SLA Topics Key Issues in SLA Vivian Cook Age in SLA
The Relationship between First and Second Language Learning Revisited
Vivian
Cook
draft of chapter in Macaro 2010
The
relationship between how people learn their first language (L1) and how they
learn their second language (L2) and subsequent languages has concerned second
language acquisition (SLA) research ever since it became an independent
discipline (see Stern, 1967; Cook, 1969, 1973; Ervin-Tripp, 1974 for a selection
of early views). The relationship between the two languages is crucial because
it defines the very nature of second language acquisition: if L2 acquisition did
not differ in some way from L1 acquisition, SLA
research would be merely a sub‑field of language acquisition
research rather than a field of its own. It is a truism that the defining
characteristic of L2 acquisition is the presence of a second language in the
same mind as a first and that the characteristic of an L2 community is the use
of additional languages to the first language. The unique problem for SLA
research is to see how this pre-existing language affects the L2 user’s
mind and the L2 user’s community.
This
chapter concentrates on the language of the individual rather than of the
community. It shows how SLA research emerged out of the chrysalis of L1
acquisition research, looking particularly at acquisition stages and at research
techniques. Then it links three contemporary L1 approaches to questions relevant
to SLA research. Next it looks at the differences and similarities that have
been proposed between L1 and L2 acquisition. Finally it concludes with a plea
for the independence of SLA research from L1 acquisition research.
1 SLA
research springing from first language acquisition
Early
SLA research in the 1960s drew on first language acquisition research not only
for its ideas but also for its research techniques. The dangers are using ideas
and techniques that do not transfer to L2 acquisition for various reasons and
employing them long after their sell-by date in L1 acquisition research.
(i) using ideas from L1
acquisition research
The
mainspring that drove SLA research in the 1960s was the independent grammars
assumption as applied to children’s language by people such as Brown (1973)
and McNeill (1966): children should not be treated as mini-adults but as
children. The child’s language constitutes an independent system of its own
rather than being a defective version of the adult system. Braine’s crucial
work with two-word sentences set the trend (Braine, 1963). Children’s
utterances like more high were not
deformed versions of adult sentences but reflected the unique pivot-open
organisation of early child grammar; to make a
two-word utterance, combine a pivot word like more with a content word like high,
yielding more high, a request to be
lifted up. Children’s sentences are not poor attempts at adult sentences but
proper sentences according to the child’s own rules.
Taken
into SLA research, the independent grammars assumption became known as the
‘interlanguage’ hypothesis: ‘the existence of a
separate linguistic system’ (Selinker, 1972). The learner’s language
system is not a defective version of the native speaker’s but a developing
system in its own right. This concept served to liberate SLA research from the
dead hand of structural linguistics and Contrastive Analysis by starting from
the learner rather than a preset apparatus. The main focus became the detailed
analysis of learners’ speech, in principle independently of the language of
native speakers. You no longer had to compare the total syntax ands phonology of
the two languages before you tackled L2 learning as it were but could start in
on what actual learners did and see what there syntax and phonology consisted
using the learners’ own speech or writing – in a sense a bottom-up data-led
process rather than a top-down theory-based one.
Yet,
despite paying lip-service to interlanguage, the vast majority of SLA research
never quite accepted the interlanguage assumption that learners have to be
studied in their own right. In L1 acquisition research people had indeed
knuckled down to the task of looking at the child’s own language development
rather than looking for deviations from adult speech, as most introductions to
L1 acquisition show to this day, say Bloom (2002) and Clarke (2003). L2
learners, however, were at every turn measured against the monolingual native
speaker, both overtly as shown by remarks like ‘Relative to native speaker's
linguistic competence, learners' interlanguage is deficient by definition’
(Kasper & Kellerman, 1997, 5), and covertly through research techniques such
as grammaticality judgements that implicitly use the native speaker as a
touchstone.
The
most influential concept taken from L1 acquisition research was undoubtedly that
of developmental sequence. L1 children were believed to progress through
distinct stages in language acquisition, just as their cognition developed
through stages whether those of Piaget (Piaget & Inhelder, 1969) or Bruner
(1966). Brown (1973) made the first major longitudinal study of the language of
three children, followed by Gordon Wells’ monumental attempt at recording 124
children (Wells, 1981) and Bruner’s observations of 120 children (Bruner,
1983). In a sense such longitudinal projects aimedc at establishing the stages
of development; what does the child learn first, second, …? Explanations of
the sequence were tagged on post hoc after the basic developmental ‘facts’
had been described, whether the semantic explanations of Brown, the functional
theories of Wells or the social interaction of Bruner.
Dulay
and Burt (1974) applied the Brown study techniques to the L2 development of
so-called grammatical morphemes such as prepositions to
and in and grammatical inflections
such as –ing and ’s. They found evidence for an L2 sequence that was similar to but
nonetheless distinct from the L1 sequence in Brown (1973). Sequence of
acquisition has dominated SLA research ever since; massive efforts have gone
into investigating which sounds are learnt first (Major, 1994), which syntactic
structures (Zobl & Liceras, 1994), and countless other areas. The order in
which things are acquired is then taken to be the crucial evidence for language
acquisition. Few L2 studies have looked at overall development through
longitudinal corpus studies, apart perhaps from the work of the ESF project with
migrant workers (Klein & Perdue, 1997) or Wode’s study of his children
(Wode, 1981). The L2 explanations for the order of L1 development either deny
the need for an explanation as it is just ‘natural’, as in the Natural Order
Hypothesis (Krashen, 1985), or are based on a single aspect of development,
whether the social cognitive dimension of the ESF (Klein & Perdue, 1997) or
the parameter setting/resetting of the Universal Grammar generativists (White,
2003).
