# data[].attributes.body
Adapted from Ellis (2020)

# data[].attributes.body
Behaviourists perceived language learning as the acquisition of behaviours.

Skinner’s perspective of L1 learning → Operant Conditioning

Children learn their mother tongue by imitating the language they hear in their environment.

Reinforcements and punishments encourage the acquisition of behaviours or changes in behaviours.

No mental process is involved in the learning process.

Behaviourism and SLA.

According to Behaviourists, SLA takes place in a similar way: through imitation of L2 input followed by positive/negative feedback which leads to the acquisition of the correct behaviours.

Problems:

L2 learners already possess a fully developed L1 set of behaviours that should be replaced by new ones.

In this process, L1 habits may interfere (positively or negatively)

Contrastive Analysis predicts learners' difficulties by comparing similarities/dissimilarities between L1 and L2. The similarities/dissimilarities in turn would predict positive or negative transfers on L2.

Implications for L2 teaching:

Teaching method: audiolingual.

Focus on:

target-language input (stimuli)

imitation and repetition

structures predicted to be more difficult by the Contrastive Analysis to prevent L1 interference errors.

Consistent Feedbacks

# data[].attributes.headline
Innatist perspective: a reaction against the Behaviourist approach.

# data[].attributes.subject
Innatist perspective: a reaction against the Behaviourist approach.

# data[].attributes.body
Chomsky criticized the Behaviourists anti-mentalist view of children as “clean slates”, and the overrated role of environmental stimuli.

According to Chomsky, Behaviourists cannot explain:

The creativity of languages→ how do children create utterances they have never heard before?

how do children manage to control a language so quickly despite limited input?

Chomsky’s response: this is possible because human beings have an innate ability to acquire their mother tongue.

Key concepts of Chomskyan theory:

Universal Grammar: a genetic endowment made up of a set of principles, common to all languages (for example all languages are made up of phrases: noun-phrases, Verb-phrases, etc.) and parameters, which determine differences between languages (example: head-first/last, pro-drop parameter, etc.)

Implications for F1 acquisition:

Considering that children already possess in their minds a set of abstract principles and parameters, they just need to learn the right set of parameters that suit the language they are exposed to.

This process of learning is possible because of the Language Acquisition Device: a mental tool that enables children to infer the rules of the language they hear in their environment.

Unlike the Behaviourist approach, here the focus is on the quality of input rather than the quantity.

Innatist approach and SLA: Krashen’s Monitor Theory.

Krashen inherits Chomsky's idea that given the input, children can infer the rules governing the language, and he proposed a theory according to which the SLA process is similar.

Monitor Theory consists of five hypotheses:

1. the Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis: proposes two separate ways of getting knowledge:

Acquisition: L2 acquisition as L1, appears in a natural way when learners communicate.

Learning: It is a conscious process → it is the result of learning rules and patterns.

The acquired knowledge cannot integrate with learned knowledge and vice versa.

This can explain why learners can put into practice rules but cannot explain them, and why learners can explain rules but cannot put them into practice properly.

2.     Monitor Hypothesis:

The learned knowledge serves to monitor the acquired knowledge.

3.      The Natural Order Hypothesis:

specific rules/patterns are acquired in a predictable order, regardless of the order they are taught.

4.     The Input Hypothesis:

Learners can acquire an L2 by receiving comprehensible input (i+1) → input slightly more advanced than learners' current level of mastery.

5.     The affective filter Hypothesis:

The ability to learn an L2 and the different outcomes are largely due to the affective filter (whose components are attitudes, motivation, anxiety, etc) which can positively/negatively affect the processing of input.

Implications for L2 teaching:

Natural approach to teaching.

Provision of input and opportunities for meaningful interaction.

minimize the teaching of grammar.

Feedback on errors is not important.

# data[].attributes.body
Key concept: general cognitive mechanisms are involved in all types of learning, included language learning.

