Second Language Learning PDF

SECOND LANGUAG E LEARNING Preview In this chapter we focus on second language learners' developing knowledge and use of their new language. We begin by looking at the different contexts far first and second language learning as well as the different characteristics of learners in t...

SECOND LANGUAG E LEARNING Preview In this chapter we focus on second language learners' developing knowledge and use of their new language. We begin by looking at the different contexts far first and second language learning as well as the different characteristics of learners in these contexts. We examine sorne of the errors that learners make and discuss what errors can tell us about their knowledge of the language and their ability to use that knowledge. We look at stages and sequences in the acquisition of sorne syntactic and morphological features in the second lan guage. We also review sorne aspects of learners' development of vocabulary, pragmatics, and phonology. AC T I V I T Y Explore contexts for second language learning A second language learner is different in many ways from a young child acquiring a first language or an older child learning a second language.This is true in terms of both the learners' characteristics and the environments in which the language acquisition typically occurs.Think about how the characteristics and learning conditions of the following learners may differ: a young child learning a first language a child learning a second language in day care or on the playground an adolescent studying a foreign language in their own country an adult immigrant with limited or disrupted education working in a second language environment and having no opportunity to go to language classes. 36 Second language learning Now ask you rself the following questions about these different learners. 1 Do they al ready know at least one language? 2 Are they cognitively matu re? Are they able to engage in problem solving, deduction, and complex memory tasks? 3 How well developed is their metalinguistic awareness? Can they define a word, say what sounds make u p that word, or state a rule such as 'add an -s to form the plural'? 4 How extensive is thei r general knowledge of the world? Does this knowledge enable them to make good guesses about what a second language interlocutor is probably saying? 5 Are they likely to be anxious about maki ng mistakes and concerned about soundi ng'silly' when speaking the language? 6 Does the learning environment allow them to be silent in the early stages of learning, or are they expected to speak from the begi n ni ng? 7 Do they have plenty of time available for language learni ng and plenty of contact with proficient speakers of the language? 8 Do they frequently receive corrective feedback when they make errors in grammar or pronu nciation, or do listeners usually overlook these errors and pay attention to the meani ng? 9 Do they receive corrective feedback when their meani ng is not clear, when they use the wrong word, or when they say something that seems inappropriate or impolite? 1OIs modified input available?That is, do interlocutors adapt their speech so that learners can u nderstand (for example, in terms of speed of delivery, complexity of grammatical structure, or vocabulary)? Then compare you r views with the discussion of learner characteristics and learning conditions below. Learner characteristics By definition, all second language learners, regardless of age, have already acquired at least one language. This prior knowledge may be an advantage in the sense that they have an idea of how languages work. On the other hand, knowledge of other languages can lead learners to make incorrect guesses about how the second language works, and this may result in errors that first language learners would not make. Very young language learners begin the task of first language acquisition without the cognitive maturity or metalinguistic awareness that older second language learners have. Although young second language learners have begun to develop these characteristics, they will still have far to go in these areas, as well as in the area of world knowledge, before they reach the levels already attained by adults and adolescents.  Second language learning 37 Usi ng the chart in Table 2.1 ,give you r opinion about the presence or absence of learner characteristics and learning conditions for the four different learners mentioned above. Use the following notation: + =usually present - = usually absent ? = sometimes present, sometimes absent, or you're not sure First Second language language Young child You ng child Adolescent Adult (at home) (playground) (classroom) (on the job) Learner characteristics Another languag e Cognitive matu rity Metalinguisti c awareness World knowledge Anxiety about speaking Learning conditions Freedom to be silent Am ple time Corrective feedback (grammar and pronunciation) Corrective feed back (meaning, word choice, politeness) Modified input Photocopiable © Oxford University Press Table 2. I Contexts for language /earning 38 Second language learning On the one hand, cognitive maturity and metalinguistic awareness allow older learners to salve problems and engage in discussions about language. This is particularly important for those who are learning language in a class room, with limited time in contact with the language. On the other hand, sorne theorists have suggested that the use of these cognitive skills-so valua ble for many kinds of tasks-can actually interfere with language acquisition. They argue that successful language acquisition draws on different mental abilities, abilities that are specific to language learning. Ithas been suggested that older learners draw on their problem-solving and metalinguistic abilities precisely because they can no longer