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BEGINNINGS
There is a general agreement that around the end of 1950s Second Language Acquisition research established itself as a field of inquiry. The first question, which guided much of the early research, concerned what it was that learners actually acquired when they tried to learn a L2. -
ROBERT LADO - CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS HYPOTHESIS
Try to discover similarities and differences to sound system, morphological system, syntactic system, and even the cultural system. The purpose is to predict areas that will be either easy or difficult for learners. Serious studies into contrastive analysis began with Robert Lado’s 1957 book, “Linguistics Across Culture.” Its central tenets and other observations on second language acquisition became increasingly influential in the 1960s and 70s -
B.F. SKINNER - BEHAVIORISM
In a detailed account of behaviourism applied specifically to language, Skinner argues that language learning, like any other learning, takes place through stimulus–response– reinforcement leading to the formation of habits. This work does not deal primarily with L2 acquisition, but is included here because of the major influence it had on shaping the field of SLA in its early days. -
CHOMSKY'S THEORY OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Chomsky arguing that children have an innate faculty guiding them in their acquisition of language, as they do not merely imitate the language around them, but routinely generate novel sentences and rules. This innate language faculty will subsequently become known as Universal Grammar (UG). Chomsky does not deal with L2 acquisition, but his ideas have had a major impact on the field and its subsequent abandonment of behaviourism as an explanation of the SLA process. -
STEPHEN CORDER - THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEARNERS ERRORS
Corder is the first to draw attention to the significance of studying learners’ errors, as it becomes evident that a great number do not originate in the L1 of learners, and that learners seem to have an in built syllabus of their own, as suggested by CHOMSKY (1959) in the context of L1 acquisition. This major shift from comparing L1 and L2 to studying learner language itself mirrors significant developments in L1 acquisition. -
HYMES' COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
The term ‘communicative competence’ was coined by Hymes , in reaction to Chomsky's notion of grammatical ‘competence,’ arguing against his search for an understanding of universals of language knowledge, and in favour of an ethnography of communication account which focusses on the full variety of knowledge of how to produce and interpret language used communicatively across different groups and cultures. -
SELINKER'S INTERLANGUAGE THEORY
Selinker coins the term INTERLANGUAGE to refer to the L2 learner’s developing system (both the L2 system of a learner at a given point in time and the series of interlocking systems developing over time). This term puts the emphasis firmly on the learner system in its own right and captures the imagination of L2 researchers, keen to move away from contrastive analysis (see LADO 1957), for both theoretical and empirical reasons. -
HENRY WIDDOWSON - Teaching Language as Communication
proposed the distinction between usage and use applicable to language acquisition. Usage is ‘that aspect of performance which makes evident the extent to which the language user demonstrates his knowledge of linguistic rules; while use is ‘that aspect of performance which makes evident the extent to which the language user demonstrates his ability to use his knowledge of linguistic rules for effective communication. -
VYGOTSKY’S ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT (ZPD)
The ZPD refers to the learner's ability to successfully complete tasks with the assistance of more capable other people, and for this reason it is often discussed in relation to assisted or scaffolded learning. The creation of ZPDs involves assistance with the cognitive structuring of learning tasks and sensitivity to the learner's current capabilities. -
LONG - Input, interaction and second language acquisition.
Long’s Ph.D. thesis provides the foundation for much later work (including his own, e.g. Long 1996) investigating the role of input and interaction in L2 acquisition. He shows that learners are active partners in L2 interactions rather than mere recipients of input, negotiating the input in order to maximise its comprehensibility, given their current developmental level. -
INPUT AND INTERACTION IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
In the first half of 1980s appear three important hypothesis: Input Hypothesis: Focus on the meaning not in the form of the message, Interaction Hypothesis: Emphasis on the feedback during interactions and Output hypothesis: action of producing language, speaking and writing.
Krashen (1985) Long (1983) and Swain (1985) -
SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING
At a theoretical level, Krashen develops and refines his influential Monitor Model, which claims that ‘learning’ and ‘acquisition’ are different processes. Acquisition is the subconscious process whereby the learner constructs the grammar of the L2 and conscious learning (of, for example, grammar rules) cannot impact on this process. It can only be used to ‘monitor’ (and, if necessary, modify) output once an utterance has been produced by the acquired system. -
PIENEMANN - PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS ON THE TEACHABILITY OF LANGUAGES
Pienemann is the first to link developmental stages to learnability and teachability issues, suggesting that it is only when a given stage has been acquired that learners will be able to learn the following one. There had been very little attempt until now to link research on L2 development to teaching concerns. -
SWAIN - Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development
Swain argues that learners not only need comprehensible language input, but that they also need to produce output in order to develop their communicative abilities in the L2 to a high standard. This follows research on immersion students in Canada, who become close to native-like in comprehension, but whose productive abilities lag behind and remain short of native-like competence. She further develops this work in Swain 1995. -
WOLFGANG KLEIN - NATURALISTIC VS INSTRUCTED LEARNING
Klein distinguishes “spontaneous” and “guide” acquisition, treating a distinction as a psycholinguistic one. He argues that learners focus on communication in naturalistic second language acquisition and thus learn incidentally, whereas in instructed second language acquisition the learner typically focuses on some aspects of the language system.
