Understanding Second Language Acquisition
Published in this series
BACHMAN: Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing
BACHMAN and PALMER: Language Assessment in Practice
BACHMAN and PALMER: Language Testing in Practice
BATSTONE: Sociocognitive Perspectives on Language Use and Language Teaching
BRUMFIT: Individual Freedom and Language Teaching
BRUMFIT and CARTER (eds.): Literature and Language Teaching
CANAGARAJAH: Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in Language Teaching
COOK: Language Play, Language Learning
COOK: Translation in Language Teaching
COOK and SEIDLHOFER (eds.): Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics
DÖRNYEI: Research Methods in Applied Linguistics
DÖRNYEI: The Psychology of Second Language Acquisition
ELLIS: Understanding Second Language Acquisition (second edition)
ELLIS: SLA Research and Language Teaching
ELLIS: Task-based Language Learning and Teaching
ELLIS: The Study of Second Language Acquisition (second edition)
ELLIS and BARKHUIZEN: Analysing Learner Language
FOTOS and NASSAJI (eds.): Form-focused Instruction and Teacher Education
HOLLIDAY: The Struggle to Teach English as an International Language
HOWATT WITH WIDDOWSON: A History of English Language Teaching (second edition)
HYLAND: Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of Knowledge
JENKINS: The Phonology of English as an International Language
JENKINS: English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity
KERN: Literacy and Language Teaching
KRAMSCH: Context and Culture in Language Teaching
KRAMSCH: The Multilingual Subject
LANTOLF (ed.): Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning
LANTOLF and THORNE: Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development
MACKEY: Input, Interaction, and Corrective Feedback
MACKEY (ed.): Conversational Interaction and Second Language Acquisition
MURPHY: Second Language Learning in the Early School Years: Trends and Contexts
NATTINGER and DECARRICO: Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching
PHILLIPSON: Linguistic Imperialism
SEIDLHOFER (ed.): Controversies in Applied Linguistics
SEIDLHOFER: Understanding English as a Lingua Franca
SELIGER and SHOHAMY: Second Language Research Methods
SKEHAN: A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning
STERN: Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching
TARONE, BIGELOW and HANSEN: Literacy and Second Language Oracy
WIDDOWSON: Aspects of Language Teaching
WIDDOWSON: Defining Issues in English Language Teaching
WIDDOWSON: Practical Stylistics
WIDDOWSON: Teaching Language as Communication
WRAY: Formulaic Language
Understanding Second Language Acquisition
Second Edition
ROD ELLIS
1
1
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eBook Edition
ISBN: 978 0 19 442201 7 eBook (epub)
ISBN: 978 0 19 442202 4 eBook (mobi)
First published in 2015
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors and publisher are grateful to those who have given permission to reproduce the following extracts and adaptations of copyright material: p.98 Figure from “On the Variability of Interlanguage Systems” by Elaine Tarone, Applied Linguistics, Vol. 4 (2), 1983. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. p.107 Figure adapted from “A Dynamic Look at L2 Phonological Learning: Seeking Processing Explanations for Implicational Phenomena” by Pavel Trofimovich, Elizabeth Gatbonton and Norman Segalowitz, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Indiana University Linguistics Club. Reproduced by permission of Cambridge University Press. p.122 Table from The Study of Second Language Acquisition by Rod Ellis (Oxford University Press, 2008), adapted from The Sounds of English and Spanish by Robert P Stockwell and J Donald Bowen (University of Chicago Press, 1965). Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press and University of Chicago Press. p.125 Extract from “Markedness and the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis” by Fred R. Eckman, Language Learning, Vol. 27 (2), 1977. © 1977 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley and Sons. p.187 Table from Input Processing and Grammar Instruction by Bill VanPatten (Ablex Publishing Company, 1996). Reproduced by permission. p.242 Table from Investigations in Instructed Second Language Acquisition by Alex Housen and Michel Pierrard, (De Gruyter, 2004). Reproduced by permission of De Gruyter.
