1

Introduction

Language is one of the most uniquely human capacities that our species possesses,
and one that is involved in all others, including consciousness, sociality and culture.
We employ the symbolic system of language to make meaning and communicate with
other fellow humans. We mean and communicate about immediate realities as well
as about imagined and remembered worlds, about factual events as well as about
intentions and desires. Through a repertoire of language choices, we can directly or
indirectly make visible (or purposefully hide) our stance, judgement and emotions
both towards the messages that we communicate and towards the addressees of those
messages. In characteristically human behaviour, we use language not only to
communicate to specific audiences, but sometimes to address ourselves rather than
others, as in self-talk, and other times to address collective, unknown audiences, as
when we participate in political speeches, religious sermons, internet navigation,
commercial advertisements, newspaper columns or literary works.
We take it for granted that all humans have the potential to accomplish all of these
amazing feats in whatever language(s) they happen to grow up with. But many
people around the globe also do many of the same things in a language other than
their own. In fact, whether we grow up with one, two or several languages, in most
cases we will learn additional languages later in life. Many people will learn at least
a few words and phrases in a foreign language. Many others will be forced by life
circumstances to learn enough of the additional language to fend for themselves in
selected matters of daily survival, compulsory education or job-related
communication. Others still will choose to develop entire communication
repertoires and use literary or scientific discourses comfortably and with authority
in their second language or languages. Indeed, many people around the globe may
learn, forget and even relearn a number of languages that are not their mother
tongue over the course of their late childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The
details of people’s L2 learning histories can vary greatly, depending on where their
studies, their families, their jobs and careers, and wider economic and political
world events, take them. How do humans learn languages after they learn their first?
This is the fundamental question that we will explore in this book.

1.1 WHAT IS SLA?

Second language acquisition (SLA, for short) is the scholarly field of inquiry that
investigates the human capacity to learn languages other than the first, during late
 2 Introduction

childhood, adolescence or adulthood, and once the first language or languages have
been acquired. It studies a wide variety of complex influences and phenomena that
contribute to the puzzling range of possible outcomes when learning an additional
language in a variety of contexts. SLA began in the late 1960s as an emerging
interdisciplinary enterprise that borrowed equally from the feeder fields of
language teaching, linguistics, child language acquisition and psychology
(Huebner, 1998). During the 1980s and 1990s SLA expanded considerably in scope
and methodology, to the point that by the end of the twentieth century, after some
40 years of exponential growth, it had finally reached its coming of age as an
autonomous discipline (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). The growth of SLA continues to be
prodigious today. This book is about SLA, its findings and theories, its research
paradigms and its questions for the future.
In this first chapter I have three goals. First, I situate SLA in the wider landscape
of the language sciences and introduce readers to the aims and scope of this field. I
then present definitions of the main terms I will use throughout the text. Finally, I
explain the rationale for the rest of the book.

1.2 WHENCE LANGUAGE? DESCRIPTION, EVOLUTION AND ACQUISITION

How can language as a human faculty be explained? This fundamental question

guides a number of language fields that pursue three kinds of understanding about
language: descriptive, evolutionary and developmental.
A number of disciplines within the language sciences aim to provide an accurate
and complete description of language at all its levels, such as sounds (phonetics
and phonology), minimal grammatical signs (morphology), sentences (syntax),
meanings (semantics), texts (discourse analysis) and language in use
(sociolinguistics, pragmatics). The overarching question guiding these subfields of
linguistics is: What is language made of, and how does it work? Human language
manifests itself in spoken, signed and written systems across more than 6,500
languages documented to date (they are catalogued in Ethnologue; see Gordon,
2005). Despite this daunting linguistic variety, however, all languages, no matter
how different from each other they may seem (Arabic from American Sign
Language from Chinese from English from Spanish from Swahili), share
fundamental commonalities, a universal core of very abstract properties. Thus,
linguistics and its various subfields aim at generating satisfactory descriptions of
each manifestation of human language and they also seek to describe the universal
common denominators that all human languages share.
A different approach to explaining language as a human faculty is to ask not what
or how, but whence and why questions: Whence in the evolution of the human
species did language originate and why? This is the line of inquiry pursued in the
study of language evolution, which focuses on the phylogenesis or origins of
language. A fundamental area of research for cognitive scientists who study
language evolution (and a source of disagreement among them) is whether human
language evolved out of animal communication in an evolutionary continuum or
 First language acquisition, bilingualism and SLA 3

