Lighbown, P. M. & Spada N.

(2013) How languages are learned

Explaining second language learning

The behaviourist perspective

 Behaviourist theory explained learning in terms of imitation, practice, reinforcement (or feedback
on success), and habit formation.

Second language applications: Mimicry and memorization

 Behaviourism had a powerful influence on second and foreign lg teaching, especially in North
Amerva (1940-1970s)
 Nelson Brooks and Robert Lado – two prominent of this perspective.
 Classroom activities emphasized mimicry and memorization, and students learned dialogues and
sentence patterns by heart.
 Lg learning was viewed as formation of habits, it was assumed that a person learning a second lg
would start off with the habits formed in first lg and these habits would interfere with new ones
needed for the second lg.
 Behaviourism was often linked to the contrastive analysis hypothesis.
 Researchers found that many of the errors learners make are not predictable on the basis of their
first language, nor do they always make the errors that would be predictble by a simple
comparison of their first and second languages.
 This discovery led to the rejection of both the contrastive analysis hypothesis and behaviourism,
leading to a period during which both the role of the first lg and the role of practice in learning a
second lg received limited attention in both research pedagogy.
 The influence of the learner’s first language may not simply be a matter of habits, but more a
subtle and complex process of identifying points of similarity, weighing the evidence in support of
some particular feature, and even reflecting about whether a certain feature seems to ‘belong’ in
the target lg.
 By the 1970s, many researchers were convinced that behaviourism and the contrastive analysis
hypothesis were inadequate explanations for second lg acquisition.

The innatist perspective

 Chomsky argued that innate knowledge of the principles of Universal Grammar permits all
children to acquire the language of their environment during a critical period of their
development.
 White and other linguists have argued that UG offers the best perspective from which to
nderstand second lg acquisition.
 Robert Bley-Vroman and Jacquelyn Schachter have suggested that it does not offer a good
explanation for the acquisition of a second lg, especially by learners who have passed the
critical period.
 Vivian Cook and others point out that there is still ‘the logical problem’ of sec. lg acquisition.
 The implication is that knowledge of UG must be available to second lg. learners as well as to
first lg learners.
 Bonnie Schwartz concludes that instruction and feedback change only superficial aspects of lg
performance and do not affect the underlying systematic knowledge of the new lg.
  Lydia White and others agree that acquisition of many grammatical features of the new lg
takes place naturally when learners are engaged in meaningful use of the language.
 Because UG is altered by acquisition of the first lg, second lg learners may sometimes need
explicit information about what is not grammatical in the second lg.

Second language applications: Krashen’s ‘Monitor Model’

 Monitor Model – first described in the early 1970s, at a time when there was growing
dissatisfaction with lg teaching methods based on behaviourism.
 Krashen described his model in terms of 5 hypothesises:
 In the acquisition/learning hypothesis, Krashen suggests that we ‘acquire’ lg as we are exposed to
samples of lg that we understand in much the same way that children pick up their first lg – with
no conscious attention to lg form.
 We ‘learn’ on the other hand through conscious attention to form and rule learning.
 Monitor hypothesis – second lg users draw on what they have acquired when they engage in
spontaneous communication.
 They may use rules and patterns that have been learned as an editor of ‘monitor’, allowing them to
make minor changes and polish what the acquired system has produced.
 The natural order hypothesis was based on the finding that, as in first lg acquisition, second lg
acquisition unfolds in predictable sequences,.
 The comprehensible input hypothesis is that acquisition occurs when one is exposed to lg that is
comprehensible and contains i + 1. The i represents the level of lg already acquired, and the +1 is
a metaphor for language that is just a step beyond that level.
 Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis is proposed to account for the fact that some people who are
exposed to large quantities of comprehensible input do not necessarily acquire lg successfully.
 The ‘affective filter’ is a metaphorical barrier that prevents learners from acquiring lg even when
appropriate input is available.
 A learner who is tense, anxious or bored may filter out input, making it unavailable for
acquisition.
 Classroom research has confirmed that sts can make a great deal of progress through ecposure to
comprehensible input without direct instruction.