This perspective challenges:

Chomsky's separate view of language development and cognitive development. Chomsky claims that humans have in the brain a mechanism (LAD), that works specifically for languages.

Behaviourists’ view according to which mental processes are not involved in language learning.

The cognitive perspective to SLA was inspired by the constructivist approach, according to which learning is a mental construction.

Piaget’s influential ideas:

Developmental stage theory: explain how learning is related to cognitive development.

Assimilation and Accommodation processes:

1. Assimilation: the incorporation of new knowledge with the existing.

2. Accommodation: the modification of the existing knowledge to accept something new.

From a constructivist point of view, Learning is a mental construction of knowledge that is the result of learners’ experiences.

Cognitivism and SLA

The cognitive perspective to SLA is well described by the information-processing models, based on the idea that SLA occurs through internal processing of information and the gradual building up of knowledge that eventually becomes automatic.

As a process, it consists of 3 stages:

1. Learners are faced with new knowledge (example: the use of a final -s in the third person singular of present verbs).

This knowledge is also known as explicit or declarative knowledge.

2.    Learners practice, that is, they put into practice the declarative knowledge which at this stage becomes procedural knowledge.

At this stage, learners start producing expressions like ‘she eats, he works, etc.’

Practicing and restructuring are essential in this stage to process language features.

3.      Learners eventually can produce the language features automatically.

Implications for L2 teaching:

Emphasis on input and practice to help learners to process new knowledge.

Provision of new knowledge only when lower-level knowledge is acquired/automatised.

# data[].attributes.body
Sociocultural SLA theory takes its inspiration from social-constructivism and especially from Lev Vygotsky’s ideas.

Unlike cognitive constructivism, here the emphasis is on social interactions.

According to Vygotsky, learning is a socially mediated process in which individuals acquire knowledge through social interactions, and interaction itself is the source of cognitive development.

How does L2 learning occur according to SCT?

Researchers have applied Vygotsky’s idea to the L2 learning process, and according to them, learning happens when:

learners internalize new knowledge through interaction.

Internalization (or languaging as Swain referred to this process) occurs when learners interact with others in the so-called Zone of Proximal development, that is, a metaphorical space just beyond the learners' current level of mastery.

In this zone, learners need support, which is provided by Scaffolding. Vygotsky’s view of scaffolding involved an active role of a skilled individual. For example, children’s internalization of their mother tongue is scaffolded by parents’ aid.

In SLA contexts, the concept of scaffolding has been extended. Scaffolding can be provided by teachers through feedback, errors corrections, but also by consulting books, dictionaries, hearing other people, etc.

Implications for L2 teaching:

communicative teaching method.

learners are actively involved in the process of learning.

Role of the teachers:

Encourage learners to work collaboratively.

Provide problem-solving and communicative tasks.

Use scaffolding to help learners.

Provide negotiated feedback.

# data[].attributes.body
Cook, V. (2016). Second Language Learning and Language Teaching. Routledge. http://search.ebscohost.com.bishopg.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1233911&site=ehost-live&ebv=EB&ppid

Ellis, R. (2020). A short history of sla: where have we come from and where are we going? Language Teaching, 1-16, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444820000038

Johnson, K. (2017) An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching. Taylor & Francis Group. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bishopg/detail.action?docID=4799861.

Mitchell, R., Myles, F., & Marsden, E. (2013). Second Language Learning Theories. Routledge. http://search.ebscohost.com.bishopg.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=634601&site=ehost-live&ebv=EB&ppid=pp_61

Pritchard, A. (2017). Ways of Learning: Learning Theories for the Classroom. Routledge. http://search.ebscohost.com.bishopg.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1592885&site=ehost-live&ebv=EB&ppid=pp_19

VanPatten, B., & Williams, J. (2015). Theories in Second Language Acquisition: An Introduction (2nd ed.). Routledge. http://search.ebscohost.com.bishopg.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=882769&site=ehost-live