Second Language Acquisition

What is SLA?
The systematic study of how people acquire a second language (often referred to as an L2) is a
fairly recent phenomenon, belonging to the second half of the twentieth century. Its
emergence at this time is perhaps no accident.
At first sight, the meaning of the term 'second language acquisition' seems transparent but, in
fact, it requires careful explanation. For one thing, in this context 'second' can refer to any
language that is learned subsequent to the mother tongue. Thus, it can refer to the learning of
a third or fourth language. Also, 'second' is not intended to contrast with 'foreign'. Whether you
are learning a language naturally as a result of living in a country where it is spoken, or learning
it in a classroom through instruction, it is customary to speak generically of 'second' language
acquisition. 'L2 acquisition', then, can be defined as the way in which people learn a Language
other than their mother tongue, inside or outside of a classroom, and 'Second Language
Acquisition' (SLA) as the study of this.

Goals of SLA
How learners learn second language? One way might be to ask learner about how they do it. A
better approach might he to find out what learners actually do, as opposed to what they think
they do, when they try to learn an L2. One way of doing this is by collecting samples of learner
language. These samples provide evidence of what the learners know about the language they
are trying to learn (the target lan-guage). If samples are collected at different points in time it
may also be possible to find out how learners' knowledge gradually develops.
Researchers select a specific grammatical structure, such as plurals or relative clauses and
explore how learners' ability to produce this structure develops over time.
One of the goals of SLA then is the description of L2 acquisition. Another is explanation;
identifying the internal and external factors that account for why learners acquire an L2 in the
way they do.
One of the external factors is the social media in which learning takes place Another external
factor is, the input that learners receive, that is, the samples of Language to which a learner is
exposed. Language learning cannot occur without some input.
L2 acquisition can be explained in part by these external factors but we also need to consider
internal factors. Learners possess cognitive mechanisms which enable them to extract
information about the L2 from the input-to notice, for example, that plurality in English is
conveyed by adding an -s to a noun or that the relative pronouns 'who' and 'which' substitute
respectively for human and non-human nouns.

Two case Studies

Wes was a 33 years old artist and a native speaker of Japanese. Wes visited Hawaii where he
got in contact with native speakers. Wes, then, is an example of a 'naturalistic' learner-someone
who learns the language at the same time as learning to communicate in it. Richard Schmidt
studied Wes for three years. He asked Wes to make recordings of his speech as he was
interested in knowing about how Wes knowledge of grammar develops. He focused on auxiliary
“be”, plural -s and third person -s.
Wes learnt formula or fix expressions. He was far behind from native like proficiency. They
helped him develop fluency and in communication.

Two children were selected for investigation of SLA. J was a ten years old Portuguese boy and R
was eleven years old Pakistani boy. Both learners were learning English in a unit in London. J
spent four years and R spent 2 years there. The focus of the study was on requests. When the
requests of J and R were analyzed, significant development was observed i.e. the two learners
developed in the same way and that their initial requests were verbless. The next stage of
development was general expression of the linguistic devices they used for example R made
use of ‘want’ statements. However, learners later began to use ‘can’ with a range of different
verbs. Many points emerge from this. One is that learners performed requests even when they
knew very little English. Another point is that both learners developed over time. A third point
is that their requests seemed formulaic in nature. In short, despite all opportunities, the
learners were still far behind the native like proficiency.
Both of these case studies raised three types of problems i.e. methodological issues, issues in
description of learner language and issues in explanation of L2 acquisition.

Methodological Issues
Methodological issues revolve around the parameters of SLA. Some linguists prefer the broader
aspect of SLA for example in the case of WES, complete SLA was analyzed while some prefer
narrower view i.e. in the case of two children, focus was only on the requests and it is a
common observation that linguists prefer the narrower view.
Another issue is the meaning of acquisition. For Schmidt, acquisition means when the learner
manifests patterns of language use that are more or less the same as native speakers of the
target language but this creates confusion with what learners know and what they can do.
Another issue is that learner has acquired a single feature but he has not acquired it
productively rather it was like a formula. It may be a fixed expression about which the learner
knows that it is used in this particular situation but he does not know how to use that
expression somewhere else productively.
The last issue which concerns linguists is the overuse of certain linguistic expressions. In the
case of WES, he used present progressive tense correctly but he overused it wrongly many
times. SLA researchers realized the need to study the relationship between form and function.

Issues in the description of Learner Language

The studies of WES and children set out to explain how the use of L2 by learner changes over
time and their knowledge of L2. One finding is that learners make errors of different kinds. WES
failed to use some grammatical features and errors of omission and overuse. J and R made
sociolinguistic errors i.e. they failed to use request in a socially appropriate manner.
Another finding is that learner acquire a large volume of formulaic chunks. An important issue
in SLA is the role of these chunks.
One other issue is that do these learners acquire language systematically. Both of the above
studies show that learners acquire second language systematically moreover they follow same
development patterns.

Issues in the explanation of L2 acquisition

Two types of learning take place in SLA. On one hand, learners acquire formulaic chunks and on
the other hand they acquire certain rules of language. This means that learners must engage in
both system learning and item learning. When learners engage in Can I have a…...? they
engage in item learning i.e. they learn the expression as an unanalyzed whole. When they learn
that ‘can’ is followed by a variety of verbs and that it can express a variety of expressions they
are engaging in system learning.
The systematic nature of L2 acquisition also requires explanation. One view is that the mental
structures of learners are same so they follow same pattern. Another issue is that even after
proper learning, why none of these were able to attain native like proficiency.