Hardly
anybody seems to have taken heed of Chomsky’s insistence that it is the
acquired knowledge that is crucial, not the order in which it is acquired. He
has often spoken of an idealised ‘instantaneous’ model of language
acquisition that relates language input and competence as wholes without
reference to chronological development (Chomsky, 1986). Cook and Newson (2007)
distinguish acquisition – the
logical problem of how the mind acquires language independent of intervening
stages – and development – the
history of the intervening stages. As a car-driver, it does not matter to you in
which order you learnt to steer, use the brake, change gear etc. It’s what you
can do that is important, not which component you learnt first, even if there is
presumably a natural sequence for learning to drive. Developmental order in the
first language may be the product of factors other than language acquisition per
se, such as frequency effects in the language input, the development of the
child’s working memory and so on. Teasing out language acquisition from these
other factors is a major task for L1 acquisition research.
Nor
is the concept of stage itself clearly defined. Ingram (1989) found several
types of L1 ‘stage’ – a ‘continuous stage’ referring to ‘a point on
a continuum’, a ‘plateau stage’ where change halts for some time, a
‘transition stage’ before change takes off again, and an ‘acceleration
stage’ where there is rapid acquisition before reaching a plateau. Most SLA
research such as Dulay and Burt (1974) has used the continuum meaning;
a stage has no coherent characteristics of its own other than its position on
the continuum; one thing just comes after another. Processability theory
(Pienemann, 1998) is like more a plateau and transition stage theory with broad
characteristics for each stage. Saying that language acquisition proceeds
through stages of development is empty without defining what a stage is.
One
crucial question to be developed below is whether the L2 user’s knowledge of
the second language is the same as that of an L1 monolingual native speaker of
that language. The main question for many researchers has been whether the
stages and processes through which L2 learners develop are the same as those for
L1 children. SLA researchers were impressed by the overall idea of sequence: the
discovery of a common acquisition sequence for L2 learners is 'surely one of the
most exciting and significant outcomes of the last decade of second language
research' (Dulay & Burt, 1980). Experiments
indeed showed that L2 learners acquired things in a sequence resembling L1
acquisition. Like L1 children (Cromer, 1970), L2 users first confused the
difference between John is easy to please
and John is eager to please and sorted
it out comparatively late (Cook, 1973) – plateau stages with transitions –
despite having no clear way of deriving the structure from the speech that they
encounter. The importance of stagiation depends on whether you accept that the
route is important rather than the process or the target. I can walk to work, or
go by bicycle or by car, with slight variations according to one-way streets and
pedestrianised areas etc, but does it matter what I do so long as I get there?
(ii) research techniques
As
a new area of research, SLA research undoubtedly borrowed most of its research
techniques from first language acquisition and has continued to do so. After
all, why not? Both disciplines are concerned with language acquisition; it would
be surprising if techniques that worked in one area did not work in the other;
it’s the same human mind acquiring language in both cases after all. A useful
practical survey of the main L1 research techniques is provided in McDaniel et
al (1996).
The
techniques most obviously borrowed from L1 acquisition research are those for
studying actual sentences that L2 learners produce, which we can call natural data (Cook, 1986). The L1 corpus studies by Brown (1973) and
Wells (1981) recorded children’s sentences over a period of years and analysed
them in terms of mostly syntactic criteria. In SLA research the ESF project
adopted a similar approach by recording large amounts of speech by immigrants to
five countries and producing an account of the learners’ common basic grammar
and semantic stages through which they progressed (Klein & Perdue, 1997).
SLA
research was also fond of a technique for tackling natural data called Error
Analysis (EA) (Corder, 1971). This looked at the differences between the
learners’ speech and that of native speakers and then looked for explanations.
However, EA fundamentally differed
from the children’s corpus analyses in that it looked for ‘errors’,
defined as deviations from native speech – 'the methodology of description is,
needless to say, fundamentally that of a bilingual comparison' (Corder, 1971).
EA in the main tried to find the origins of errors in the knowledge of the first
language, an explanation that was clearly not possible for L1 researchers.
Indeed the very concept of ‘error’ in L2 speech seems in breach of the
interlanguage assumption unless highly qualified.
Another
popular technique with natural data was scoring obligatory occurrences of
particular syntactic forms. Brown (1973) had defined ‘obligatory’ in terns
of context; in some sentences the linguistic context makes you supply a
demonstrative that – that man – or
the prior context shows that you must say the
man, not a man, and so on. The
continued use in SLA research from Dulay and Burt (1974) to the Competition
Model (Pienemann, 1998), however, defines obligatory as what a native speaker
would say – again the native speaker sneaking in by the back door.
The
second broad family of techniques borrowed from L1 research generated controlled data (Cook, 1986). One form this takes is getting
learners to produce naturalistic speech. For example Slobin and Welsh (1973)
devised the elicited imitation technique which asks L1 children to repeat
sentences; the ways in which they change the sentence are believed to reveal
properties of their underlying competence. Elicited imitation was used for
second language acquisition by Cook (1973) for testing the comprehension of relative
clauses, and by many others. Eliciting sentences through picture
description was also used by for example Bellugi and Brown (1964) for L1 plurals
and by Dulay and Burt (1974) for L2 grammatical
morphemes. Various ways of getting people to talk have been used ever since, for
instance the well-known ‘danger of death’ question pioneered by Labov
(1984), ‘When did you come closest to dying?’.