The cognitive perspective

 Humans have a language-specific module in the brain
 From the cognitive psychology perspective, first and second lg acquisition are seen as drawing on
the same process of perception, memory, categorization and generalization. The difference lies in
the circumstances of learning as well as in what the learners already know about lg and how that
prior knowledge shapes their perception of the new lg.

Information processing
 Cognitive psychologists working in an information processing model of human learning and
performance see second lg acquisition as the building up of knowledge that can eventually be
called on automatically for speaking and understanding.
 DeKeyser, Richard Schmidt and others have suggested that learners must pay attention at first to
any aspect of the lg that they are trying to produce.
 Through experience and practice, information that was new becomes easier to rocess and learners
become able to access it quickly and even automatically.
 Another aspect of automaticity in lg processing is the retrieval of word meanings.
  When proficient listeners hear a familiar word, even for a split second, they cannot help but
understand it. Thus proficient lg users can give their full attention to the overall meaning.
 Most learning starts with declarative knowledge, knowledge that we are aware of having.
 Through knowledge, declarative knowledge can become procedural knowledge.
 With continued practice, the procedural knowledge can become automathized and the learner may
forget having learned it first as declarative knowledge.
 Restruction – restricting may account for what appear to be bursts of progress, when learners
suddenly seem to ‘put it all together’.
 Transfer appropriate processing (TAP) – information is best retrieved in situations that are similar
to those in which it was acquired.

Usage-based learning
 Usage based theories attribute less importance to the kind of declarative knowledge that
characterizes skill learning and traditional structure-based approaches to second lg instruction.
 The emphasis is on the frequency with which learners encounter specific linguistic features in the
input and the frequency with which lg features occur together.
 Learners develop stronger and stronger network of associations or connections between these
features as well as between lg features and the context in which they occur.

The competition model

 Competition method: an explanation for both first and second lg acquisition that takes into
account not only lg but also lg meaning and lg use.
 According to the competition model, second lg acquisition requires that learners learn the relative
importance of the different cues appropriate in the lg they are learning.

Language and the brain

 Questions investigated: Whether first and second lgs are acquired and represented in the same
areas of the brain, whether the brain processes second lg input differently from first lg input.
 Recent brain imaging studies show activation in different locations in both hemispheres of the
brain during lg processing. This is true for both first and second lgs.
 Differences have been observed, depending on the learners’ age and level of proficiency.
 Some research has shown that as an L2 learner’s proficiency increases, the brain activity looks
more like that of first lg processing.
 Keep in mind: this is a young discipline – therefore any implications of lg and brain research for
second lg teaching are premature.

Second language applications: Interacting, noticing, processing and practising

The interaction hypothesis
 Conversational interaction is an essential condition for second lg acquisition.
 Comprehensible input is necessary for lg acquisition.
 How input could be made comprehensible? Modified interaction is the necessary mechanism
for making lg comprehensible.
 Learners need opportunities to interact with other speakers, working together to reach mutual
comprehension through negotiation for meaning.
 Noticing, corrective feedback during interaction
  When comm.. is difficult, interlocutors must ‘negotiate for meaning’, and this negotiation is
seen as the opportunity for lg development.
 Comrehensible output hypothesis: when learners must produce lg that their interlocutor can
inderstand, they are most likely to see the limits of their second lg ability.

The noticing hypothesis

 Noticing does not itself result in acquisition, but it is the essential starting point.
 Comprehensible input does not lead to growth in lg knowledge unless the learner becomes aware
of a particular lg feature.
 Schmidt’s proposal of the noticing hypothesis came from his own experience as a learner of
Portuguese.
 Schmidt hypothesized that second lg learners could not begin to acquire a lg feature until they had
become aware of it in the input.
Input processing
 Students often misunderstand sentences
 The problem arose in part from the fact that learners have limited processing capacity and cannot
pay attention to form and meaning at the same time. They tend to give priority to meaning,
overlooking some features of the lg form.