access the innate language acquisition ability they had as young children. We will have more to say about this in Chapter 3, when we discuss the role of age in second language acquisition. In addition to possible cognitive differences, there are also attitudinal and cul tural differences between children and adults. Most child learners are willing to try to use the language-even when their proficiency is quite limited. Many adults and adolescents find it stressful when they are unable to express themselves clearly and correctly. Nevertheless, even very young (pre-school) children differ in their willingness to speak a language they do not know well. Sorne children happily chatter away in their new language; others prefer to listen and participate silently in social interaction with their peers. Learning conditions Young second language learners are often allowed to be silent until they are ready to speak. They may also practise their second language in songs and games that allow them to blend their voices with those of other children. Older second language learners are often forced to speak from the earli est days of their learning, whether to meet the requirements of classroom instruction or to carry out everyday tasks such as shopping, medical visits, or job interviews. Another way in which younger and older learners may differ is in the amount of time they can actually spend learning a second language. We know that first language learners spend thousands of hours in contact with the language or languages spoken around them. Young second language learners may also be exposed to their second language for many hours every d a y - i n the classroom, on the playground, or in front of the television. Older learners, especially students in foreign language classrooms, receive far less exposure perhaps only a few hours a week. Indeed, a typical foreign language student will have no more than a few hundred hours of exposure, spread out over a number of years. Adult learners who are immigrants or minority language speakers often continue to use the language they already know as they fulfil their daily responsibilities for work and family, and they may use the second language only in limited situations.  Second language learning 39 Classroom learners not only spend less time in contact with the new lan guage, they also tend to be exposed to a far smaller range of discourse types. For example, classroom learners are often taught language that is somewhat formal in comparison to the language as it is used in most social settings. I n manyforeign language classes, teachers may even switch to their students' first language for discipline or classroom management, thus depriving learners of opportunities to experience uses of the language in real communication. As we saw in Chapter l, parents tend to respond to the meaning rather than to the grammatical accuracy of their children's language. Similarly, in second language learning outside classrooms, errors that do not interfere with meaning are usually overlooked. Most people would feel they were being impolite if they interrupted and corrected someone who was trying to have a conversation with them. Nevertheless, interlocutors may react to an error if they cannot understand what the speaker is trying to say. Thus, errors of grammar and pronunciation may not be remarked on, but the wrong word choice may receive comment from a puzzled interlocutor. In a situation where a second language speaker appears to use inappropriate language, interlocu tors may feel uncomfortable, not knowing whether the speaker intends to be rude or simply does not know the polite way to say what is intended. Inthis case too, especially between adults, it is unlikely that the second language speaker would be told that something had gone wrong. The only place where feedback on error is typically present with high frequency is the language classroom. Even there, it is not always provided consistently. In Chapters 5 and 6, research on the role of feedback in the classroom will be reviewed. One condition that appears to be common to learners of all ages-though not in equal quality or quantity-is exposure to modified or adapted input. This adjusted speech style, called child-directed speech in first language acquisi tion, has sometimes been called foreigner talk or teacher talk depending on the contexts of second language acquisition. Sorne people who interact regularly with language learners seem to have an intuitive sense of what adjustments they need to make to help learners understand. Of course, not everyone knows what adjustments will be most helpful. We have all witnessed ch.ose painful conversations in which people seem to think that they can make learners understand better if they simply talk louder! Sorne Canadian friends told us of an experience they had in China. They were visiting sorne historie temples and wanted to get more information about them than they muld glean from a guidebook, so they asked their guide sorne questions. Unfortunately, their limited Chinese and his non-existent English made it difficult for them to exchange information. The guide kept speaking louder and louder, but our friends understood very little. Finally, in frustration, the pude concluded that it would help if they could see the information, so he ll>Oka stick and began writing in the s a n d - i n Chinese characters! 