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Developmental Patterns

This document discusses developmental patterns in second language acquisition. It begins by distinguishing between order of acquisition and sequence of acquisition. It then describes some methods for investigating developmental patterns, including examining learner errors over time and obligatory occasion analysis. Developmental patterns are compared between first and second language acquisition. Early stages of second language acquisition discussed include the silent period, formulaic speech, and structural/semantic simplification. The acquisition of morphemes and syntactic structures like negatives, relative clauses, and word order are also examined. Similarities between first and second language acquisition are noted.

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1K views

Developmental Patterns

This document discusses developmental patterns in second language acquisition. It begins by distinguishing between order of acquisition and sequence of acquisition. It then describes some methods for investigating developmental patterns, including examining learner errors over time and obligatory occasion analysis. Developmental patterns are compared between first and second language acquisition. Early stages of second language acquisition discussed include the silent period, formulaic speech, and structural/semantic simplification. The acquisition of morphemes and syntactic structures like negatives, relative clauses, and word order are also examined. Similarities between first and second language acquisition are noted.

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al zely
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Name : Alrina Raras Tacazely (0203516010)

Class : Tuesday, 204-206

Developmental Patterns: Order and Sequence in Second Language Acquisition

A distinction will be made between the idea of an order and a sequence of acquisition. One
question we can ask is Do learners acquire some target-language (TL) features before others?
This is a question about the order of acquisition.

Methods for investigating developmental patterns

There are number of different ways in which researchers can set about trying to identify
developmental patterns. One way is to examine whether learners errors change over time. One
common method for identifying and describing developmental patterns is obligatory occasion
analysis. First, samples of naturally occurring learner language are collected. Second, obligatory
occasions for the use of specific TL features are identified in the data. Third, the percentage of
accurate use of the feature is then calculated by establishing whether the feature in question has
been supplied in all the contexts in which it is required.

Developmental patterns in L1 acquisition

The study of developmental patterns in L1 acquisition research is a good starting point in our
investigation of L2 developmental patterns for two reasons. First, it has provided L2 researcher
with useful methodological procedures for investigating developmental patterns in learning
language. Second, L1 acquisition orders and sequences provide a baseline for considering L2
acquisition orders and sequences.

Developmental patterns in second language acquisition

The early stages

The silent period

Children go through lengthy period of listen to people talk to them before they produce their first
words. The silent period is necessary, for the young child needs to discover what language is and
what it does. One possibility is that the silent period provides learners with opportunities to
prepare themselves for social use of the L2 by means of private speech, which they engage in
while they are silent.

Formulaic speech

Formulaic speech consists of expression which are learnt as unanalysable wholes and employed
on particular occasions. Formulaic speech has been observed to be very common in L2
acquisition, particularly in the early stages. It figures frequently in the speech of all learners,
irrespective of their age. It is possible, therefore, that formulas are slowly unpackaged, releasing
valuable information, which is fed into the knowledge system the learner uses to produce and
understand creative speech.

Structural and semantic simplification

In comparison with formulaic speech, the learners early creative utterances are typically
truncated, consisting of just one or two words, with both grammatical functors and content words
missing. There is some evidence to suggest that learners, particularly children, tend to begin
speaking first in single-word utterances and then in increasingly longer utterances, many of
which are novel.

The acquisition of morpheme: order and sequence

The morpheme studies


Morpheme studies were carried out to investigate the order of acquisition of grammatical
functors such as articles and inflectional features such as plural s.

The acquisition of individual morphemes: pronoun

A close look at individual morphemes shows that they are acquired gradually and systemically.
Learners do not progress from a state of non-acquisition to a state of acquisition, but rather pass
through a series of stages. In the pronoun system of language, a number of systematic
distinctions are to be found.

The acquisition of syntactic structures

The acquisition of negatives in English and German

Negation is an example of a transitional structure. That is, it involves a series of forms or


structures which learners use en route to mastering the TL form. These interim forms are
indicative of the developmental stages that learners pass through on the way to TL competence.
Initially, negative utterances are characterized by external negation. That is, the negative particle
(usually no but sometimes not) is attached to a declarative nucleus.

The acquisition of relative clauses in English and Swedish


In the case of English, they must first learn that relative clauses can modify noun phrases that
occur both before the verb (i.e. as subject of the main clause) and after the verb (i.e. as object or
in a personal phrase). Second, they must learn the various functions that the relative pronoun can
serve.

The acquisition of German word order rules

A general pattern of L2 grammatical development

In subsequent work, an attempt has been made to explain the developmental pattern in the
acquisition of German word order rules by means of a set of cognitive processing operations that
underlie the production of sentences manifesting each word order rule.
The L2 = L1 hypothesis

The concern is whether the fundamental principles that underlie L1 and L2 are the same, and
whether the language acquisition device which mentalists claim is responsible for L1 acquisition
is available to L2 learners. The similarities in learner language in L1 and L2 acquisition are
perhaps most pronounced in the early stages of development. The process by which individual
morphemes are acquired displays both similarities and differences. The similarities between L1
and L2 acquisition are strongest in syntactical structures.

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