Profesorado de Inglés

Psycholinguistics

Chapter Two Second Language Learning - Reading Guide and

Activities

Your own ideas

 What is “learner language”? Does the term apply to L1 or L2 acquisition, or both? What
characteristics does it have?
 Can teachers profit from analyzing learner language? How?
 In your opinion, is error-free production a sign of progress and acquisition?
 Pit Corder (1967) said that “when learners produce ‘correct’ sentences, they may simply be
repeating something they have already heard; when they produce sentences that differ
from the target language, we assume that these sentences reflect the learners’ current
understanding of the rules and patterns of that language”. How is this assertion connected
to the previous question?

Read

A. Read the section on Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis, and Interlanguage (p. 41) and
answer the following questions:
 What is the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) explanation for learners’ errors?
Find arguments against their position in the rest of the section.
 What is Error Analysis? What is the main difference between Error Analysis and
CAH?
 Make sure you understand what INTERLANGUAGE, SIMPLIFICATION,
OVERGENERALIZATION, TRANSFER, INTERFERENCE and FOSSILIZATION mean and
how they are related.

B. Study Krashen’s summary of the L2 developmental sequence for grammatical morphemes

on p. 46-47.
 Does this sequence apply to speakers with different L1?
 If a speaker can produce regular past –ed, for example, can it be assumed that
they can use articles correctly?
 What factors seem to influence the order of acquisition?

C. Read about L1 influence (p 57):

 List the instances in which L1 seems to have an effect on L2 acquisition.
 Profesorado de Inglés
Psycholinguistics

Choose

A. Developmental sequences:
 On pp. 45-57 the authors present different developmental sequences (negation,
questions, possessive determiners, relative clauses, reference to past); which of these
features do you think you have had some difficulties in acquiring?
 Study the sequence for the feature in question and get ready to describe it to the class and
explain where your difficulties lie.

B. Other components of communicative competence:

 On pp. 60-71 the authors discuss the acquisition of areas such as vocabulary, pragmatics
and phonology. Choose the area you are most interested in and prepare a short
presentation for your class.

Analyze

A. Study the sample below and answer: what types of errors can you find? What information
can a teacher derive from analyzing these samples? What errors can be addressed through
teaching, in your opinion?