Psycholinguistic approaches underlying SLA

Central questions for psycholinguists since SLA emerged as a discipline:

• What cognitive processes underlie success and failure in people's attempts to master the syntactic patterning of a second language?
• Is there evidence from this question to indicate that rule acquisition is involved in SLA?
• If SLA does involve rule acquisition, is there an innate linguistic capacity or can learning alone account for SLA?
• How is fluency of a L2 achieved?
• What is the importance of memory and attention mechanisms in SLA and their contribution to fluency?

Universal Grammar

Grammar = an abstract and unconscious linguistic system which underlies the use of language, including comprehension and production.

Universal Grammar (UG) = inbuilt universal linguistic principal thought to constrain native-speaker grammars.

Interlanguage = Non-native grammar.  Complex linguistic system demonstrating errors which are rule-governed rather than random mistakes.

Linguistic behaviour of non-native speakers can be accounted for in terms of interlanguage grammars which are constrained by principles and parameters of UG.

Interlanguage grammars differ from the grammars of native speakers.

Plato's Problem

Plato's Problem is the term given by Noam Chomsky to "the problem of explaining how we can know so much" given our limited experience.

Competition Model

Brian MacWhinney's homepage with links to papers.

The Competition Model views both L1 and L2 acquisition as a learning process based on universals of cognitive structure rather than on principles of UG.

Basic Cognitive Mechanisms in SLA

Attention

Noticing Hypothesis - Developed by Schmidt (1998) arguing that every aspect of SLA involves attention.  Involves the concern over whether there is such a thing as "implicit learning" or whether all learning requires explicit attention or noticing.

The Competition Model is based on the premise that learning takes place in the absence of attention, that is, learning is automatic (does not consume attentional capacity), learning is implicit (does not require attention), and repetitive exposure to input is sufficient for learning to take place.

Schmidt argues the contrary in his "Noticing Hypothesis".  He believes attention is essential for learning.  He does acknowledge that a person can register information without focal attention or awareness.  Schmidt's point however, is that, while such registration of information can take place without attention, the effects do not last long and do not affect long term learning.

There is a problem in this area in that the meaning of such terms as attention and implicit learning are not fixed.

Memory

Transfer-appropriate processing, also referred to as TAP, is a type of state-dependent memory specifically showing that memory performance is not only determined by the depth of processing (where associating meaning with information strengthens the memory; see levels-of-processing effect), but by the relationship between how information is initially encoded and how it is later retrieved.

Patys M. Lightbrown: Transfer Appropriate Processing as a Model for Classroom Second Language Acquisition

"The fundamental tenet of TAP is that we can better remember what we have learned if the cognitive processes that are active during learning are similar to those that are active during retrieval."

There is little agreement "that language features that are first learned as explicit, declarative knowledge can, through practice, become proceduralised and accessible for communicative use, that is, retrieved automatically, without conscious attention to the declarative knowledge. Some SLA researchers conclude that it cannot (Krashen, 1982), but others contend that the jury is still out (N. Ellis, 2005, for a review). DeKeyser (2003: 329) contends that ‘. . . there is no evidence in the SLA literature that explicit learning and practice cannot lead to automatized procedural knowledge, only a dearth of evidence that it can . . . Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’."

One of the reasons for the lack of evidence is that, in both teaching and research settings, success continues to be measured in terms of discrete points of language in isolated explicit test situations rather than in contexts calling for automatized procedural knowledge of language in spontaneous language production. There are good reasons for this – both practical and theoretical. In practical terms, it is far easier for teachers  and researchers to ask students to fill in the blanks or make a choice between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences than it is to solicit (and record and transcribe and analyse) samples of spontaneous speech. The theoretical reasons to prefer discrete point measures come from the importance in hypothesis-testing research of ensuring that the conditions for assessment are as nearly identical as possible across the groups being compared. But there can be a cost to using explicit, discrete point types of measures. They may not adequately answer questions about the extent to which different kinds of instruction prepare learners to use the language under other conditions. Doughty (2003) reviewed the studies that were included in Norris and Ortega’s (2000) comprehensive meta-analysis of research on the effect of instruction and concluded that the studies overwhelmingly used ‘explicit’ assessment instruments, even when the researchers’ intention was to assess an ‘implicit’ approach to instruction. As Norris and Ortega point out, the evidence suggests that the predominance of explicit testing may not be solely responsible for the finding that explicit instruction appeared to be more effective

TAP suggests the hypothesis that what matters most is not how we learned something in the first place, but whether the learning processes are easily transferred to the retrieval processes and conditions (Franks et al., 2000).

Although LOP research initially focused on the importance of processing the semantics – the meaning – of items, subsequent research showed the importance of other components of the learning situation. These included:

• Frequency – numerous encounters with language features are almost always required for effective memory encoding (e.g. N. Ellis, 2002).

• Distribution and spacing – in general, long-term retention is better if there are multiple, spaced exposures rather than a single study session, even if the overall time devoted to learning is the same (e.g. Dempster, 1996).

• Generation – it is usually helpful for learners to produce as well as hear or see the item during the learning phase, especially if they must retrieve it from memory and use it to express their own meanings (e.g. De Keyser, 1998; Jacoby, 1978; Slamecka & Graf, 1978).

 

• Elaboration – linking the item to be learned to multiple aspects of form and meaning, as well as to related ideas, will increase the likelihood that it will be retrieved successfully (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001).

Reference:
Norman Segalowitz and Patsy M.Lightbrown (1999) Psycholinguistic Approaches to SLA.  Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 19, 43-63. CUP.