40 Second language learning This brief discussion places the emphasis on how both the characteristics of learners and the contexts in which they acquire a second language may be different. Inthe following pages, we will focus more on similarities in how their knowledge of the new language develops over time. Studying the language of second language learners We have seen that children's knowledge of the grammatical system of their first language is built up in predictable sequences. Por example, grammati cal morphemes such as the -ing of the present progressive or the -ed of the simple past are not acquired at the same time, but in a sequence. Are there developmental sequences for second language acquisition? How does the prior knowledge of the first language affect the acquisition of the second (or third) language? How does instruction affect second language acquisition? Are there differences in the development oflearners whose only contact with the new language is in a dassroom and those who use the language in daily life? These are sorne of the questions researchers have sought to answer, and we will address them in this chapter as well as in Chapters 5 and 6. Knowing more about the development oflearner language helps teachers to assess teaching procedures in the light of what they can reasonably expect to accomplish in the dassroom. As we will see, sorne characteristics of learner  Second language learning 41 language can be quite perplexing if one does not have an overall picture of the steps learners go through in acquiring the second language. In presenting sorne of the findings of second language research, we have induded a number of examples oflearner language as well as sorne additional samples to give you an opportunity to practise analysing learner language. Of course, teachers analyse learner language all the time. They try to determine whether students have learned what has been taught and how closely their language matches the target language. But progress cannot always be meas ured in these terms. Sometimes language acquisition progress is reflected in a decrease in the use of a correct form that was based on rote memoriza tion or chunk learning. New errors may be based on an emerging ability to generalize a particular grammatical form beyond the specific items with which it was first learned. In this sense, an increase in error may be an indica tion of progress. Far example, like first language learners, second language learners usually learn the irregular past tense forms of certain common verbs befare they learn to apply the regular simple past -ed marker. That means that a learner who says 'I buyed a bus ticket' may know more about English grammar than one who says 'I bought a bus ticket'. Without further infor mation, we cannot conclude that the one who says 'bought' would use the regular past -ed marker where it is appropriate, but the learner who says 'buyed' has provided evidence of developing knowledge of a systematic aspect of English. Teachers and researchers cannot read learners' minds, so they must infer what learners know by observing what they do. Like those who study first language acquisition, we observe learners' spontaneous language use, but we also design procedures that help to reveal more about the knowledge underlying their observable use oflanguage. Without these procedures, it is often difficult to determine whether a particular behaviour is representative of something systematic in a learner's current language knowledge or simply an isolated ítem, learned as a chunk. Like first language learners, second language learners do not learn language simply through imitation and practice. They produce sentences that are not exactly like those they have heard. These new sentences appear to be based on interna! cognitive processes and prior knowledge that interact with the language they hear around them. Both first and second language acquisition are best described as developing systems with their own evolving rules and patterns, not simply as imperfect versions of the target language. Contrastive analysis, error analysis, and interlanguage Until the late 1960s, people tended to see second language learners' speech simply as an incorrect version of the target language. According to the con trastive analysis hypothesis (CAH), errors were assumed to be the result 42 Second language learning of transfer from learners' first language. Detailed analysis of learners' errors revealed, however, that not all errors made by second language learners can be explained in terms of first language transfer alone. A number of studies show that many errors can be explained better in terms oflearners' develop ing knowledge of the structure of the target language rather than an attempt to transfer patterns of their first language (Richards 1974). Furthermore, sorne of the errors are remarkably similar to those made by young first lan guage learners, for example, the use of a regular -ed past tense ending on an irregular verb. A simplified version of the CAH would predict that, where differences exist, errors would be bi-directional, that is, for example, French speakers learning English and English speakers learning French would make errors on paral lel linguistic features. Helmut Zobl (1980) observed that this is not always the case. For example, in simple English sentences, direct objects, whether nouns or pronouns, come after the verb ('The dog eats the cookie. The dog eats it.'). In French, direct objects that are nouns follow the verb ( Le chien mange le biscuit-literally, 'The dog eats the cookie'). However, direct object pronouns precede the verb ( Le chien le mange-literally, 'The dog it eats'). The CAH would predict that a native speaker of English might make the error of saying: 'Le chien mange le' when learning French, and that a native speaker of French might say 'The dog it eats' when learning English. In fact, English speakers learning French are more likely to make the predicted error than French speakers learning English. This may be due to the fact that English speakers learning French hear many examples of sentences with subject-verb-object word order (for example, Le chien mange le biscuit) and make the incorrect generalization-based on both the word