Processability theory
 Pienemann developed processability theory on the basis of research with learners of different
languages in a variety of settings, both instructional and informal.
 His theory explains why learners do not simply transfer features from their first lg at early stages
of acquisition. Instead, they have develop a certain level of processing capacity in the second lg
before they can use their knowledge of the features that already exist in their first lg.

The role of practice

 Practice should be interactive
 Practice should be meaningful
 There should be a focus on task-essential form
 ACCESS (Automatization in Communicative Contexts of Essential Speech Segments)
 It draws on the cognitive perspective and is based on classroom activities which require learners to
use meaningful units of language repetitively in context where there are genuine exchanges of
meaning.
 The goal is to provide opportunities for using these units with sufficient frequency that will
become automatic.

The sociocultural perspective

 Sociocultural theory holds that people gain control of and recognize their cognitive process during
meditation as knowledge is internalized during social activity.

Second language applications: Learning by talking

  Swain and Lapkin: collaborative dialogue – they have carried out a series of studies to determine
how second lg learners co-construct linguistic knowledge while engaging in production tasks that
simultaneously draw their attention to form and meaning.

Second language learning in the classroom

 Question: What is the best way to promote lg learning in the classroom?

 The goal of experimental studies is to identify specific variables that may affect learning similarly
in different environments and find ways of measuring these effects.
 These studies involve large numbers of learners to avoid the possibility that the unusual behaviour
of one or two individuals might lead to a misleading conclusion about learners in general.
 Qualitative research often involves small numbers – the emphasis is not on what is most general
but rather on a thorough understanding of what is particular about what is happening in this
classroom.
 While quantitative and qualitative research are important in assessing theoretical proposals, action
research carried out by teachers in their own classroom is also essential to answer specific local
questions.

Get it right from the beginning

 Although communicative lg teaching has come to dominate in some environments grammar
translation remain widespread.
 The grammar translation approach has its origin in the teaching of classical lgs.
 The original purpose of this approach was to help sts read literature rather than to develop fluency
in the spoken lg.
 Audiolingual instruction arose in part as a reaction to the grammar translation approach.
 Audiolingual teaching would lead sts to actually speak the lg.
 Audioling. approach was based on behaviourism and contrastive analysis.
Research findings
 Many adult learners express a preference for structure-based approach.
 Learners whose previous lg learning experience was in grammar translation classes may also
prefer such instruction.
 Supporters of communicative lg teaching have argued that lg is not learned by gradual
accumulation of one item after another. They suggest that errors are a natural and valuable part of
the lg learning process.
 These opponents of the ‘get it right from the beginning’ proposal argue that it is better to
encourage to develop ‘fluency’ before ‘accuracy’

Audiolingual pattern drill

 Patsy Lightbown – carried out a series of longitudinal and cross-sectional investigations into the
effect of audiolingual instruction on interlanguage development.
 The results showed differences between the ‘natural order’ and the relative accuracy with which
these classroom learners produced them.
 These findings suggested that the type of instruction sts had experienced resulted in a
developmental sequence that was different from that of learners in more natural learning
environments
  An almost exclusive focus on accuracy and practice of particular forms doesn’t mean that learners
will be able to use the form correctly.
 Repetition and drill of decontextualized sentences did not seem to favour the development of
comprehension, fluency or communicative abilities either.

Grammar plus communicative practice

 Research findings: the communicative group scored significantly higher than the other groups on
the four communicative tests developed for the study.
 Opportunities for free communication did not cause learners to do less well on measures of
linguistic accuracy.