An
important additional source of information for SLA research is introspection
data (Cook, 1986). L2 learners are asked about their emotions, motivations
and strategies, surveyed in say Dornyei (2006) or McDonough (1981). Much of this
data is unobtainable in L1 acquisition as the children’s age makes such
testing virtually impossible. One key technique in SLA research has been
grammaticality judgements, the vital technique used in generative SLA research.
L2 learners are asked whether they feel that certain sentences are grammatical
or not and their answers compared with those of native speakers, explicitly or
implicitly as in say Hawkins and Chen (1997).
L1
research has mostly eschewed testing the grammaticality judgements of young
children, partly because of doubts about what these judgements actually mean,
partly because of the difficulty of administering them, though they are stoutly
defended by McDaniel et al (1996) provided they are carried out in a way that
makes sense to the child. Despite this, Muhammad
Hannan (2004) used grammaticality judgements to find an L2 sequence of
acquisition for Bengali-speaking children in East London. By and large
grammaticality judgements as an L2 research technique cannot be justified from
L1 acquisition research – for good or for ill. Nor can they claim their
justification from the linguist’s non-experimental use of linguistic
intuitions, a different approach to evidence. And they are suspect for comparing
L1 and L2 learning because one of the things that changes in L2 learners is
precisely the ability to treat language metalinguistically (Bialystok, 1993).
2 L1 acquisition theories and L2
acquisition
Let
us now turn to some current views of how children acquire their first language
to second language acquisition before relating them to second language
acquisition.
- Tomasello and theory of mind
Since
the mid 1990s an influential psychology theory has been called usage-based
linguistics, among other names. As described by Tomasello (2003), this has two
important components: intention-reading and pattern finding, which reappear in
different guises in other forms of cognitive psychology.
Intention
reading refers to the well-documented ability of young children to see the world
from another’s point of view. Trevarthen (1974) filmed mothers talking to
babies face to face. When the mother started to look over the baby’s shoulder,
the baby would try to turn to see what the mother was looking at. Simple enough
but a clear sign of being able to see things from another point of view: if I
were my mother, moving my eyes would mean I was looking at something; therefore
there is something to be seen if I turn round. Another example is the well-known
false belief test, which has many variations. Typically two girls called Sally
and Molly are in the same room with the experimenter. Sally hides a teddy bear
under a chair; Molly goes out of the room; Sally picks up the bear and hides it
under the table; the experimenter asks Sally ‘Where does Molly think the bear
is?’. If Sally says ‘under the chair’, she can see the other’s point of
view; if Sally says ‘under the table’, she cannot. Tomasello (1999) explores
variations on this task, showing time and again that the child knows how other
people see the world – a so-called ‘theory of mind’ (TOM). The crucial
thing for language acquisition is then being able to see the world from another
point of view; lack of a theory of mind is one of the causes of autism
(Baron-Cohen, 1995). Hence the language interaction formats described by Bruner
(1983) are a way of developing the child’s theory of mind, of enabling him or
her to see how an adult views the world.
Looked
at from an SLA perspective, the L2 learner no longer needs to go through this
process; L2 learners already have a theory of mind and do not need to develop it
over again. Goetz (2003) has shown that young L2 learners pass such theory of
mind tests earlier than monolinguals; learning a second language provides an
initial impetus to getting a theory of mind. Children who were bilingual in
pairs of spoken and sign languages such as Italian/Italian Sign Language and
Estonian/Estonian Sign Language were better at TOM tasks than those raised with
only a single language (Meristo et al, 2007). L2 learners may go a stage beyond
a theory of mind to a theory of minds: monolingual children may get the
impression that all other minds have a similar point of view; bilingual children
or adults are soon convinced of the multiplicity of points of view.
This
topic introduces a leit-motiv for this chapter: the L1 child’s maturation is a
transforming experience that does not need to be repeated by older learners in a
second language, or indeed cannot be repeated. Stages of acquisition may be
non-reversible, if they depend on cognitive or social maturation; you don’t
lose TOM in a second language. Gleitman (1982) introduced the metaphor of frogs
and tadpoles into language development: once a tadpole transforms into a frog,
the process cannot be reversed. It may be that language and other cognitive
processes are transformations of this kind; you can’t change back into an
earlier version of yourself, whatever beauty products may try to hint. Indeed I
once conducted an experiment with hypnotic age regression that tried to
demonstrate that adults could not speak like five-year-olds, alas abandoned for
methodological and ethical reasons.
-
Halliday and social theories of language
Language
is for doing things and for relating to people. Halliday (1975) saw children’s
development in terms of the functions they want to express, initially starting
with six distinct functions, gradually developing into the three simultaneous
adult functions – the interpersonal
(relating to people), the ideational
(communicating ideas to other people) and the textual (relating one piece of language to another). The fundamental
issue is ‘learning how to mean’ – discovering how to use the multiple
functions of language.
Social
theories of language therefore imply the first language emerges through
interaction between children and adults. Different social functions have been
emphasised from time to time. Adults for example use a particular style of
language when talking to children, say speaking more grammatically and using
baby-talk vocabulary like ‘bow-wow’ (Snow & Ferguson, 1977). Certain
kinds of interaction are favoured; Bruner (1983) for instance documented the
development of peekaboo games. Others have looked at characteristics of
child-adult exchanges; Bellugi and Brown (1964) highlighted a process of
‘imitation with expansion’ in which the adult repeats back the child’s
sentence in a slightly different form,
Child: Baby highchair
Mother: Baby is in the highchair
These came subsequently to be called ‘recasts’. These interactional devices
clearly depend on the child having a theory of mind; nothing would be gained
from recasts if the child reacted by thinking ‘Why is this stupid person
repeating what I say?’