order of their first language and evidence from the second language-that all direct objects come after the verb. French-speaking learners of English, on the other hand, hearing and seeing no evidence that English direct object pronouns precede verbs, do not tend to use this pattern from their first language. The finding that many aspects of learners' language could not be explained by the CAH led a number of researchers to take a different approach to ana lysing learners' errors. This approach, which developed during the 1970s, became known as 'error analysis' and involved detailed descriptions of the errors second language learners made. The goal of this research was to dis cover what learners really knew about the language. As Pit Corder observed in a famous artide published in 1967, when learners produce correct sen tences, they may simply be repeating something they have already heard; when they produce sentences that differ from the target language, we may assume that these sentences reflect the learners' current understanding of the rules and patterns of that language. We saw this in the example of a learner who says 'buyed' instead of 'bought.' Error analysis differed from contras tive analysis in that it did not set out to predict errors. Rather, it sought to  Second language learning 43 discover and describe different kinds of errors in an effort to understand how learners process second language data. Error analysis was based on the hypothesis that, like child language, second language learner language is a system in its own rig h t -o n e that is rule-governed and predictable. Larry Selinker ( 1972) gave the name interlanguage to learners' developing second language knowledge. Analysis of a learner's interlanguage shows that it has sorne characteristics influenced by previously learned languages, sorne characteristics of the second language, and sorne characteristics, such as the omission of function words and grammatical morphemes, that seem to be general and to occur in all interlanguage systems. Interlanguages have been found to be systematic, but they are also dynamic, continually evolving as learners receive more input and revise their hypotheses about the second language. The path through language acquisition is not necessarily smooth and even. Learners have bursts of progress, then reach a plateau for a while before something stimulates further progress. Selinker also coined the term fossilization to refer to the fact that sorne features in a learner's language seem t o stop changing. This may be especially true for learners whose exposure to the second language does not inelude instruction or the kind of feedback that would help them to recognize differences between their interlanguage and the target language. AC T I V I T Y Analyse learner language The following texts were written by two learners of English, one a French speaking secondary school student, the other a Chinese-speaki ng ad ult learner. Both learners were describing a cartoon film entitled The GreatToy Robbery (National Film Board of Canada). After viewi ng the film, they were asked to retell the story in writi ng, as if they were telli ng it to someone who had not seen the film. Read the texts and answer the followi ng questions: Can you u nderstand what each learner is trying to say? l Exami ne the errors made by each learner. What ki nds of errors interfere most with you r ability to understand? 3 Do both learners make the same ki nds of errors? 4 In what ways do the two interlanguages differ? Learner I: French first language, secondary school student Du ri ng a sun ny day, a cowboy go in the desert with his horse. he has a big hat. His horse eat a flou r. In the same time, Santa Clause go in a city to give sorne surprises. He has a red costume and a red packet of surprises.You have th ree robbers in the mou ntai n who sees Santa Clause with a ki ng of glaces that it permitted us to see at a long distance. Every robbers have a horse.They go in 44 Second language learning the way of Santa Clause, not Santa Clause but his pocket of surprises. After they will go in a city and they go in a saloon. [...] (Unpu blished data from P. M.Lightbown and B.Barkman) Learner 2: Chinese first language,adult This year Christmas comes soon! Santa Claus ride a one horse open sleigh to sent present for child ren. on the back of his body has big packet. it have a lot of toys. in the way he meet th ree robbers.They want to take his big packet. Santa Claus no way and no body help, so only a way give them, then three robbers ride their horse dashing through the town.There have saloon, they go to d ri nk sorne beer and open the big packent.They plays toys in the Bar.They meet a cow boy in the saloon. (Unpublished data provided by M. J.Martens) Perhaps the most striking thing here is that many error types are common to both learners. Furthermore, both make errors of spelling and punctuation that we might find in the writing of a young first language speaker of English. Even though French uses grammatical morphemes to indicare person and number on verbs and Chinese does not, both these learners make errors of subject-verb agreement-both leaving off the third person -s marker and overusing it when the subject is plural ('a cowboy go' and 'three robbers in the mountain who sees' by Learner 1 and 'Santa Claus ride' and 'they plays' by Learner 2). Such errors reflect learners' understanding of the second language system itself rather than an attempt to transfer characteristics of their first language. They are sometimes referred to as 'developmental' errors because they are similar to those made by children acquiring English as their first lan guage. Sometimes these are errors of overgeneralization, that is, errors caused by trying to use a rule in a context where it does not belong, for