Just listen... and read

 This proposal is based on the hypothesis that lg acquisition takes place when learners are exposed
to comprehensible input through listening and/or reading.
 ‘Just listen...and read’ is a controversial proposal for second language teaching.
 It not only says that second lg. learners need to drill and practise lg in order to learn it, but also
that they do not need to speak at all, expect to get other people to provide input by speaking to
them.
 According to this view, it is enough to hear and understand the target lg.

Total physical response

 TPR – was developed by James Asher.
 In TPR classes sts participate in activities in which they hear a series of commands in the target lg,
for example: stand up, put your book on the table
 At more advanced level, they may act out skits as the teacher provides a description of an event or
encounter.
 Sts simply listen and show their comprehension by their actions.
 When sts speak, they take over the role of the teacher and give commands as well as following
them
 In TPR instruction, the vocabulary and structures learners are exposed to are carefully graded and
organized. The material gradually increases in complexity so that each new lesson builds on the
ones before.
 Asher’s research showed that ts could develop quite advanced levels of comprehension in the lg
without engaging in oral practice.
Research on comprehension-based approaches to second lg acquisition shows that learners can make
considerable progress if they have sustained exposure to lg they understand.

Let’s talk
 Advocates of ‘Let’s talk’ emphasize the importance of access to both comprehensible input and
conversational interactions with teachers and other sts
 When learners are given the opportunity to engage in interaction, they are compelled to
‘negotiation for meaning’ – to express and clarify their intentions, thoughts, opinions, in a way
that permits them to arrive at mutual understanding. – esp. task based instruction
Research based on the interaction hypothesis has investigated factorst hat contribute to the quality of
interactions between second language learners.
Several studies have shown that implicit corrective feedback in pair work situations is beneficial.

Two for one

 This approach to lg teaching referred to as content-based instruction is one in which learners
acquire a second or a foreign lg as they study subject matter taught in that lg.
 Bilingual education, immersion programmes, content and lg-integrated learning programmes
 The expectation of this approach is that sts can get ‘two for one’, learning the subject matter
content and the lg at the same time.
 Content-based instruction has many advantages: it increases the amount of time for learners to be
exposed to the new lg. It creates a genuine need to communicate, motivating sts to acquire the lg
in order to understand the content.
 There are also some problems with content-based instruction: sts may need several years before
their ability to use the lg for cognitively challenging academic material has reached an age-
appropriate level.
 For sts from disadvantaged minority groups, this delay in coming to grips with schooling can have
lasting effects.

Teach what is teachable

 According to Pienemann, any attempt to teach Stage 4 word-order pattern to learners at Stage 1
will not work because learners have to pass through Stage 2 and get to Stage 3 before they are
ready to acquire what is at Stage 4.
 Individual vocabulary items = ‘variational features’ – depend on factors such as motivation, the
learners’ sense of identity, language aptitude, and the quality of instruction.
 ‘Teach what is teachable’ view suggests that while some features of the lg can be taught
successfully at various points in the learners’ development, other features develop according to the
learners’ internal schedule.
 Although learners may be able to produce more advanced forms on tests or in very restricted
pedagogical exercise, instruction cannot change the ‘natural’ developmental course.
 The recommendation is to assess the learners’ developmental level and teach what would
normally come next.

Get it right in the end

 Learners will do better if they also have access to some form-focus instruction.
 Learners will benefit in terms of both efficiency of their learning and the level of proficiency they
will eventually reach.
 Proponents of ‘Get it right in the end’ argue that it is sometimes necessary to draw learners’
attention to ther errors and to focus on certain linguistic (vocab or grammar) points.
 However it is different from the ‘Get it right from the beginning’ proposal in acknowledging that
it is appropriate for learners to engage in meaningful language use from the very beginning of
their exposure to the second lg.
 They assume that much of lg acquisition will develop naturally out of such use, without formal
instruction that focuses on the lg itself.
The implications of classroom research for teaching
 Classroom-based research on second lg learning and teaching has given us partial answers to
many questions.
 Through continuing research and experience, researchers and teachers will fill in more details,
always recognizing that no single answer will be adequate for all learning environments.