SLA
research has usually
translated parent/child interaction into native speaker (NS) to non-native
speaker (NNS) interaction. Recasts have featured highly in classroom
interaction, defined as ‘the teacher’s reformulation of all or part of a
student’s utterance minus the error’ (Lyster & Ranta, 1997, 46). Han
(2002) suggested that the success of recasts depends on intensity of instruction
and developmental readiness. Often recasts have been linked to Vygotsky’s
1930s theory of child development (Vygotsky, 1934/1962, 1935/1978), a precursor
to modern ideas. The main construct has been the ZPD (Zone of Proximal
Development), in SLA research taken to be the
gap between the learner’s current stage and the next point on some
developmental scale (Lantolf, 2000). Yet, like the theory of mind, this brings
to light a distinct feature of second language acquisition: whatever L2 learners
need to learn it is not how to mean.
They have learnt the functions of language itself along with their first
language; they simply have to discover how second language exploits this. Their
social interactions with others do not need to be directed towards acquiring
knowledge of language functions and social interaction – except in so far as
these vary from one language to another.
-
Chomsky and knowledge of language
Chomsky’s
theory of Universal Grammar (UG) has primarily been concerned with the
acquisition of syntax. It denies the premise of the other two L1 theories that
language arises from social contact by claiming that virtually all children
learn human language regardless of their situations or the ways their parents
talk. However much a theory of mind may be needed for social interaction, it is
incidental to the acquisition of syntax. None of the modifications to speech or
interaction of L1 parents can be shown to be necessary to language acquisition,
even if they may provide a small assistance. However diverse the cultural
pattern of interaction, children always manage to learn language; the dialogues
with babies so often commended in Western societies are not found in many
societies, say Samoa (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984). All you need to learn a
first language acquisition is a normal human mind and exposure to language.
Chomskyan
theory sees language acquisition as the child’s language faculty creating
language knowledge by reacting to language input. The child possesses inbuilt
principles and parameters that are applied differently according to the
properties of the lexical items the child learns. A lexical item like faint projects particular properties on
to the sentence – it can’t have an object, he
fainted her, or an inanimate subject, the
house fainted, its subject comes before it, i.e. he
fainted, not after, fainted he,
and so on. Acquisition means acquiring the properties of thousands of lexical
items like faint. Chomsky’s recent
Minimalist Program (MP) (Chomsky, 1995) divides the language faculty into the
broad faculty of language (FLB) and the narrow faculty of language (FLN); the
FLN includes only the property of recursion (embedding a structure within an
example of the same structure) (Hauser et al., 2002), thus considerably reducing
the innate language structure of the human mind. However most work in
developmental linguistics tends to use the earlier Government and Binding theory
(Chomsky, 1981), as shown in Guasti (2002), with
the exception of a few mainstream syntacticians working in first language
acquisition, such as Rizzi (2004). Chomsky’s theory remains a theory of
knowledge of language to which both social relationships and general cognition
are incidental.
The
overall UG theory has led to so-called generative SLA research, a subfield with
its own articles, conferences and journals, much concerned with the relationship
between L1 and L2 acquisition. One controversy is whether L2 differs from L1
acquisition because the L2 learner can no longer use the resources of UG in
their minds . The initial debate concerned whether the L2 learner had
‘access’ to Universal Grammar; perhaps L2 learning differs from L1
acquisition because L2 learners can no longer apply the original principles of
Universal Grammar in their minds or perhaps they use them differently. Mostly
the answer seemed to be that L2 learners are still capable of learning aspects
of language such as structure-dependency without sufficient evidence, just as
native children do (Cook, 2003a); hence there is exactly the same evidence for
UG in their minds as there is for it’s existence in the monolingual child’s.
The
1990s generativists debated a number of ‘hypotheses’ about access to UG in
second language acquisition including: Full Access, Full Transfer/Full Access
and variations on partial access such as Minimal Trees, Valueless Features and
Failed Functional Features, all attempts to pin out the syntactic configurations
that may be available to the L2 learner. These hypothesis wars are detailed in
Cook and Newson (2007) who conclude ‘Rather than using the richness of the
Universal Grammar theory, this area seems to have become the kind of discussion
associated with the question, probably spuriously attributed to St Aquinas, of
how many angels can dance on the head of a pin’ (Cook & Newson, 2007,
239).
Generative
SLA research has taken the current Minimalist
Program more seriously than L1 acquisition research. For example SLA
research has started to explore the ‘interface conditions’ where the
syntactic core of language impacts upon the actual production of language on the
one hand and the cognitive systems of the rest of the human mind (Sorace, 2004).
In
general recent SLA research has drawn on L1
acquisition theories more for its own ends than to test the relationship between
L1 and L2 acquisition. In particular
it has not paid much attention to the massive descriptive work on L1 acquisition
reflected in books such as Bloom (2002), Clark (2003), and O’Grady (2005),
which describe the many developmental studies of the past decade rather than
sticking exclusively to a particular acquisition theory.
3 differences and similarities
between first and second language acquisition
Some
of the differences between first language and
L2 acquisition are intrinsic and cannot be avoided; some are, so to speak,
accidental in that they vary according to the circumstances in which L2
acquisition takes place, in particular inside or outside a classroom. In the
vast majority of cases for instance L2 learners are older than L1 children; age
inevitably brings with it a host of factors that have little to do with language
acquisition itself. The discussion here excludes early childhood simultaneous
bilingualism, considering this as ‘bilingualism as a first language’ (Swain,
1972), i.e. a separate process in which first and second languages are not
consecutive.