whether the two are fundamentally different biological capacities (Bickerton, 2007;
Tallerman, 2005). It is well known that other animal species are capable of using
elaborate systems of communication to go about collective matters of survival,
nutrition and reproduction. The cases of species as different as bees, dolphins and
prairie dogs are well researched. However, none of these species has created a
symbolic system of communication that even minimally approaches the
complexity and versatility of human language. Chimpanzees, however, possess a
genetic structure that overlaps 99 per cent with that of Homo Sapiens. Although
they do not have a larynx that is fit for human language or hands that could be
physically modulated for signing, some of these animals have been taught how to
communicate with humans through a rudimentary gesture-based language and
through computer keyboards. Bonobos, if reared by humans, as was the case of
bonobo celebrity Kanzi, can achieve the comprehension levels of a two-and-a-half-
year-old human and develop human-like lexical knowledge (Lyn and Savage-
Rumbaugh, 2000). The conclusion that apes can develop true syntactic knowledge
remains considerably more controversial, however. As you can guess, language
evolution is a fascinating area that has the potential to illuminate the most
fundamental questions about language.
For a full understanding of the human language faculty, we also need to engage
in a third line of inquiry, namely the study of the ontogenesis of language: How does
the human capacity to make meaning through language emerge and deploy in each
individual of our species? This is the realm of three fields that focus on language
acquisition of different kinds.

1.3 FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, BILINGUALISM AND SLA

In some parts of our world, most children grow up speaking one language only. It
should be underscored that this case is truly the minority in the large picture of
humanity, although it is the norm in many Western middle-class contexts. Perhaps
because many researchers also come from these same contexts, this is the type of
language acquisition that has been studied the best (for a good review, see
Karmiloff-Smith and Karmiloff-Smith, 2001). The field that investigates these cases
of monolingual language acquisition is known by the generic name of child
language acquisition or first language acquisition. A robust empirical research
base tells us that, for children who grow up monolingually, the bulk of language is
acquired between 18 months and three to four years of age. Child language
acquisition happens in a predictable pattern, broadly speaking. First, between the
womb and the few first months of life, infants attune themselves to the prosodic
and phonological makeup of the language to which they are exposed and they also
learn the dynamics of turn taking. During their first year of life they learn to handle
one-word utterances. During the second year, two-word utterances and
exponential vocabulary growth occur. The third year of life is characterized by
syntactic and morphological deployment. Some more pragmatically or
syntactically subtle phenomena are learned by five or six years of age. After that
 4 Introduction

point, many more aspects of mature language use are tackled when children are
taught how to read and write in school. And as children grow older and their life
circumstances diversify, different adolescents and adults will embark on very
different kinds of literacy practice and use language for widely differing needs, to
the point that neat landmarks of acquisition cannot be demarcated any more.
Instead, variability and choice are the most interesting and challenging linguistic
phenomena to be explained at those later ages. But the process of acquiring
language is essentially completed by all healthy children by age four of life, in terms
of most abstract syntax, and by age five or six for most other ‘basics’ of language.
In many parts of the globe, most children grow up speaking two or more
languages simultaneously. These cases are in fact the majority in our species. We
use the term ‘bilingual acquisition’ or ‘multilingual acquisition’ to refer to the
process of learning two or more languages relatively simultaneously during early
childhood – that is, before the age of four. The field that studies these
developmental phenomena is bilingualism (or multilingualism, if several rather
than two languages are learned during childhood). Two key questions of interest
are how the two (or more) languages are represented in the brain and how bilingual
speakers switch and alternate between their two (or more) languages, depending
on a range of communicative needs and desires. The study of dual first language
acquisition is only one area of this wide-encompassing field, which also includes
the study of adult and child bilingual processing and use from psycholinguistic,
sociolinguistic and educational perspectives (good introductions to bilingualism
are Romaine, 1995; Wei, 2000).
The third field devoted to the study of the acquisition and development of the
language faculty is second language acquisition, the subject of this book. SLA as a
field investigates the human capacity to learn languages once the first language – in
the case of monolingual children – or the first languages – in the case of bilingual
or multilingual children – have been learned and are established. Naturally, this
happens later in life, whether in late childhood, adolescence or adulthood.
Sometimes, however, the individuals learning an additional language are still young
children when they start acquiring the L2, maybe as young as three or four years old
(remember by this early age most of the essential pieces of their mother tongue may
be all in place). Thus, bilingualism and SLA can overlap in the early years, making
it at times difficult to draw the boundaries between the two fields. Nevertheless,
they are clearly two distinct disciplines with their own journals, conferences and
affiliations in academia. There are also some key differences between the two fields.
SLA often favours the study of late-starting acquirers, whereas bilingualism favours
the study of people who had a very early start with their languages. Additionally,
one can say that bilingualism researchers tend to focus on the products of
bilingualism as deployed in already mature bilingual capabilities of children or
adults, whereas SLA researchers tend to focus on the pathways towards becoming
competent in more languages than one. This in turn means that in SLA the
emphasis often is on the incipient stages rather than on ultimate, mature
competence. A third difference is that bilingual research typically maintains a focus
on all the languages of an individual, whereas SLA traditionally orients strongly
 Main concepts and terms 5

towards the second language, to the point that the first language may be abstracted
out of the research picture. In this sense, SLA may be construed as the pure
opposite of monolingual (first) child language acquisition. Indeed, in both fields
monolingual competence is often taken as the default benchmark of language
development. We will return to this issue in the next section.

