Second Language Acquisition Semester 1, 2005

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Second Language Acquisition Semester 1, 2005

• Week 11
• Individual differences in SLA

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Non-linguistic factors in L2 development

• motivation personality / cognitive
  style factors
• beliefs extroversion / introversion
• affective states locus of control
• anxiety risk-taking
• field dependence
  / independence
• age aptitude
• learner strategies

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Role of individual differences (ID) in L2
development

• IDs more important in L2 than L1
• IDs consist of states and traits
• states specific learning situation or
  state of mind
• traits enduring characteristics of a
  person
• Direct versus indirect cause of L2 development.
  ID models are multivariate in that different
  factors combine to affect learning outcomes.
• IDs are hard to measure.

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Age

• Does it make a difference?
• What kind of difference does it make?
• What is the cause of the difference?

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Critical versus sensitive period for SLA

• A critical period implies that there is an age,
  after which SLA is not possible.
• A sensitive period implies that there is an age
  when (second) language acquisition is optimised.

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A sensitive period for SLA

• What is the evidence for a sensitive period in
  language acquisition?
• Three generalizations.
• 1. Universal age of onset of production, rate of
  acquisition and age of completion of language
  learning (Slobin, 1982).
• 2. Relatively homogenous across individual
  cognitive abilities.
• 3. Little effect for environmental variation
  (social class, childrearing patterns).
• 4. Feral cases like Genie, where I child does
  not receive normal exposure.

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Does age make a difference?

• 1. Adults are faster than children at earlier
  stages of morphological and syntactic
  development. (Holding time and exposure constant)
• 2. Older children acquire faster than younger
  children.
• 3. Child starters outperform adult starters in
  the long run.
• 4. Attainment of native-like fluency across all
  domains is only possible if the language is
  started prior to six years of age. Learners
  starting not much later than age 6 can become
  fluent but will have an accent in phonology.
  Learners starting after 15 will have 'accents' in
  all domains.
• (Long 1990)
• See also DeKeyser, R. M. (2000). The robustness
  of critical period effects in second language
  acquisition. Studies in Second Language
  Acquisition, 22, 499-532.

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What kind of difference does age make?

• Phonology.
• Evidence for a critical age of 6 for phonology
  has come from a number of studies looking at
  age-of-arrival (AO) (Oyama, 1976, Fathman, 1985).
  Counterevidence from Neufield, 1978.
• Morphology and syntax.
• Strong main effect for AO no main effect for
  other variables (Coppieters 1987 Newport
  Johnson, 1989 DeKeyser, 2000).
• Semantics, Discourse and Pragmatics.
• Not much research but anecdotal evidence for an
  accent in this areas in adult learners.

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What is the cause of age differences?

• Social/Affective factors. The development of
  identity makes adult learners more
  self-conscious. Ego permeability and cultural
  identification make it difficult for adults to
  learn another language.
• Input. Children receive more and better input
  than adults
• Cognitive development. The cognitive system
  overrides natural language learning. The
  acquisition of metalinguistic skills occurs at
  around puberty.
• Neurophysiological Loss due of natural language
  learning ability due to hemispheric
  lateralization, or changes due to mylenation of
  neural pathways. Recent evidence shows late
  acquired language to be localised in different
  part of the brain (Kim et al 1999).

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What difference does it make?

• Is the native speaker the appropriate target
  for adult SLA?

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Social Distance

• Acculturation model (Schumann, 1978) The learner
  needs to adapt to the target language culture in
  order for successful acquisition to take place.
• Two kinds of distance
• Psychological (individual) distance
• Social (group) distance

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Beliefs

• SLA can be affected by the attitudes, values,
  theories and assumptions about learning (
  teaching) which learners build up over time and
  bring with them to the classroom.
• Richards, J. C. Lockhart, C. (1994) Reflective
  teaching in second language classrooms. Cambridge
  University Press.

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Motivation

• Integrative motivation is present in learners who
  identify with the target culture, would like to
  resemble members of the target culture and who
  would like to participate in the target culture.
  It is assumed to be based in the personality of
  the learner.
• Instrumental orientation refers to those cases
  where the learners are interested in learning the
  language for the possible benefits professional
  advancement, study in the target language,
  business.

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General findings on the role of motivation

• Motivation plays an important role in L2
  development.
• Motivation is separate from aptitude.
• Integrative motivation is more powerful for
  facilitating L2 development in some situations
  than in others.
• Both integrative instrumental motivations may
  lead to success, but lack of either causes
  problems.

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Motivation as a multi-componential construct

• Motivation
• effort desire to achieve goal attitudes
• (Gardner, 1985)

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The motivation construct

• Short-term motivation towards the day-to-day
  activities in the classroom and general
  motivations for classroom learning are also
  important.
• The instrumental-integrative dichotomy is it
  real?
• Does motivation drive achievement or vice versa?
• Causal versus resultative effects

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Affective states Anxiety

• state anxiety versus trait anxiety
• state anxiety anxiety related to a specific
  learning situation
• trait anxiety a predisposition to be anxious
  (unchangeable?)

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There is a non-linear relationship between
anxiety and performance

• Facilitating versus debilitating anxiety (Scovel,
  1978 Bailey, 1995).
• It depends on the amount and context of anxiety

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Affective states Locus of control

• Internal External
• Stable Ability Task difficulty
• Unstable Effort Luck
• Individuals who believe success is based
  internally on ability and externally on luck are
  likely to be less motivated.

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Personality cognitive style factorsExtroversio
n / Introversion

• Extrovert sociable dislikes solitude takes
  risks impulsive.
• Two main components are sociability and
  risk-taking.
• Introvert introspective quiet retiring
  reserved dislikes order.
• Some evidence that introverts have higher
  academic achievement.
• Extroversion has been linked to success in L2
  development sociable learners should generate
  more input, maximize contact and emphasize using
  the language.

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Personality cognitive style factors
Risk-taking

• Risk-taking has been viewed positively in L2
  learning, e.g., Naiman's GLLs.
• Ely (1986) Risk-taking predicts classroom
  participation which in turn predicts proficiency.

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The Good Language Learner

• What strategies do successful language learners
  use that unsuccessful learners don't use?
• Taxonomies of learner / learning strategies
• Wong-Filmore (1976, 1979)
• Naiman, Fröhlich, Stern Todesco (1978)
• O'Malley Chamot (1985, 1990)
• Oxford, R. (1990)

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Learner strategies

• A behavioral or mental procedure used by
  learners to develop their interlanguages.
  (Ellis, 1997)
• Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language
  Learning (SILL). SILL is designed to help
  students better understand how they learn a new
  language and to help them become better learners.

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L2 Learning Aptitude

• A generalized capacity to learn a foreign
  language.
• gt Separate from intelligence
• gt Reflects rate, not necessarily capacity.
• gt Concerned with prediction, not necessarily
  explanation.

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Measuring Aptitude

• Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) developed by
  Carroll Sapon (1959)
• Designed to predict success in foreign language
  learning.
• Four components of Aptitude.
• Phonemic coding ability
• Grammatical sensitivity
• Inductive language learning ability
• Rote memory skills

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Aptitude has received limited attention in SLA
research

• Other factors more important. Motivation,
  cognitive style, attitude.
• gt High' correlations leave much variance
  unaccounted for.
• gt Fixed and innate? Empirical question. People
  attacking the notion assume it is fixed,
  determinist
• gt Elitist. Focus should be learner styles. But
  could be used to identify particular areas of
  strength and weakness.
• gt Appears to only be relevant to formal
  learning
• gt Prediction not explanation.

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End of individual differences.

• Week 11 end