-
the lack of another language in the L1 child’s mind
It
may seem to be labouring the obvious to say that the L1 child only knows a
single language – that’s what first language acquisition means. L2 learners
already have at least one other language in their minds; the initial language
state of their minds is in principle different from the L1 child because of the
first language they already know, however variously this may be interpreted.
This
is implicitly denied if the acquisition of the second language is treated in
complete isolation from the already present first language, as if L2 acquisition
were merely a form of L1 acquisition undertaken later in life. This view has
chiefly come from language teachers rather than SLA
researchers. Since the Reform Movement of the nineteenth century (Howatt,
2004), mainstream teaching has advocated using the first language in the
classroom as much as possible; ‘The natural use of the target language for
virtually all communication is a sure sign of a good modern language course’
(DES, 1990, 58). The argument is effectively that, since the L1 child cannot
fall back on another language, neither should the L2 student.
The
unique selling point of SLA research is the
relationship between two languages in the same mind, leading to the vast area of
transfer, whether from L1 to L2, L2 to L1 (reverse transfer) or one L2 to
another L2 (lateral transfer) (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2007). L2 acquisition
necessarily differs from L1 acquisition because everything the learner acquires
and does potentially involves both first and second languages. Weinreich (1953)
suggested that two of the forms bilingualism may take are coordinate bilingualism in which the languages are effectively kept
in separate compartments and compound
bilingualism in which they are in contact. The integrative continuum (Cook,
2003b) sees a continuum from total separation to total integration of the two
languages rather than discrete compartments; the point on the continuum varies
for individual L2 learners, for different aspects of language and for different
situations. That is to say, the L1/L2 mental relationship has many variations
and cannot be stated in simple terms even for a particular individual, whose L1
and L2 vocabulary say may be closely linked, but whose L1 and L2 phonologies may
be quite distinct. One doubts whether any L2 learner is actually at the extreme
compound and coordinate poles of the continuum, given the persuasive evidence
for influence of the second language on the first described in Cook (2003b).
- the comparative maturity of the
L2 learner
L1
acquisition has seen continual controversy over the links between language
development and social and cognitive development. At one extreme UG theorists
attempt to isolate language from other cognitive systems; they go as far as the
conceptual-intentional interface between the computational system of language
and the rest of the mind but stop there (Chomsky, 2000). To them the controversy
concerns maturity of the language faculty itself, whether it is essentially the
same from birth, just requiring language experience or exposure – the Gradual
Development Hypothesis (Deprez, 1994) – or whether the faculty itself matures
– the Full Competence Hypothesis (Poeppel & Wexler, 1993). The
relationship of L1 and L2 acquisition in Universal Grammar theory depends on
whether the same Universal Grammar is present in the mind of the L2 learner as
the native child or it has matured into some other form.
At
the opposite extreme, language development has been directly tied into cognitive
development. Piagetians have often traced particular aspects of language
development back to cognition: the one-word stage depends for example on the
sensorimotor abilities of object constancy and representational thinking;
complex syntax requires the ability to conserve at the concrete operations stage
(Sinclair de Zwart, 1969). Rick Cromer claimed that where
there was a link between language and cognition, language depended on cognition
(Cromer, 1974). The development of spatial concepts goes hand in hand with the
development of L1 spatial terms, even if sorting out cause and effect is still
uncertain (Bloom, 2005).
Nor
can it be coincidence that the child’s development of vocabulary goes along
with the expansion in the child’s short-term phonological memory (Gathercole
and Baddeley, 1993). Social development too develops over the years the child is
acquiring language. Children who first attend playgroup for instance prefer to
speak to adults rather than to the other children present; they slowly develop
the ability to talk to their peers (Cook, 1979). Similarly they start with a
poor awareness of how to switch speaking style; young children have no idea of
when to whisper, often to the embarrassment of their parents (Weeks, 1971). In
many areas of L1 acquisition research it is necessary to investigate the
connection between language development and other aspects of development, even
if it eventually proves that the barrier between language and the rest of the
mind in the UG theory is true.
L2
learners start from the position of having done all of this once already. They
are older and more mature than the L1 child and so have whatever advantages that
age confers in terms of working memory, conceptual and social development,
command of speech styles, and so on. The L2 learner does not start from the L1
tabula rasa of knowing nothing about language (apart from the built-in
paraphernalia of Universal Grammar). More specifically, once a child has learnt
how to mean, they are no longer the same person and cannot regress to a point
where they no longer know how to mean: language itself is there for the L2
learner, even if the specific second language is not.
Much
maturation is then transformation. In Gleitman’s terms, frogs do not go back
to being tadpoles when they learn a second language. The aspects of language
acquisition that are related to maturation are not reversible; the L2 learner
starts with the attributes of maturation appropriate to their age, not those of
the L1 child, whether emotional, conceptual, or any other changes that growing
up entails. Maturation is seldom a matter of either/or sudden change but a
continuous process. One of the variables in L2 learning is that the L2 learner
may be at any point on this developmental continuum, ranging say from a nearly
adult-like short term memory to a nearly child-like memory and may be at any
stage of Piagetian development from the infant’s sensorimotor to the adult
formal operational. L1 children acquiring language are in step with normal
development; L2 learners are out of step, to a greater or lesser degree – an
extreme form of décalage between stages in Piagetian theory (Piaget &
Inhelder, 1969).