Although every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders before publication, this has not been possible in some cases. We apologize for any apparent infringement of copyright and if notified, the publisher will be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.
Additional online resources are available at www.oup.com/elt/teacher/understandingsla
To my children – Lwindi, Emma, Anne, and James – for their forbearance
Contents
Introduction
1 Second language acquisition research: an overview
Introduction
Defining ‘second language acquisition’
A brief history of SLA
Summary
2 Age and second language acquisition
Introduction
Age and ultimate attainment
Age and rate of acquisition
Age and the route of L2 acquisition
Educational policy
Summing up
Concluding comment
3 Psychological factors and second language acquisition
Introduction
Key psychological factors
Language aptitude
Motivation
Language anxiety
Learning strategies
Effects of strategy instruction
Age and psychological factors
Conclusion
4 The development of a second language
Introduction
Order of acquisition, sequence of acquisition, and usage-based accounts of L2 development
Case studies of L2 learners
Learner varieties
Order of acquisition
Sequence of acquisition
Development of other linguistic systems
Summing up
Conclusion
5 Variability in learner language
Introduction
Variationist sociolinguistics
The Dynamic Paradigm
Dynamic Systems Theory
Conclusion
6 The role of the first language
Introduction
Defining ‘language transfer’
Investigating language transfer
Linguistic factors
Psycholinguistic factors
Contextual factors
Developmental factors
Individual factors
Language transfer as a multifactorial phenomenon
Conceptual transfer
Transfer in communication and learning
Conclusion
7 Input and interaction: the cognitive-interactionist perspective
Introduction
Key interactionist constructs
Focus on form and incidental learning
Early research on input and interaction
The Input and Noticing Hypotheses
Pre-modified input and noticing
Interactionally-modified input and noticing
Pre-modified input and acquisition
Interactionally-modified input and acquisition
Modified output and acquisition
Corrective feedback and L2 acquisition
Interaction, working memory, and acquisition
Measuring the effects of input and interaction on acquisition
Conclusion
8 Cognitive aspects of second language acquisition
Introduction
Paradigms in cognitive SLA
The representation of L2 knowledge
Attention
Cognitive theories of L2 acquisition
Systems are adaptable
Unstable systems
Researching cognitive processes in SLA
Conclusion
9 Social aspects of second language acquisition
Introduction
Social factors and L2 achievement
SLA—a cognitive or a social enterprise?
The sociocognitive approach
The conversation-analytic approach
The social identity approach
Language socialization and L2 learning
Conclusion
10 The role of explicit instruction
Introduction
Types of intervention
Types of explicit instruction
Presentation-Practice-Production instruction
Integrated explicit instruction
Concept-based instruction
Comprehension-based instruction
Pattern practice
Consciousness-raising instruction
Feedback
The interface positions revisited
Conclusion
11 The role of implicit instruction
Introduction
Theoretical issues in implicit instruction
Types of implicit instruction
Investigating task-based teaching
Input-based tasks
Output-based tasks
Some general comments on research involving tasks
Explicit vs. implicit instruction
Conclusion
12 Understanding and applying second language acquisition
Introduction
The boundaries of SLA
What do we know about L2 acquisition?
Applying SLA
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
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.
This new edition has turned out, in fact, to be an entirely new book with an old title. Some of the areas that figured in the earlier edition are also addressed in this book reflecting their continuing importance: the significance of learners’ starting age (Chapter 2); individual learner factors such as language aptitude and motivation (Chapter 2 and Chapter 3); the order and sequence of second language development (Chapter 4); variability in learner language (Chapter 5); the role of the learner’s first language (Chapter 6) and input and interaction (Chapter 7). But each of these areas has been the subject of intensive research in the last thirty years, leading to new theoretical insights. Some of the conclusions I reached in the first edition are now much less certain. For example, whether there are universal orders and sequences in the acquisition of grammatical features of a second language—for a long time an accepted ‘fact’—has become a matter of dispute. The chapters that deal with these issues have been almost completely rewritten to reflect the new perspectives and findings of research completed since 1985.
