom’s research paved the way for a new wave of child language study, this time centering on the relationship of cognitive development to L1 acquisi- tion. Jean Piaget (1955; Piaget & Inhelder, 1969) described overall development as the result of children’s interaction with their environment. According to Piaget, what children learn about language is determined by what they already know about the world. Gleitman and Wanner (1982, p. 13) noted in their review of the state of the art in child language research at that time, “children appear to approach language learning equipped with conceptual interpretive abilities for categorizing the world.” 32 CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition Dan Slobin (1971, 1986, 1997), among others, demonstrated that in all lan- guages, semantic learning depends on cognitive development and that sequences of development are determined more by semantic complexity than by structural complexity. Bloom (1976, p. 37) likewise noted that “what children know will determine what they learn about the code for both speaking and understanding messages.” So child language researchers began to tackle the child’s acquisition of the functions of language, and the relationships of the forms of language to those functions. Social Interaction and Language Development In recent years, it has become quite clear that language development is intertwined, not just with cognition and memory, but also with social and func- tional acquisition. Holzman (1984), Berko-Gleason, (1988), and Lock (1991) all looked at the interaction between the child’s language acquisition and the learning of how social systems operate in human behavior. Other investigations of child language (Kuczaj, 1984; Budwig, 1995) centered on one of the thorn- iest areas of linguistic research: interactive, communicative functions of lan- guage. What do children learn about talking with others? About connected pieces of discourse (relations between sentences)? The interaction between hearer and speaker? Conversational cues? Within such a perspective, the very heart of language—its communicative and pragmatic function—is being tackled in all its variability (Clark, 2003; O’Grady, 2005). Of significance in this genre of research is the renewed interest in the performance level of language. The overt responses that were so carefully observed by structuralists—and hastily weeded out as “performance variables” by generative linguists in their zeal to get at “competence”—returned to the forefront. Hesitations, pauses, backtracking, and the like are indeed significant conversational cues. Even some of the contextual categories described by—of all people—Skinner, in Verbal Behavior, turn out to be relevant! The linguist can no longer deal with abstract, formal rules without dealing with all the minutiae of day-to-day performance that were previously set aside in a search for systematicity. C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Adult L2 instruction—even in communicative approaches—typically includes an emphasis on the structure of the language, and also vocabulary. In other words, students are taught the forms of lan- guage. What has been your experience? Do you think foreign lan- guage classrooms should put less emphasis on form and more emphasis on communication, social interaction, and discourse? What would be an appropriate “mix” of form and function?  CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition 33 Behaviorist Mediation Nativist Functional Theory innate predispositions (LAD/UG) constructivist tabula rasa social interaction stimuli: linguistic systematic, mediating rule-governed cognition and responses language response acquisition conditioning creative construction functions of language (Rm) reinforcement “pivot” grammar discourse parallel distributed processing Figure 2.1 Theories of first language acquisition Several perspectives have been sketched out here, as summarized in Figure 2.1. A complete, consistent, unified theory of L1 acquisition is yet on the horizon; however, L1 research has made enormous strides toward that ultimate goal. And even if all the answers are far from evident, maybe we are asking more of the right questions. ISSUES IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Intertwining all the above perspectives are issues, questions, and controversies that carry over into quite a number of domains of inquiry in linguistics and psychology. A sketch of these issues will lay the groundwork for under- standing some of the variables surrounding SLA that will be taken up in sub- sequent chapters. Competence and Performance Let’s go back to Stefanie, the five-year-old monolingual English speaker quoted at the beginning of the chapter. Obviously fond of recounting stories, she is now retelling another story, this time a TV program: They heared ‘em underground ca-cause they went through a hoyle—a hole—and they pulled a rock from underground and then they saw a wave going in—that the hole—and they brought a table and the wave brought ‘em out the k—tunnel and then the—they went away and then, uh, um, ah, back on top and it was, uh, going under a bridge and they went—then the braves hit the—the bridge—they—all of it, th-then they looked there, then they, then they were safe. 34 CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition The story is replete with what a linguist would call performance variables: hesitations, repetitions, false starts, and self-corrections. Is it possible to “weed out” those performance glitches and be left with her basic competence? For centuries scientists and philosophers have drawn a basic distinction between competence and performance. Competence