A
major factor in many L2 learners’ lives is literacy. Learning to read and
write changes people’s thinking (Luria, 1976) and brain structures (Petersen
et al, 2000). Most SLA research is, however, about literate L2 learners who have
been transformed by literacy, as Bialystok (2007) points out. Indeed specific
types of writing system have overall effects on people’s thinking (Cook &
Bassetti, 2005): Japanese children remember geometrical patterns better than
English children (Mann, 1986) because their writing system is more visually than
phonologically based. English readers place images of events such as breakfast,
going to school, going to bed etc in a left-to-right order, while Hebrew and
Arabic readers use right-to-left order, showing the directionality in the
respective writing systems (Tversky et al, 1991).
Incidentally
this undermines the view that L2 teaching should start with the spoken language;
as Harmer (1998, 53) puts it, ‘Because many people acquire languages by
hearing them first, many teachers prefer to expose students to the spoken form
first’. The reliance on spoken
language is still very much at the heart of language teaching methods, which
assume implicitly that speaking comes first and use writing as a prop for
written tasks rather than as the main focus (Cook, 2005). Literate adults rely
on writing in all sorts of ways and organise their thinking differently.
Age
has often been blamed for alleged deficiencies in L2 acquisition. L2 learners
are typically older than children acquiring their first language. Perhaps there
is a point of no return beyond which the second language can no longer be learnt
in the same way or with the same efficiency as you learnt your first language.
This is not the place to explore the vast literature on age differences as it is
dealt with elsewhere in this volume. It might be for example that your Universal
Grammar quota was used up with nothing available for second language
acquisition. So your second language would have to be learnt in some way that
did not involve Universal Grammar, as argued by say Clahsen and Muysken (1989).
However it is not age per se that shuts the door but maturation on a particular
scale: it’s not being 30 that prevents you learning a new language but having
the memory system, the cognitive abilities and the social situations etc of a
30-year-old. The variable is not age itself is not but one of the inevitable
companions of age.
-
differences in situation, learner and language input
The
vast majority of children acquire their first language in a primal family
care-taking situation; the situations of human babies are rather similar apart
from cultural differences in child-rearing practices. Virtually all human
children learn human language; nothing stops a child learning their first
language other than the total absence of language. First language learning can
be taken for granted: it’s what human beings do to be human.
L2
learners, however, encounter the second language in a variety of situations,
ranging from Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails learning Hebrew to teenagers
in the USA learning Chinese as a heritage language, from Vietnamese and Poles learning
Italian in Toronto for their workplaces (Norton,
2000) to footballers learning English to play in the English Championship League (Kellerman
et al, 2005), and from Japanese children learning Spanish at school to married
couples bridging the gap between their different first languages (Piller,
2002). Cook (t.a.) itemises some of these L2 user
groups as: people using an L2 within a larger community, people using an L2
internationally for specific functions, people using an L2 globally for a wide
range of functions, people
historically from a particular community (re-)acquiring its language
as an L2, and people using an L2 with spouses, siblings or friends. Not to
mention those learning the second language in schools because it’s a set
subject on the curriculum.
One
overall group of L2 situations can be called natural,
i.e. picking the language up through encounters at work etc. Another
group are artificial, i.e. learning it through instruction of one kind or
another. In either case the people the learners speak to are not necessarily
making concessions to their lower language knowledge, and are certainly not in
charge of their lives in the way that an adult is in charge of a child. The
perpetual dilemma for language teaching is whether it should deliberately stress
the artificial in the classroom or should try and make it as natural as
possible, captured in Krashen’s well-known distinction between learning and
acquisition (Krashen, 1985).
Those
who acquire a second language ‘artificially’ in a classroom may be exposed
to teaching methods ranging from grammar-translation to task-based learning by
teachers who may or may not be native speakers. Teaching practices vary round
the world far more than child-rearing practices and they change rapidly
according to the changing winds of language teaching. Neither the natural nor
the artificial L2 situations come in a standard package, as L1 situations
usually do.
Children
barely differ in their acquisition of the first language so far as the main
features of the spoken language are concerned. They all end up learning the
phonology, vocabulary and grammar appropriate for their dialect, class, age,
gender, etc. Individual differences in second language acquisition, however, are
extreme. You can’t learn a second language, apparently, without having the
right motivation, attitude, learning style, learning strategies, cognitive
style, personality and all the other factors enumerated in books like Skehan
(1989) and Dornyei (2006), mostly concerned with artificial classroom learning.
The majority of L2 students give up before they pass the threshold when the L2
becomes genuinely useful to them; allegedly 80% of all students of English in
the world are beginners, implying only a small proportion go on to higher
levels. Success in L2 learning is a matter of individual variation; success in
L1 acquisition is not.
The
language input that L1 children get from their caretakers differs dramatically
from that provided to the L2 learner. In natural contact situations, the input
is closest to that in L1 acquisition. Parents simplify what they say to children
and how they interact with them, using what Bruner (1983) calls the LASS
(Language Acquisition Support System); native speakers speaking to non-natives
simplify their speech in ways known as foreigner talk but hardly simplify topics
in the same way parents do to children (Freed, 1980). In the artificial teaching
situation, coursebooks and language teachers simplify the language in various
ways, say the vocabulary limits put on graded readers (Nation, t.a.). Practical
language teaching is almost inconceivable without simplified language;
approaches using authentic uncensored materials have usually either been used at
a late stage or have used tiny amounts of speech (Cook, 2008). The Interaction
Hypothesis has however maintained since 1981 that what is necessary is
simplified interaction, not simplified language (Long, 1981; 1996), undeterred
by the lack of proof for its necessity in L1 acquisition.