Some areas I addressed in the first edition have since fallen out of favour. I have not included a separate chapter on learning strategies for example. Although work has continued in this area, there is growing recognition of the problematic nature of this construct and of the methodological weaknesses in much of the research that has investigated it. I also decided to omit dealing with linguistic universals and Universal Grammar. This is a more controversial decision and will be a disappointment to those who view SLA as a testing ground for theories of grammar. My decision was based partly on what I considered to be of relevance to the primary readers of this book—language teachers or students training to become teachers—and partly on my own conviction that purely linguistic theories, especially those that assume a separate language faculty, cannot provide an adequate account of how second languages are learned. SLA, of course, does have a role to play in linguistics, but that would need a very different kind of book to this one.
Two entirely new chapters (Chapter 8 and Chapter 9) address respectively the cognitive and social aspects of second language acquisition, two of the more recent major developments in SLA. They outline the key theoretical constructs and discuss different theoretical positions, replacing the chapter in the 1985 edition called ‘Theories of Second Language Acquisition’. Increasingly, researchers have turned to research in cognitive psychology to explain the mechanisms responsible for processing input and output and the role these play in learners’ developing second-language systems. More recently, however, some researchers have challenged the view that acquisition is just a cognitive phenomenon and argued that it is just as much, if not more so, social in nature. Social theories view second language learning as inextricably connected with learners’ social identities and the social communities they belong to. They also see acquisition as taking place not in the learner’s mind but within the social interactions in which they participate.
In the first edition, I included a single chapter on form-focused instruction. In this book, there are two separate chapters addressing instruction and second language acquisition. Chapter 10 examines different types of explicit instruction (i.e. instruction directed at intentional learning of specific linguistic features). Chapter 11 considers implicit instruction (i.e. instruction catering to the incidental acquisition of specific linguistic forms). In both cases, I consider these two types of instruction and
the research that has investigated them in relation to theoretical positions introduced in earlier chapters.
Much of the earlier research focused on the acquisition of grammar. This led to the criticism that SLA was overly narrow in scope as it paid scant attention to phonology and vocabulary and ignored almost completely the acquisition of macro-aspects of language such as pragmatic features and interactional routines. I have tried to address this imbalance in the new book by including reference to research on all the micro-aspects of language and also on some of the macro-aspects. However, the book continues to reflect the continuing importance of grammar in SLA.
The intended readers of this book are the same as those of the first edition: undergraduate students taking an initial course in SLA who want more than a bare-bones account of the field; graduate students enrolled in applied linguistics or language teaching programmes; and teachers who want to improve their understanding of how second languages are learned both in naturalistic and instructed contexts.
An understanding of how learners learn a second language seems to me an essential requirement for language teachers. In order for teaching to be effective, it needs to accord with how learners learn. All teachers have a theory of language learning, but this is often implicit, based on their own experience of learning a language in a classroom. Hopefully, this book will help them to evaluate their beliefs about language learning, enable them to make their theory of learning explicit, and encourage them to think about how they can best ensure that their practice of teaching takes account of how learners learn. An understanding of second language acquisition serves as a basis for making pedagogic decisions in a principled manner.
I have endeavoured to make the material in the book accessible to readers with no prior knowledge of SLA. In Chapter 1, I provide a brief history of SLA—from its origins in the 1960s up to today—so that readers can obtain a general picture of what SLA entails and how it has developed over time. SLA has spawned a large number of technical terms for labelling different concepts. In this respect, it is like any other academic discipline but this proliferation of metalanguage makes entry into the field somewhat forbidding. To help readers, I have provided definitions of key technical concepts when these are first introduced and also provided a glossary where readers can check their understanding when they come across them later.