Understanding Second Language Acquisition by Rod Ellis

Understanding Second Language Acquisition by Rod Ellis là giáo trình viết về Learning language theory của Rod Ellis. The first edition of this book was published in 1985—thirty years ago—when second language acquisition as a disciplinary field (SLA) was still in its infancy. At that time, it was a relatively easy task to survey the quite limited research and provide an overview of the key areas of SLA. Since then research has proliferated, the boundaries of SLA have expanded, theories have been revised and new theories developed, old methodologies have been challenged and new ones proposed. This makes the task of providing a succinct but comprehensive account of the field much more challenging. I have approached it with trepidation.

Chapter 4

The development of a second language Presenter 1: Lý Thiện Bình

1 Order of acquisition, sequence of acquisition, and usage- based accounts of L2 development

2 Case studies of L2 learners

3 Learner varieties

Order of acquisition

◦To investigate when learners achieve mastery of different linguistic or pragmatic features

◦‘My father live in London’ - the use of third-person –s has not been supplied

⇒no mastery

◦‘My father lives in London’, the use of third-person –s has been correctly supplied

⇒ mastery

Ellis R (1985). Understanding second language acquisition Oxford University Press.

◦Evidence of the learner progressing from an early stage to a later one

◦‘No coming today’ -> ‘I don’t coming today’

⇒syntactic features are acquired gradually

Ellis R (1985). Understanding second language acquisition Oxford University Press.

Usage-based accounts of learning

◦Learners gradually and dynamically move from chunks to constructions

◦‘Good morning

⇒Good afternoon/evening

Ellis R (1985). Understanding second language acquisition Oxford University Press.

Schmidt’s (1983) study of Wes

◦Wes was a 33-year-old Japanese learner of L2 English who left school at the age of fifteen

◦The focus of Schmidt’s study was the extent to which Wes’s acculturation to American society could explain his development of communicative competence

(1) linguistic competence (i.e the ability to use grammatical structures with target-like accuracy)

(2) sociolinguistic competence (i.e the ability to use language in socially appropriate ways)

(3) discourse competence (i.e the ability to participate in coherent and cohesive conversations)

(4) strategic competence (i.e the ability to deal with communication breakdown)

Case studies of L2 learners

Schmidt’s (1983) study of Wes

Findings

◦The development of these abilities proceeded separately

◦Wes’s linguistic competence remained quite limited

◦There was greater evidence of development in his sociolinguistic competence

◦The aspect that showed the greatest development was Wes’s discourse competence

◦Wes also manifested considerable strategic competence

Schmidt’s (1983) study of Wes

Conclusion

◦First, it showed the partial independence of grammatical competence from other aspects of communicative competence

◦Second, the lack of linguistic development could not be explained by Wes’s failure to acculturate as in fact

he became socially very integrated when he lived in Hawaii

Case studies of L2 learners

R Ellis’s (1984, 1992) study of two classroom learners

◦There were three learners, all children aged ten to 13 years, and all complete beginners at the start of the study

◦The researcher focused on their communicative speech

◦The purpose was to examine whether the pattern of development evident in these classroom learners was the same as or different from the pattern reported for naturalistic learners / whether the instructional

setting influenced the way in which the children learned English

R Ellis’s (1984, 1992) study of two classroom learners

Findings

Learners’ linguistic development

◦Three children made extensive use of formulaic sequences as a means of performing the communicative acts

◦Over time, the learners were able to modify and extend these formulas

◦‘I don’t know’ -> ‘I don’t understand’-> ‘You don’t know’ -> ‘I don’t know this one’

◦‘Semantic simplification’ diminished in the children’s speech over time

◦‘Sir, sir, pencil’ - meaning ‘You have taken my pencil’

Case studies of L2 learners

R Ellis’s (1984, 1992) study of two classroom learners

Findings

The sequence of acquisition for negatives and interrogatives

◦The developmental profiles for these structures of the three children were very similar to each other and showed a striking similarity to that reported for naturalistic learners

◦‘No’ -> ‘No’ + verb negatives -> negatives with auxiliaries (don’t)

R Ellis’s (1984, 1992) study of two classroom learners

Findings

Development in a pragmatic feature (requests)

◦The range of request types expanded

◦Direct request -> ‘could’ -> ‘Could you ’

◦The learners’ requests continued to be of the direct kind, more complex types of requests did not occur at all, and the range of formal devices for encoding requests remained limited

◦No evidence of the learners systematically modifying their choice of request strategy according to

addressee

Case studies of L2 learners

R Ellis’s (1984, 1992) study of two classroom learners

Conclusions

◦These learners relied initially on formulaic chunks to express their communicative needs and gradually learned how to manipulate the linguistic elements in these chunks to produce more varied, novel utterances

◦The general pattern of development was very similar to naturalistic learners, suggesting that the classroom setting did not have a major effect on how these learners’ linguistic competence developed

◦After two years, their development was still quite limited - the classroom setting did not afford the appropriate communicative conditions for acquisition / L2 development is a slow and gradual process

Jia and Fuse’s (2007) study of Chinese ESL learners

◦The study investigated the acquisition of English grammatical morphemes (regular and irregular past

tense, third-person singular -s, verb + - ing, copula be, and auxiliary do )

◦There were ten learners in this study - They all received focused ESL instruction for a period of time - two groups—six who were early arrivals and four who were late arrivals

Case studies of L2 learners

Jia and Fuse’s (2007) study of Chinese ESL learners

Main findings

◦The two easiest structures were progressive - ing and auxiliary ‘do’ and the two most difficult were regular past tense and third-person -s

◦The age of arrival of the learners had no effect on the order of acquisition

◦Progressive - ing and plural -s, for example, showed accelerated learning initially and then levelled off

◦In contrast, third-person -s was acquired slowly but steadily with no plateauing

◦Regular past tense showed no significant growth over time, but with fluctuations from one point in time to the next

Jia and Fuse’s (2007) study of Chinese ESL learners

Conclusion

◦Learners learn features that are more frequent and/or more salient earlier than those features that are less frequent and/or less salient

◦They explained the advantage noted for the early arrivals in terms of the richer learning environment they experienced

Case studies of L2 learners

Some general observations

learning environment

Ellis R (1985). Understanding second language acquisition Oxford University Press.

Learner varieties

Ellis R (1985). Understanding second language acquisition Oxford University Press.

◦Ellis, R (1984) Classroom Second Language Development Oxford: Pergamon.

adolescents: age-related differences’ Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 50: 1280–99

(eds.): Sociolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition Rowley, MA: Newbury House