PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF INTERLANGUAGE

Yayuk Fitriani 2201410004Rega Giyang Girana Z 2201410088Annisa Mustikanthi 2201410094

Second Language AcquisitionBy Rod Ellis

Chapter 6: Psycholinguistic aspects of interlanguagePage 51 - 61

L1 TRANSFER

L1 transfer refers to the influence that thelearner’s L1 exerts over the acquisition of an L2. The learner’s L1 is one of the sources of error in

learner language (negative transfer) The learner’s L1 can facilitate L2 acquisition

(positive transfer)

Errors were largely the result of interference

(another term for negative transfer) in the

heyday of behaviourism.

Behaviourist theories led to two developments: Some theorist, espousing strong mentalist

accounts of L2 acquisition, sought to play down the role of the L1.

Reconceptualize transfer within a cognitive framework.

Transfer errors do not always occur when they are predicted to occur. Differences between the target and native language do not always result in learning difficulty.

According to Eric Kellerman, learners treat some linguistic features as potentially transferable and non-transferable.

Kellerman found that advanced Dutch learners of English had clear perceptions about which meanings of ‘breken’ (‘break’) were basic in their L1 .

He also found that they were prepared to translate a

sentence like:Hij brak zijin been. (He broke his leg.)

directly into English, using ‘broke’ for ‘brak’ butwere not prepared to give a direct translation of asentence like:

Het ondergrondse verset werd gebroken.

(the underground resistance was broken.)

Other researchers have found that the transfer of

some L1 grammatical features is tied to the

learners of English.

When language transfer takes place there is usually no loss of L1 knowledge. This obvious fact has led to the suggestion that a better term for referring to the effects of the L1 might be ‘cross-linguistic influence.’

THE ROLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN L2 ACQUISITION

Adults seem to have work hard and to study the language consciously in order to succeed when they acquire L2. in contrast, children seem to do so without conscious effort when they acquire their L1.

TWO OPPOSING POSITION CAN BE IDENTIFIED.

Stephen Krashen has argued the need to distinguish ‘acquired’ L2 knowledge (i.e. implicite knowledge of language) and ‘learned’ L2 knowledge (i.e. explicit knowledge about language).

Richard Schmidt has poinyed out that the term ‘consciousness’ is often used very loosely in SLA and argues that there is a need to standardize the concept that underlie its use.

For example, he distinguihes between consciousness as ‘intentionality’ and

consciousness as ‘attantion’.

‘Intentionality’ that refers to whether a learner makes an conscious and deliberate decition to learn some L2 knowledge.

He failed to recognize that ‘incidental’ acquisition might in fact still involving some degree of conscious ‘attention’ to input. In the other words, learning incidentally is not the same as learning without conscious attention.

Irrespective of whether learners learn implicitly or explicitly, it is widely accepted that they can acquire different kind of knowledge.

Explicit knowledge may help learners to move from intake to acquisition by helping to notice the gap between what they have observed in the input and the current state of their interlanguage as manifested in their own output.

Another way of identifying the processes responsible for interlanguage development is to deduce the operations that learners perform from a close inspection of their output. We shall examine two of them here; operating prinsiples and processing constrains.

OPERATING PRINCIPLES

Operating principles is the study of the L1 acquisition of many different language has led to the identification of a number of general strategies which children use to extract and segment linguistic information from the language they hear.

PROCESSING CONSTRAINS

Processing constrains sought to account for both why learners acquire the grammar of a language in a definite order and also why some learners only develop very simple interlanguage grammar.

Later, learners achieve access to the ‘subordinate clause strategy’, which premits movement of elements within main clauses but blocks them in subordinate clauses.

Later they develop the ‘initialization/finalization strategy’ which enables

them to move elements at the end of a structure to the beginning and vice versa but

prevents them moving elements within a structure.

Later, learners achieve access to the ‘subordinate clause strategy’, which premits movement of elements within main clauses but blocks them in subordinate clauses. 

Later they develop the

‘initialization/finalization strategy’ which enables them to move elements at the end of a structure

to the beginning and vice versa but prevents them moving elements

within a structure.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

When learners experience some kind of problem with an initial plan which prevents them from executing it. They can either abandon the initial plan and develop an entirely different one by means of a reducation strategy or try to maintain their original communicative goal by adopting some kind of achievement strategy.

Communication strategies

When learners experience some kind of problem with an initial plan which prevents them from executing it. They can either abandon the initial plan and develop an entirely different one by means of a reducation strategy or try to maintain their original communicative goal by adopting some kind of achievement strategy.

Communication strategies

TWO TYPES OF COMPUTATIONAL MODEL

Serial processingThat is, imformation is processed in a series of sequential step and results in the representation of what has been learned as some kind of ‘rule’ or ‘strategy’.

Two types of computational model

That is, imformation is processed in a series of sequential step and results in the representation of what has been learned as some kind of ‘rule’ or ‘strategy’.

serial processing

PARALLEL DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING

This credits the learner with the ability to perform a number of mental tasks at the same thing. Models based on paralled distributed processing reject the whole notion of ‘rule’.

This credits the learner with the ability to perform a number of mental tasks at the same thing. Models based on paralled distributed processing reject the whole notion of ‘rule’.

parallel distributed processing

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