example,the -s ending on the verb in 'they plays'. Sometimes the errors are better described as simplification, where elements of a sentence are left out or where all verbs have the same form regardless of person, number, or tense. One can also see, especially in Learner 2's text, the influence of classroom experience. An example is the use of formulaic expressions such as 'one horse open sleigh' which is taken verbatim from a well-known Christmas song that had been taught and sung in his English as a Second Language (ESL) class. The vivid 'dashing through the town' probably comes from the same source, with the substitution of 'town' for 'snow'. For those who are familiar with the English spoken by native speakers of French, sorne of the errors (for example, preposition choice 'in the same time') made by the first learner will be seen as probably based on French. Similarly, those familiar with the English of Chinese speakers may recog nize sorne word arder patterns (for example, 'on the back of his body has big packet') as based on Chinese patterns. These may be called transfer or  Second language learning 45 'interference' errors. What is most clear, however, is that it is often difficult to determine the source of errors. Thus, while error analysis has the advan tage of describing what learners actually do rather than what they might do, it does not always give us clear insights into why they do it. Furthermore, as Jacquelyn Schachter pointed out in a 1974 article, learners sometimes avoid using sorne features of language that they perceive to be difficult for them. This avoidance may lead to the absence of certain errors, leaving the analyst without information about sorne aspects of the learners' develop ing interlanguage. The absence of particular errors is difficult to interpret, and the phenomenon of 'avoidance' may itself be a part of the learner's sys tematic second language performance. Developmental sequences Second language learners, like first language learners, pass through sequences of development: what is learned early by one is learned early by others. Among first language learners, the existence of developmental sequences may not seem surprising because their language learning is partly tied to their cog nitive development and to their experiences in learning about relationships between people, events, and objects around them. But the cognitive develop ment of adult or adolescent second language learners is much more stable, and their experiences with the language are likely to be quite different, not only from the experiences of a small child, but also different from each other. Furthermore, second language learners already know another language that has different patterns for creating sentences and word forms. In light of this, it is more remarkable that we find developmental sequences that are similar in the developing interlanguage of learners from different language back grounds and also similar to those observed in first language acquisition of the same language. Moreover, the features of the language that are most frequent are not always learned first. Far example, virtually every English sentence has one or more anides ('a' or 'the'), but even advanced learners have difficulty using these forms correctly in all contexts. Finally, although the learner's first language does have an influence, many aspects of these developmental stages are similar among learners from different first language backgrounds. In Chapter 1 we saw sorne developmental sequences for English first lan guage acquisition of grammatical morphemes, negation, and questions. Researchers in second language acquisition have also examined these, as well as other features. They have found patterns in the development of syntax and morphology that are similar among learners from different language back grounds. Evidence for these developmental patterns first carne from studies oflearners whose primary learning environment was outside the classroom. Far example, Jürgen Meisel, Harald Clahsen, and Manfred Pienemann 46 Second language learning ( 1981) identified developmental sequences in the acquisition of German by speakers of several Romance languages who had little or no instruction. Subsequent research has shown that learners who receive instruction exhibit similar developmental sequences and error patterns. Inthe interlanguage of English speakers whose only exposure to German was in university dasses in Australia, Pienemann (1988) found patterns that were similar to those of the uninstructed learners. In Chapter 6, we will discuss other studies that have investigated the influence of instruction on developmental sequences. Grammatical morphemes Researchers have examined the development of grammatical morphemes by learners of English as a second language in a variety of environments, at different ages, and from different first language backgrounds. In analysing each learner's speech, researchers identify the obligatory contexts for each morpheme, that is, the places in a sentence where the morpheme is necessary to make the sentence grammatically correct. For example, in the sentence 'Yesterday I play baseball for two hours', the adverb 'yesterday' creates an obligatory context for a past tense, and 'for two hours' tells us that the required form is a simple past ('played') rather than a past progressive ('was playing'). Similarly, 'two' creates an obligatory context for a plural -s on 'hours'. For the analysis, obligatory contexts for each grammatical morpheme are counted separately, that is, one count for simple past, one for plural, one for third person singular present tense, and so on. After counting the number of obligatory contexts, the researcher counts the correctly supplied morphemes. The next step is to divide the number of correctly supplied morphemes by the