refers to one’s underlying knowledge of a system, event, or fact. It is the nonobservable ability to do some- thing—to perform something. Performance is the overtly observable and concrete manifestation, or realization, of competence. It is the actual doing of something: walking, singing, dancing, speaking. The competence–performance distinction is exemplified in all walks of life. In businesses, workers are expected to perform their jobs “competently,” that is, to exhibit skills that match their expected compe- tence. In educational circles we have assumed that children possess certain com- petence in given areas (or standards) and that this competence can be measured by elicited samples of performance called tests and examinations. Think of language competence and performance in the horticultural metaphor of a tree, as illustrated in Figure 2.2. The “invisible” roots of competence nourish and sustain the outwardly visible branches, leaves, and fruit of production. In reference to language, competence is one’s underlying knowledge of the system of a language—its rules of grammar, vocabulary, all the “pieces” of a language, and how those pieces fit together. Performance is actual production (speaking, writing) or the comprehension (listening, reading) of linguistic events. Chomsky (1965) likened competence to an “idealized” speaker-hearer who does not display such performance variables as memory limitations, dis- tractions, shifts of attention and interest, errors, and hesitation phenomena (e.g., repeats, false starts, pauses, omissions). Chomsky’s point was that a theory of language had to be a theory of competence lest the linguist try in vain to categorize an infinite number of performance variables that are not reflective of the underlying linguistic ability of the speaker-hearer. The distinction is one that linguists and psychologists in the generative/ cognitive framework operated under for some time, a mentalistic construct that structuralists and behaviorists obviously discounted, as competence is unobserv- able. Brown and Bellugi (1964) gave us a delightful example of the difficulty of attempting to extract underlying grammatical knowledge from children. Unlike adults, who can be asked, for example, whether it is better to say “two foots” or “two feet,” children exhibit what is called the “pop-go-weasel” effect, as wit- nessed in the following dialogue between an adult and a two-year-old child: Adult: Now Adam, listen to what I say. Tell me which is better to say: some water or a water? Adam: Pop go weasel. The child obviously had no interest in—or cognizance of—the adult’s grammatical interrogation and therefore said whatever he wanted to! The researcher is thus forced to devise indirect methods of judging competence.  CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition 35 speaking listening N C IO CT O MP U OD RE PERFORMANCE PR HE g N O writin "doing" language SI N overt manifestation reading speaking rules pragmatics COMPETENCE reading strategies writing underlying grammar rules ability to perform phonology semantics cultural knowledge lexicon listening rules Figure 2.2 Horticultural depiction of language competence and performance 36 CHAPTER 2 First Language Acquisition Among those methods are the audio or video recording and transcription of countless hours of speech followed by rigorous analysis, and/or the direct administration of certain imitation, production, or comprehension tests, all with numerous disadvantages. Now let’s return to the five-year-old’s narrative at the beginning of this sec- tion. On the surface it might appear that Stefanie is severely impaired in her attempts to communicate. In fact, I once presented this same transcript, without identification of the speaker, to a group of speech therapists and asked them to analyze the various possible “disorders” manifested in the data. After they cited quite a number of technical instances of aphasia, I gleefully informed them of the real source! The point is that every day in our processing of lin- guistic data, we comprehend such strings of speech and comprehend them rather well because we know something about storytelling, hesitation phe- nomena, and the context of a narrative. C LASSROOM C ONNECTIONS Have you ever visited a country where another language is used and tried to make yourself understood by shopkeepers, vendors, or cab drivers? Your attempts were probably riddled with errors as you “butchered” the language. What would you think of a teacher who forced you into such situations (through role-play simulations) in a beginning language classroom? What would be the pros and cons of such a technique? If we were to record many more samples of the five-year-old’s speech, we would still be faced with the problem of inferring her competence. What is her knowledge of the verb system? Or her concept of a “sentence”? Even if we administer rather carefully designed tests of comprehension or production to a child, we are still left with the problem of accurately inferring the child’s under- lying competence. Continued research helps us to confirm those inferences through multiple observations. Adult talk is often no less fraught with monstrosities, as we can see in the following verbatim transcription of comments made on a talk show by a profes- sional golfer discussing tips on how to improve a golf game. Concentration is important. But uh—I also—to go with this of course if you’re playing well—if you’re playing well then you get up-tight about your game. You get keyed up and it’s easy to concentrate. You know you’re playing well and you know... in with a chance than it’s easier, much easier to—to you know g