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Developmental Sequences in Second Language Learning
Presenters: Jacqueline dos Anjos, Hanna Heseker, Dana Meyer
Table of Contents 1. Background: Influences in SLA 2. Grammatical Morphemes 3. Stages of Development
3.1 Negations 3.2 Questions
3.2.1 Activities 3.3 Relative Clauses
4. Movement through Developmental Sequences 5. More about First Language Influence 6. Conclusion
Background: Influences in SLA
High level of cognitive development Mental lexicon of real-world concepts Knowledge of L1 structures Different learning environments and
conditions
→ Learners develop an interlanguage: Various levels of success in their L2 acquisition
Concept of Grammatical Morphemes
What is a morpheme?“smallest meaningful segment of a
language“
What is a grammatical morpheme?“a word that functions to specify the
relationship between one lexical morpheme and another“
Obligatory Contexts
“Obligatory contexts“ in which specific grammatical morphemes must occur:
‘Yesterday I listened to that song
three times.‘
irregular past
regular past –edthird person singular –s
possessive ‘s
-ing (progressive)plural
copula (‘to be’)
auxiliary (progressive as in ‘He is going’)
article
Stephen Krashen‘s Natural Order Hypothesis
Source: Lightbrown, Patsy M. and Nina Spada. How Languages are Learned. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 84.
Reception of Accuracy Order
learners may only use morphemes correctly in certain contexts
Morphemes placed in wrong positions not taken into considerations
Results may depend on task construction
What this means for L2 acquisition...
developmental sequences identified in L2 acquisition are similar to those in L1 acquisition
Similarities in L2 acquisition of learners cannot be traced back exclusively to L1 transfer
Questions
1st stage Dog? Four Children?
Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments 2nd stage
It’s a monster in the right corner? Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting
with rising intonation3rd stage
Where the children are playing? Does in this picture there is four astronauts?
Fronting: do-fronting; wh-fronting, no inversion; other fronting
Questions4th stage
Where is the sun? Is there a fish in the water?
Inversion in wh- + copula; yes/no questions with other auxiliaries
5th stage How do you say proche? What’s the boy doing?
Inversion in wh-questions with both an auxiliary and a main verb
6th Stage 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?
Questions
1st Stage Single words, formulae, or sentence fragments
2nd Stage Declarative word order, no inversion, no fronting with rising
intonation
3rd Stage Fronting: do-fronting; wh-fronting, no inversion; other fronting
4th Stage Inversion in wh- + copula; yes/no questions with other auxiliaries
5th Stage Inversion in wh-questions with both an auxiliary and a main verb
6th Stage Question tag, Negative question, Embedded question
Relative Clauses
Part of speech Relative clause
Subject The girl who was sick went home.
Direct object The story that I read was long.
Indirect objectThe man who[m] Susan gave the present to was happy.
Object of prepositionI found the book that John was talking about.
Possessive I know the woman whose father is visiting.
Object of comparisonThe person that Susan is taller than is Mary.
Source: Lightbrown, Patsy M. and Nina Spada. How Languages are Learned. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 90.
Movement through Developmental Sequences
Stages in language learning are not like “closed rooms“
Stress situations may cause learners to fall back into an earlier stage
Learners may have difficulty moving beyond a stage when facing similarities between first and interlanguage patterns
More about First Language Influence
First language interacts with developmental sequences
When learners reach a certain stage and perceive a similarity to their first language, they may linger longer at that stage
Addition of a substage May learn a second language rule
but restrict its application
Phenomenon of “Avoidance“
Feature in the target language too distant and different from their first language → don’t try it
Extent of transfer has do to with the L2 learner’s beliefs about the distance between the L1 and the L2
Language acquirer will typically avoid those structures that he is
not sure are grammatical in the L2 knows that idiomatic or metaphorical uses of
words are often unique to a particular language
Conclusion
The idea of developmental sequences greatly facilitates our understanding of L2 acquisition
However, the concept of L1 transfer should always be taken into consideration when looking at L2 acquisition processes
List of References Lightbrown, Patsy M. and Nina Spada. How
Languages are Learned. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006.
Saville-Troike, Muriel. Introducing Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.
Cook, Vivian. Second Language Learning and Language Teaching. 3rd ed. London: Arnold, 2001.