total number of obligatory contexts to answer the question 'what is the percentage accuracy for each morpheme?' An accuracy score is created for each morpheme, and these can then be ranked from highest to lowest, giving an accuracy order for the morphemes. The overall results of the studies suggested an order that was similar but not identical to the developmental sequence found for first language learners. However, the order the researchers found was quite similar among second language learners from different first language backgrounds. For example, most studies showed a higher degree of accuracy for plural -s than for posses s, sive - and for -ing than for regular past (-ed). Stephen Krashen summarized the order as shown in Figure 2.1. The diagram should be interpreted as showing that learners will produce the morphemes in higher boxes with higher accuracy than those in lower boxes, but that within boxes, there is no dear pattern of difference.  Second language learning 47 -ing (progressive) plu ral copula ('to be') t auxiliary (progressive as in 'He is going') article t irregular past t regular past -ed third person singular -s possessive 's Figure 2.1 Krashen's ( 1982) summary of second /anguage grammatical morpheme acquisition sequence The similarity among learners suggests that the accuracy arder cannot be described or explained in terms of transfer from the learners' first language, and sorne researchers saw this as strong evidence against the CAH. However, a thorough review of all the 'morpheme acquisition' studies shows that the learners' first language does have an influence on acquisition sequences. Far example, learners whose first language has a possessive form that resembles the English s (such as German and Danish) seem to acquire the English possessive earlier than those whose first language has a very different way of forming the possessive (such as French or Spanish). And even though ani des appear early in the sequence, learners from many language backgrounds (including Slavic languages, Chinese, and Japanese) continue to struggle with this aspect of English, even at advanced levels. Learners may do well in supplying articles in certain obligatory contexts but not others. If the lan guage sample that is analysed contains only the 'easier' obligatory contexts, che 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 arder in the diagram is based on the analysis of correct use in obligatory contexts only. Itdoes 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 led researchers 48 Second language learning to question the adequacy of obligatory context analyses as the sale basis for understanding developmental sequences. Teresa Pica (1983) argued that accuracy seores should take account of overuse and incorrect uses to deter mine a score for target-like use rather than reflect only use in obligatory contexts. The morpheme acquisition literature raises other issues, not least of them the question of why there should be an arder of acquisition for these language features. Sorne 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 col lection procedures alone. As with first language acquisition, researchers have not found a single simple explanation for the arder. Jennifer Goldschneider and Roben DeKeyser (2001) reviewed this research and identified a number of variables that contribute to the arder. Salience (how easy it is to notice the morpheme), linguistic complexity (for example, how many elements you have to keep track of), semantic transparency (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 path that looks nearly identical to the stages we saw in Chapter 1 for first language acquisition. However, second language learners from different first language backgrounds behave somewhat differendy within those stages. This was illustrated in John Schumann's (1979) research with Spanish speakers learning English and Henning Wode's (1978) work on German speakers learning English. Stage 1 The negative element (usually 'no' or 'not') is typically placed befare the verb or the element being negated. Often, it occurs as the first word in the sen tence because the subject is not there. No bicycle. I no like it. Not my friend. 'No' is preferred by most learners in this early stage, perhaps because it is the negative form that is easiest to hear and recognize in the speech they are exposed to. Italian- and Spanish-speaking learners may prefer 'no' because it corresponds to the negative form in Italian and Spanish (No tienen muchos libros). They may continue to use Stage 1negation longer than other learners because of the similarity to a pattern from their first language. Even at more advanced stages, they may also use Stage 1 negatives in longer sentences or  Second language learning 49 when they are under pressure. Thus, similarity to a learner's first language may slow clown a learner's progress through a particular developmental stage. Stage2 At 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 befare modals like 'can' and 'should'. He don't likeit. 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 likerice. At 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: They come not [to] home. (Sie kommen nicht nach Hause. ) Stage 4 In this stage, 'do' is marked for tense, person, and number, and most interlan guage sentences appear to be just like those of the target language. l t doesn't work. We didn't have supper. However, sorne learners continue to mark tense, person, and number on both the auxiliary and the verb. I didn't went there. Questions fanfred Pienemann, Malcolm Johnston, and Geoff Brindley (1988) described a sequence in the acquisition of questions by learners of English from a variety of first language backgrounds. An adapted version of the sequence is shown in Stages 1-6 below. The examples (except those in Scage 6) come from French speakers who were playing a game in which they had to ask questions in arder to find out which picture the other player ,(the researcher) was holding. As we saw for negation, the overall sequence is similar to the one observed in first language acquisition. And again, there are sorne differences that are attributable to first language influence. Suzge 1 Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments. 