Second
language teaching has often attempted to recreate the conditions of the L1 child
in the L2 classroom mostly in terms of using only a single language and having a
simple interaction between students and teachers or between students. The
Interaction Approach holds recasts to be important for L2 acquisition (Long,
1996). The Sociocultural Model too
argues that, since L1 acquisition depends on bridging the ZPD gap between what
the child can do unaided and what they can achieve with the help of others
through ‘scaffolding’, then so should L2 acquisition (Lantolf, 2000). But,
however vital ZPD may be to an L1 child, scaffolding may function differently
for an L2 learner in a different situation at a different developmental level.
-
the alleged lack of success and its causes
The
crucial difference between first and second language acquisition according to
many is the success of first language acquisition versus the failure of second
language acquisition, summed up by Bley-Vroman (1989):
'The
lack of general guaranteed success is the most striking characteristic of adult
foreign language learning. Normal children inevitably achieve perfect mastery of
the language; adult foreign language learners do not… one has the impression
of ineluctable success on the one hand and ineluctable failure on the other’
(Bley-Vroman, 1989, 42-44)
Undoubtedly
this view has been shared by the majority of SLA researchers. Ellis (1994, 107)
summarised nine differences between L1 acquisition and L2 acquisition, using
Bley-Vroman (1988):
overall
success (L2 learners don’t achieve ‘perfect mastery’)
general
failure (in L2 acquisition ‘complete success is very rare’)
variation
(‘L2 learners vary… in success …’)
goals
(‘L2 learners may be content with less than target competence …’)
fossilisation
(‘L2 learners often cease to develop and also backslide …’)
intuitions
(‘L2 learners are often unable to form clear grammaticality judgements
…’)
instruction
(‘there is a wide belief that instruction helps L2 learners’)
negative
evidence (in L2 ‘correction generally viewed as helpful…’)
affective
factors (‘…play a major role in determining proficiency’ in the L2)
Points
(1)-(3) are directly concerned with the lack of success of L2 learners. (4) is
about lack of ‘target competence’, presumably another form of failure.
Success is implicitly measured in 1-6 as speaking like a native speaker –
‘perfect mastery’, ‘complete
success’, ‘target competence’; point (9) is about proficiency, ambiguous
but likely to mean native proficiency. Five of the points boil down to the fact
that L2 learners do not speak like native speakers. Incidentally, it is also
moot whether the remaining categories actually represent sharp L1/L2
differences: L1 attrition also occurs in various circumstances (Schmid et al,
2004) (point 5); L2 bilingual children are better at grammaticality judgements
than monolingual children (point 6) (Bialystok, 1993); instruction is only one
stream of L2 learning (point 7); L2 interactional techniques such as recasts are
actually derived from L1 learning research (point 8).
The
task of SLA research is then taken to be explaining why L2 acquisition is
unsuccessful in comparison to L1 acquisition;
‘why, in general, adults fail to achieve full native-speaker competence’
(Felix, 1987, 144). If an L1 child can master a
language in a few years, why can an L2 learner not do the same over many years?
The
explanations for this lack of success have drawn on many of the ideas presented
earlier. Some are to do with the transformative power of maturation: L2 learners
are intrinsically not the same people as young monolingual children.
·
Universal Grammar
may not be available in second language acquisition (Clahsen & Muysken 1986)
· the greater capacity adult short-term memory system may be a handicap
·
adults rely more on explicit learning
(DeKeyser & Larson-Hall, 2005)
·
declarative memory declines physically
(Birdsong, 2005)
·
adults are in the formal operational stage
of Piagetian development, which is a handicap to language acquisition (Tremaine,
1975)
In
a sense nothing can be done about these immutable differences between L1 and L2
learning, if they exist and are indeed language related.
Other
explanations put the lack of success down to features of the environment
·
the concentration
on the here and now in conversations with children is lost in adult conversation
(Hatch, 1978)
·
Adults are more
likely to be learning in formal classrooms that are less conducive for natural
acquisition (Krashen, 1985)
These
are in principle changeable; we could treat L2 learner like L1 children
linguistically and socially, reducing them to child-like dependence etc. The
most extreme suggestion from McNeill (1965) was that L2 learners should memorise
the two-word sentences of young L1 children like more up, to provide them with the ‘deep structure’ missing in L2
learning.
However
the issue of success is a red herring. The child is learning their first
language and has no other: the L2 learner is learning a second language when
they already have a first. Why should mastery of a second language be measured
against the mastery of a first? L2 learners are only failures if they are
measured against something they are not and never can be – monolingual native
speakers. Does an apple make a good pear? A classic disproof of this was the
Bitch 100 test, which proved white Americans were failures at speaking Black
American English (Williams, 1975); my own Can you talk Black? test attempts to make the same point (Cook, t.a.).
Clearly, if we test monolingual native speakers on knowledge of a second
language they would score zero. The success of L2 users is not necessarily the
same as that of monolingual native speakers; they are doing different things
with language with different people and have a range of other abilities for
code-switching and translation no monolingual native speaker can match. To call
what the vast majority of L2 users achieve failure is to accept that the only
valid view of the world is that of the monolingual: knowing only one language is
normal, knowing two is unusual. Only in a monolingual universe is a
multi-competent person a failure for not speaking like a monolingual.
Tthe
lack of success has haunted the discussion of L1 and L2 acquisition. If you
expect L2 knowledge and processing to be identical to that of a monolingual
speaker of the language, you’re going to be disappointed. The L2 user has a
more complex overall language system that includes two languages; neither the first
nor the first language
in a bilingual are isomorphic with the first language
in a multilingual of either language. In recent years researchers have made a
nod in the direction of abandoning the monolingual native speaker as the model
of second language acquisition – and then go on to use a research methodology
which precisely compares the L2 user with native speakers to their disadvantage
– grammaticality judgments, obligatory occurrences, and the rest.