1.4 MAIN CONCEPTS AND TERMS

In this book, I will use the acronym SLA to refer to the field and discipline and I will
reserve the term L2 acquisition to mean the process of learning additional
languages, that is, the object of disciplinary inquiry itself. This terminological
distinction is not always kept by all SLA researchers, but it has the advantage of
giving us added accuracy of expression. By the same token, acquisition and
learning will be used interchangeably as synonyms in this book. This is because, as
you will see in Chapter 6 (section 6.14), although in the early 1980s there was an
attempt at distinguishing between the two terms, in contemporary SLA
terminology no such distinction is typically upheld.
The various terms used in SLA discourse to refer to the so-called ‘mother tongue’
and to the ‘additional’ language being learned or acquired need some clarification.
As a useful shorthand, SLA researchers use the terms mother tongue, first
language or L1 generically to refer to the language (in the case of monolingual
acquisition) or languages (in the case of bilingual or multilingual acquisition) that
a child learns from parents, siblings and caretakers during the critical years of
development, from the womb up to about four years of age. Conversely, the terms
additional language, second language and L2 are used in SLA to refer to any
language learned after the L1 (or L1s). Of course, things are a lot more complicated
in real life. For one, in the case of very young children who are exposed to several
languages, it may be impossible to determine whether the two or more languages in
question are being learned simultaneously (that is, bilingually or multilingually) or
sequentially (that is, as an L2). In addition, the term ‘L2’ or ‘second/additional
language’ may mean the third, fourth, tenth and so on language learned later in life.
Thus, these labels should be taken to reflect more of an analytical abstraction made
within a disciplinary tradition and less of a black-and-white reality.
There is some danger in using these dichotomous labels and, as you embark on
reading this book about SLA, I would like you to be aware of it. When we oppose L1
acquisition to L2 acquisition, a subtle but dangerous monolingual bias seeps into
our imagination. Namely, with the L1–L2 dichotomy as a foundation, the
phenomenon under investigation can be easily construed as efforts by monolingual
adults to add on a monolingual-like command of an additional language. This bias
has been the reason for criticism and self-examination among SLA researchers in
the last decade or so, starting with Vivian Cook, who was one of the earliest voices
in the field to raise these concerns (see Cook, 1991, 2008). This bias is in part
reminiscent of the same monolingual orientation in first language acquisition
research, a strong influence on SLA during its formative years as a field. It is slowly
 6 Introduction

receding, as new research emerges in SLA that is strongly influenced by studies in

bilingualism and by research that addresses social dimensions of L2 learning.
Throughout this book, I will do my best not to perpetuate a monolingual bias in my
portrayals of SLA findings and theories. I will also refer to the people who are
investigated by SLA researchers as L2 learners, but will alternate that traditional
term with several other terms: L2 users, L2 speakers, L2 writers and, when I
explain empirical studies, L2 participants. And I will usually use the feminine
pronoun she to refer generically to them.
SLA as a field is interested in understanding the acquisition of second languages
in both naturalistic and instructed contexts. Naturalistic learners learn the L2
through informal opportunities in multicultural neighbourhoods, schools and
workplaces, without ever receiving any organized instruction on the workings of
the language they are learning. Instructed learners learn additional languages
through formal study in school or university, through private lessons and so on. In
our globalized world, multifarious opportunities for L2 acquisition arise from
travel, employment, migration, war, marriage and other such happy as well as
unhappy (and elective as well as circumstantial) life events. Most people, therefore,
learn additional languages from a mixture of both naturalistic and instructed
experiences.
Many language teachers make a sharp distinction between foreign and second
language teaching and are mystified when they realize the same distinction is often
obliterated in SLA studies, as if learning contexts were of little consequence. Yet, it
is important to realize that in SLA the term ‘second’ (or ‘L2’) is often used to mean
‘either a second or a foreign language’ and often ‘both’. This is because, for certain
research questions and research programmes, it may be useful to temporarily
suspend the contextual distinction, for the sake of the analysis at hand. For other
research questions and research programmes in SLA, however, distinguishing
among specific contexts for L2 learning is in fact important. In such cases, SLA
researchers make three (rather than only two) key contextual distinctions: foreign,
second and heritage language learning contexts. The issue of contexts for L2
learning, however, is more complex than it appears at first blush, and even this
three-way characterization of language learning contexts is often not enough.
Throughout the book I will make every effort to contextualize SLA findings and
theories, evaluating what we know about L2 acquisition vis-à-vis specific contexts
and learner populations.
One way to investigate humans’ capacities for learning second languages is to
inspect the oral and written records learners produce when people use the new
language. Hence, a long tradition within SLA research has been the study of what
we call interlanguage, or learners’ mental grammar, and the special variety of
language that it generates when they speak or sign, interact, write, negotiate and
express themselves in the L2, based on the mental representations they forge of the
new grammar. Throughout the book, and particularly in Chapter 6, I will discuss
representative interlanguage findings that help us understand the nature of what is
acquired. As you read each chapter, you will find that many of the illustrations are
in English as an L2. This is because SLA researchers have often focused their
 SLA in the world 7