50 Second language learning Dog? Four children? What's that? Stage2 Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting. It's a monster in the right comer? 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: do-fronting, wh-fronting without 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 two planets on top? French has an invariant form est-ce que (literally 'is it that') that can be placed before a declarative sentence to make a question. For example, ]ean aime le cinéma becomes Est-ce que]ean aime le cinéma? ('is it that) John likes movies?' French speakers may think that 'do' or 'does' is such an invariant form and continue to produce Stage 3 questions for sornetime. Stage 4 lnversion in wh- + copula; yes/no questions with other auxiliaries. Where is the sun? Is there a fish in the water? At Stage 4, German speakers may infer that if English uses subject-auxiliary inversion, it may also permit inversion with full verbs, as German does, leading them to produce questions such as 'Like you baseball?' (Magst du basebalP.) Stage5 lnversion in wh- questions with both an auxiliary and a main verb. How do you say 'proche'? What's the hoydoing? French-speaking learners may have difficulty using Stage 5 questions in which the subject is a noun rather than a pronoun. They may say (and accept as grammatical) 'Why do you like chocolate?' but not 'Why do chil dren like chocolate?' In this, they are drawing on French, where it is often  Second language learning 51 ungrammatical to use inversion with a noun subject ( *Pourquoi aiment les enfants lechocolat?). Stage 6 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, sorne of which will be discussed in Chapter 6. Alison Mackey and her colleagues have done a number of these studies, and she pro vided the data in Table 2.2. These examples come from three adult Japanese learners of English as a second language who were interacting with a native speaker in a 'spot the differences' task. In this task, learners have similar but not identical pictures and they have to ask questions until they work out how the 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. ACTIVITY Analyse learners' questions Using the information about the developmental sequence for questions, circle the stage of second language question development that best corresponds to ea.ch question. (Hint: Read all of each learner's questions befare you begi n.) Stage i Learner 1 1 Where is he going and what is he saying? 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 Is the room his room? 1 2 3 4 5 6 3 Is he taking out his skate board? 1 2 3 4 5 6 " 4 What is he thinking? 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 11 5 The gi rl, what do you, what does she do, what is 1 2 3 4 5 6 she doing? ,,, "r':'.11 Learner 2 J: 6 Are they buying sorne things? 1 2 3 4 5 6 11111 1 7 Is they bought present? 1 2 3 4 5 6 111 ! 52 Second language learning 8 Is they're retirement people? 1 2 3 4 5 6 9 Is this perf ume or... 1don't know. 1 2 3 4 5 6 10 And it is necktie? 1 2 3 4 5 6 Le a r n e r 3 11Are there any shuttle? Space shuttle? 1 2 3 4 5 6 12 lnside, is there any gi rl? 1 2 3 4 5 6 13 You don't see? 1 2 3 4 5 6 14 What are, what the people wearing? 1 2 3 4 5 6 I S And they are carrying pi nk box? 1 2 3 4 5 6 Answer key Learner I: Questions 1, 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 sorne 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' t o 'inversion', particularly since question IO is a Stage 2 question. Learner 3: Questions 1 1 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 t o a Stage 3 question. Photocopiable © Oxford University Press Table 2.2 Questions byJapanese-s peaking /earners of English Possessive determiners A developmental sequence for the English possessive forms 'his' and 'her' has been observed in the interlanguage of French- and Spanish-speaking learn ers. In English, the choice of 'his' or 'her' (or 'its') is determined by the 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 enfants = his children or her children  Second language learning 53 Note that when the object possessed is a body part, French typically uses a definite artide rather than a possessive determiner. Il s'est cassé le bras = He broke the [his] arm. Joanna White (1998, 2008) studied the acquisition of possessive determiners by French-speaking students, adapting a developmental sequence that was first proposed by Helmut Zobl ( 1984). White found a total of eight stages in the sequence, but they can be grouped into three main stages. The examples shown below come from French-speaking students learning English. They are describing cartoon drawings of family events and interactions. Stage 1:Pre-emergence No use of 'his' and 'her'. Definite artide or 'your' used for ali persons, genders, and numbers. The little boy play with the bicyde. 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. Stage2: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 dothes, 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. Stage3:Post-emergence Differentiated use of 'his' and 'her' but not when the object possessed has natural gender. The girl fell on her bicyde. She look his father and cry. The dad put her litde girl on his shoulder, and after, on his back. At the end of the post-emergence stage, in what White (2008) calls Stage 8, learners finally achieve error-free use of 'his' and 'her' in all contexts indud ing natural gender and body parts. The litde girl with her dad play together. And the dad take his girl on his shoulder and he hurt his back. When English speakers learn French, or other languages that use grammati cal gender as the basis for choosing possessive determiners, they must also learn a new way of determining the gender of the possessive determiner. The need to learn the grammatical gender of each and every noun further adds co the challenge. 