So,
whatever the differences between L2 learners and L1 children, they are not a
matter of success but of difference. L2 users are successful with regard to L2
use, not L1 use. The measurement of success is relative to the goal, not
absolute. The rationale for comparing them with the monolingual native speaker
is convenience; as we saw at the beginning, L1 acquisition research has a range
of discoveries and techniques that SLA research can draw on. But, unless used
carefully, they only measure L1 success, not L2 success. Many L2 learners indeed
‘fail’ to reach successful levels of L2 use but this has little to do with
the levels reached by monolingual native speakers. If
there are indeed differences between L1 and L2 acquisition, relying on L1
measures of success for L2 users will prevent any unique features of L2
acquisition such as differences in metalinguistic ability (Bialystok, 1993) or
cognition (Cook et al, 2006) from manifesting themselves and categorise any
differences as failure.
4
Conclusions
To
sum up, the discussion has presented the main points that have been raised over
the relationship between L1 and L2 acquisition. The relationship has been
symbiotic for SLA research in terms of underlying theories and of specific
research techniques. It has been largely one-way in that L1 acquisition research
does not seem to have been influenced by SLA research. The relationship is not
simple and has to handled with caution, avoiding over-simplistic claims; in some
respects the two processes are similar, in some respects different, and this
depends partly upon factors that are nothing to do with acquisition per se.
There are many ways of understanding L1 acquisition with no single unifying
model, even more ways of looking at L2 acquisition. Arbitrarily deciding on one
L1 theory, say generative L1 acquisition, or picking out one L1 acquisition
factor, say SOV word order, hardly allows one to assert L2 learning is
fundamentally different from L1 acquisition, as in say Clahsen and Muyskens
(1986).
We
have also hinted throughout that it may not be a proper question to ask if L2
acquisition is like L1 acquisition. Like has to be compared with like; if the
processes were quite different, this would not be revealed by measuring one of
the processes by the standard of the other. There
are pear-shaped apples called Worcester Pearmains but this says little about
apples as a fruit, just some of their non-prototypical forms. L1
acquisition theory and L1 acquisition research methods are a convenient source
that SLA research can borrow from, just as Teflon frying pans were allegedly a
spin-off from the NASA space program. They are a source of ideas for looking at
L2 acquisition itself, like ideas borrowed from reading research or from
connectionism and so on. Using them does not force SLA research into a junior
role in the research; they’re being used for different purposes.
The
danger lurking beneath the surface is the assumption that there is only true
form of language knowledge, the native speaker’s, and only one true form of
language acquisition, first language acquisition. If exploiting the relationship
goes beyond borrowing methods, the ideas of L1 acquisition confine SLA research
and inevitably leas to the diminution of L2 acquisition to a pale imitation of
L1 acquisition. If one accepts the multi-competence hypothesis that
knowing and using two languages is a distinct state of human minds, the L1/L2
comparison becomes problematic: L2 acquisition is necessarily different because
it involves the constant presence of a second language in the same mind as a
first.
Going
beyond this comes the argument that the overall theory of language acquisition
has to accommodate the human potential for learning more than one language from
the outset not as a footnote to the acquisition of the first language (Cook, t.a.;
Satterfield, 2003). Looked at through the looking-glass of multi-competence,
language acquisition is acquiring two or more languages; monolingual first
language acquisition is a historical accident that stops the child reaching the
normal human multi-competence state. The
monolingual native speaker is language-deprived; they would have acquired
multi-competence in more than one language if their caretakers had not deprived
them of a second language, a standard Chomskyan argument about the environment
translated to second language acquisition (Cook, t.a).
The
same applies to the relationship of the L1 and L2 communities (Cook, t.a.),
which we have not tackled here. SLA and bilingualism research have assumed a
dominant L1 community; the L2 user petitions to belong to another community: ‘An
individual’s use of two languages supposes the existence of two different
language communities; it does not suppose the existence of a bilingual
community’ (Mackey, 1972, 554). Many
parts of the world like India and Central Africa are, however, genuinely
multilingual communities where languages function alongside each other in
diverse roles; it is meaningless to say that
the L2 user joins a monolingual community as an outsider rather than belonging
to a community that uses many languages, called ‘the
multi-competence of the community’ by Brutt-Griffler
(2002). The comparison of L1 and L2 in the community may be
interesting but it may conceal the distinctive nature of the truly multilingual
community.
One
sub-theme here has been language teaching. Most language teaching methods have
prejudged the relationship of L2 to L1 acquisition by assuming that
‘natural’ L1 acquisition is the basis for all acquisition, however much they
differ in what they understand by ‘natural’. For
example Total Physical Response ‘simulates at a speeded up pace the stages an
infant experiences in acquiring its first language’ (Asher, 1986, 17). From
the Direct Method to Task-based Learning, language teaching has insisted on a
mock target language situation, in which the first language plays no part.
Students are required to speak the second language from the moment they step
inside the classroom and should not be allowed to revert to the first language;
the teacher should make the classroom a monolingual target language situation,
not a bilingual situation. While the first language necessarily exists in the L2
learner’s mind, the accepted view is that it should be forcibly prevented from
appearing in the classroom. The implications of the multi-competence approach
for language teaching have been spelled out elsewhere in general (Cook, 2007).
But, to take a more neutral position, one should at least say that teachers
should be wary of accepting advice about language teaching goals and methods
based on the comparison of L1 and L2 learning rather than on the independent
study of second language acquisition.
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