research efforts on English. This excessively narrow focus on English should be

acknowledged as a limitation, since SLA is about any language that is acquired
other than the first, not just about acquiring L2 English. Nevertheless, important
SLA findings have been generated in L2s as varied as Arabic, Chinese, Dutch,
French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.
Whenever possible, and in order to strike some balance across L2s, I have chosen a
non-English illustration over an English one.
Many other specialized terms have been coined by SLA researchers, but the few
presented here will suffice for now. As we delve into the various topics covered in
this book, I will highlight new important terms by emboldening them when they are
first introduced in the text.

1.5 INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN SLA

SLA has always been a porous, interdisciplinary field. For some, it is most
intimately connected to theoretical linguistics and first language acquisition
(White, 2003), and for others to cognitive psychology (Doughty and Long, 2003).
Other academic and professional communities view SLA rather differently and
associate it most directly with the teaching of languages (Kramsch, 2000). These
four fields (language teaching, linguistics, child language acquisition, psychology)
were the ones that originally converged into key initial developments that gave rise
to the field. As we will see throughout this book, SLA has maintained close
theoretical and methodological ties with all four. In addition, it has developed more
recent ties with other disciplines, notably bilingualism, psycholinguistics,
education, anthropology and sociology.
In general, SLA is seen as a subfield or branch of applied linguistics, a mega-field
that concerns itself with problems that have their roots in the intersections between
language and society, education and cognition (see good reviews of applied
linguistics in Davies and Elder, 2004; Schmitt, 2002). Currently SLA enjoys the
scholarly outlets typical of all autonomous academic disciplines, including refereed
journals, book series in international publishers, specialized conferences, related
professional and scientific associations, and university-based doctoral
programmes. This high degree of specialization and autonomy notwithstanding,
the field remains as strongly interdisciplinary now as it was in its origins.

1.6 SLA IN THE WORLD

Many of the questions that SLA researchers investigate are highly relevant in the
real world. A few examples here can serve as illustrations of the potential impact
that SLA scholarship can have on real-world problems:

● Parents who regard elective bilingualism as a social value wonder what the
optimal age might be for their children to begin learning a foreign language.
 8 Introduction

This question is related to the age of onset of acquisition, or how early or

late in life one should start to learn an additional language after the mother
tongue.
● Policy makers and educators in different countries debate appropriate
policies for minority children who speak other languages at home and need
to be schooled in the societal language. They also wonder how long it should
take them to learn the majority language. This speaks to many questions
related to rate of acquisition, or how fast progress can be made in various
areas of the L2, and how long is long enough to learn an L2.
● Sympathizers of anti-immigrant movements in various countries lament
that newcomers to their societies allegedly refuse to learn the language of
the majority and persist in settling for rudimentary survival language skills
only, even after decades of living in their new country. These are prejudices
that may be better countered if we knew more about ultimate attainment
or the absolute potential for complete acquisition of the L2 for different
people under various learning circumstances that entail diverse needs and
goals.
● Language teachers across institutions all over the world hotly debate
whether students in their classrooms need to be directly taught grammar
and vocabulary in order to get the basic building blocks of a language
first, or whether it is better to somehow approximate in their classroom
the richness of natural language meaning-making processes. Which of the
two broad approaches, or variations thereof, would better prepare lan-
guage students for what they will encounter once they are to use the L2
for their own purposes beyond the classroom? This is the question of
effective instruction, which plays out across many educational contexts
in the form of tensions between formal and experiential approaches to
learning. Whether in second, foreign or heritage language teaching, the
battles have been for and against traditional grammar teaching and alter-
native meaning-oriented proposals, including communicative language
teaching, task-based curricula, content-based instruction and focus on
form instruction.

As you see, SLA researchers have many opportunities to generate knowledge

about L2 acquisition that illuminates these public questions and makes the lives of
people who learn and use second languages a little bit better. Therein lies the
challenge of contemporary SLA as a discipline: on the one hand, to advance our
understanding of theoretical conundrums about the human language faculty and of
L2 acquisition phenomena in need of description and explanation; and, on the
other, to connect such understandings to the real-world problems that arise for
people who, by choice or by circumstance, set out to learn a language other than
their mother tongue.