54 Second language learning 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 sorne cases, never) learn to use them to modify nouns in other sentence roles (for example, indi rect object and object of preposition). A summary of the observed pattern of acquisition for relative clauses is shown in Table 2.3. lt is referred to as the accessihility 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 gi rl who was sick went home. Direct object The story that I read was long. lndi rect object The man who[m] Susan gave the present to was happy. Object of preposition 1found the book that John was tal ki ng about. Possessive 1know the woman whose father is visiting. Object of comparison The person that Susan is taller than is Mary. Photocopiable © Oxford University Press Table 2.3 Accessibility hierarchy for relative c/auses in English (adapted from Doughty 199 I) Unlike the study of grammatical morphemes, negation, and questions, the study of relative clauses was not inspired by research on child language. Rather, it carne from patterns that Edward Keenan and Bernard Comrie (1977) observed in a large number oflanguages. They found that those lan guages that included the structures at the bottom of the list in Table 2.3 would also have those at the top, but the opposite was not necessarily true. Subsequently, Susan Gass (1982) and others found that if a second language learner could use one of the structures at the bottom of the list, he or she would probably be able to use any that precede it. On the other hand, a learner who could produce sentences with relative clauses in the subject or direct object positions (at the top of the list) would not necessarily be able to use them in any of the clause types further clown the list. Despite the similarity of the general pattern, several types of first language influence have also been observed in the acquisition of relative clauses. First, it has been observed that for learners whose first language does not have a particular clause type (for example, object of comparison), it is more dif ficult to learn to use that type in English. Second, where learners have a first language with a substantially different way of forming relative clauses (for example, Chinese and Japanese, where the relative clause precedes the noun  Second language learning 55 it modifies), they may avoid using relative clauses even when their interlan guage is fairly advanced. Third, first language influence is seen in the errors learners make. For example, Arabic speakers often produce both the relative marker and the pronoun it replaces (for example, 'The man who I saw him was very angry') as they would in Arabic. Reference to past A number of researchers, including Jürgen Meisel (1987), have observed the developing ability to use language to locate events in time. The research has shown that learners from different first language backgrounds and acquiring a variety of second languages, acquire the language for referring to past events in a similar pattern. Like young children, learners with limited language may simply refer to events in the arder in which they occurred or mention a time or place to show that the event occurred in the past. Viet Nam. We work too hard. My son come. He work in restaurant. Later, learners start to attach a grammatical morpheme marking the verb for past, although it may not be the one that the target language uses for that meaning. Me working long time. Now stop. Past tense forms of irregular verbs may be used befare the regular past is used reliably. We went to school every day. We spoke Spanish. After they begin marking past tense on regular verbs, learners may overgen eralize the regular -ed ending or the use of the wrong past tense form (for exarnple, the present perfect rather than the simple past). My sister catched a big fish. She has lived here since fifteen years. Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig (2000) and others have found that learners are more likely to mark past tense in sentences such as 'I broke the vase' and 'My sister 6:xed it with glue' than in sentences such as 'She seemed happy last week' or ·t.1y father swam in that lake'. These differences appear to be due to the 'lexical aspect', that is, the kinds of meanings expressed by the different verbs. Learners icem to find it easier to mark past tense on verbs that refer to something whose md point can easily be determined. These are referred to as 'accomplishments' md 'achievements' ('I ran three miles.' 'My brother took an aspirin and went to bed'). For 'activities' that may continue for sorne period ('I swam all afternoon') or 'states' that may be perceived as constants ('He seemed happy to sit by the bke'), learners use simple past markers less frequently. · 56 Second language learning First language can have an influence here too. Laura Collins (2002) investi gated 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 transla tion 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 mangé u n e p o m m e - literally, 'Yesterday he has eaten an apple'. Teachers often comment on French speakers' tendency to overuse the present perfect. I n Collins' study, learners completed passages by filling in blanks with the appropriate form of a verb. As expected, in places where English speakers would use 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