Four Key Areas of Second Language Acquisition Research
How Second Languages Are Acquired
There are four areas of investigation and debate among Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers that deserve special attention from English language teachers:
The Nature of Input
Input is what you receive: the amount of language you are exposed to. Learners receive input from ‘messages’ which contain language a little above their existing understanding and from which they can infer meaning. The hypothesis makes a distinction between acquiring a language and learning it through conscious attention to language study. It is through the process of hypothesis making and testing that learners make sense of language input and impose a structure on it. They create a developing system known as interlanguage, which passes through a number of stages until it approximates the rules of the target language or until it stabilizes.
Comprehensible Input
This confirms the need for meaningful input which will involve learners in working with language at a level which is more or less above their competence. This implies a need for varied classroom materials, and many current coursebooks demonstrate a motivating range of situations and texts. It suggests the value of providing input through out-of-class resources such as readers and listening cassettes for self-access learning, or encouraging students to make use of whatever resources might be available in the community to increase input opportunities. It seems to confirm the usefulness of teachers adjusting their own classroom language.
The Process of Intake
Intake is something you can acquire or learn. You are exposed to the language, but you won’t take everything you are exposed to. The aspects we should take into account to transform input into intake include frequency. Frequency is the nature of intake; it is what we are going to remember. Saliency is something that you can remember because it catches your attention. To transform input into intake, we also have to take into account development. It is not only what you receive (input) but also what you produce (output).
The Role of Interaction in the Classroom
Learners need practice in producing comprehensible output using all the language resources they have already acquired. Getting feedback from the teacher and from other students in the class enables learners to test hypotheses and refine their developing knowledge of the language system.
There is a principle underlying current ELT practice that interaction pushes learners to produce more accurate and appropriate language, which itself provides input for other students. This is one reason why pair work and group work have become common features of contemporary classrooms. Input and output differed in a class using work in small groups and a class following a sequence of whole-class work fronted and controlled by the teacher. This highlights the value of collaborative work and the importance of reducing dependence on the teacher.
These methods also fit well with one of the aims of communicative language teaching, which is to develop learners’ ability to participate effectively in conversation. An important issue in the use of work in small groups is that it implies risk-taking. Being in face-to-face encounters requires assertiveness.
The Role of Error
We must distinguish between a mistake and an error:
- A Mistake: You are wrong and you know it.
- An Error: It is in the interlanguage, and you are unaware of the fact that it is wrong. You need feedback.
Errors are natural. We learn the language through errors. We can correct them and learn from them. The more fluent you are, the more errors you are going to have. Errors are now seen as reflections of a learner’s stage of interlanguage development.
There is increasing evidence that learners progress faster with meaningful language practice in a rich linguistic environment and with an informed policy of error correction on the part of the teacher. Children do not generally receive explicit negative feedback on the accuracy of their language, and adults do not require constant correction, which carries the dangers of distraction and demotivation.
Critics were quick to point out that adult learners can be encouraged to process error correction in useful ways, and the role of the teacher is to provide feedback which learners can work on in order to redefine their understanding and move to the next stage of interlanguage.