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EARLY DAYS: SLA primarily featured studies of naturalistic L2 learners, and it  was found out their learning follows a more-or-less universal and fixed pathway.

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SLA GROWTH: SLA grew to encompass four major research areas, namely language transfer, linguistic universals, second language pragmatics, and input/interaction.

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THE MIND AT WORK: Dubbed as a coming-of-age phase, SLA scholars were then mostly devoted to the processes taking place in the mind as learners acquire an L2. 

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Phase 4: The social turn (Late 1990s on)

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Phase 4: The social turn (Late 1990s on)

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SLA range reached out into social and sociocultural domains, and language learning was no longer explained solely in cognitive terms. One of the relevant ideas is that learners have agency and actively construct their own learning contexts.

That walks hand in hand with child-centered approaches, as they view children as powerful individuals able to construct their own knowledge. As more and more schools are inspired by such approaches, we are gradually moving further away from the old-fashioned teacher-centered style. Thus, a teacher becomes more of a guide and facilitator; and interactions play a large role in classroom settings.

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In keeping with views depicting the world as a multidimensional shifting space, new ideas emerged such as the notion of language systems as non-linear and variable, and concepts such as multilingualism and translingualism.

English has increasingly become a lingua franca, and some argue teaching should be based on communication between non-natives instead of native-speaker standards. Students’ learning styles differ; and they need not to aspire to attain native-like competence. That might take some pressure off teachers as they do not need to be models of standard English, but they are left with the responsibility of catering to students’ varying individual needs.

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Behaviorist view: This view of L2 acquisition considers what takes place outside the learner. Input comes from the outside as stimuli – graded in a series of steps and meant to lead to a response from the learner – and as feedback, which either corrects what is wrong or reinforces what is correct. Proper stimuli and feedback lead learners to internalize language by imitating their interlocutors. Therefore, the linguistic environment is of utmost importance. Learners have no agency and depend on the ones instructing them.

Nativist view: Humans have an innate ability to learn language; and regardless of its quality, external input per se is insufficient to account for language acquisition. Its role is to set in motion internal mechanisms. As a consequence, studies informed by this view focused on the output of L2 learners, and overlooked input.

Interactionist view: The external environment is a source of input, and L2 learning is a process involving interactions between the external linguistic environment and learners’ internal mechanisms. Thus, for learning to take place, learners and interlocutors have to engage in collaborative efforts.