Cognitive Approaches to Second Language Learning

Kadri, Shafqat Ali

Department of Language Teaching and Linguistics, University of Auckland,
New Zealand
Lecturer, Institute of English Language & Literature,
University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan

01.11.2010

The nature and the processes of cognition have been at the heart of philosophical debates ever
since Socrates. The question, as it emerged then, was twofold: What is the nature of cognition,
and how do we cognize the reality around us? Philosophers ever since have been answering to
these two central questions in what is known in philosophy as the theory of knowledge. These
questions have got implications for all brain, behavioral sciences and social sciences. The
importance of these questions can be assessed by the central role they play in psycholinguistics
and theories of first/second language learning. Almost all second language learning (SLA)
theories have tried to answer these questions: The nature of second language (or to be precise,
linguistic knowledge, i.e., the general/universal) and how this knowledge is individually
learnt/acquired. The question of cognition and its individual acquisition (conscious and
unconscious) is one of the most debated issues in SLA theory (Schmidt, 1990).
The underlying questions in SLA theory are how the mind deals with a language(s), and how
a new linguistic system (L2) emerges alongside the existing one (Field, 2008). Among various
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approaches developed around these underlying issues are what are collectively known as
cognitive approaches. Cognitive approaches differ from the other dominant theory (Universal
Grammar) in the sense that UG emphasizes the language dimension of language learning,
whereas; cognitive theories lay emphasis on the learnability/processability of a language (s). UG
is a property theory (what properties of the mind are essential for the language system), while
cognitive approaches are transition theories, i.e., how linguistic input becomes an
acquired/learned language (Mitchell and Myles 2004). Cognitive approaches emerged out of
dissatisfaction with comprehension-driven approaches (Skehan, 1998). Cognitive approaches to
SLA focus on staged development and systamaticity across L2 learners ( Towell and Hawkins,
1994, p.45). Or in other words, simple learning mechanisms of the human mind at the perceptive,
motor and cognitive levels when exposed to an L2 data are sufficient to create an L2 system in
the learner (Ellis, 2003).
As noted above, any SLA theory which aspires to be called a theory has to answer the two
questions: the nature of linguistic knowledge and its acquisition. This issue is what separates the
cognitivists from the innatists. The division does not stop here. This issue has resulted in a
further distinction between the cognitivists: a group of the cognitivists believe that language
might occupy a special place in the human mind, but are concerned mainly with building an
account of how this property of the mind results in learning of a second language(s). The other
group, on the other hand, does not take the nature of a language to be special in any way and
considers it to be just like other form of information. The distinction between competence and
performance which is one of the central tenets of Universal Grammar (UG), is not subscribed to
by this group of cognitivists. The approaches of the first groups are generally known as
processing approaches, while those of the second group are called constructionist or emergentist
approaches.
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Processing approaches
Theorists in this school are interested mainly in the minds information-processing
mechanism and the way this information is made available when needed. Theorists interested in
the role of the mind in the processing of information, its automatization and restructuring have
developed what are called Information-Processing Models to help explain the issues they deal
within this particular school. Processing approaches are by no means a theoretical monolith, and
theorists have got many disagreements. One such disagreement is on the constraints a linguistic
system puts on a learner and its resultant implication on teachability/ learnabillty of a language.
One such information-processing model believes that learners use controlled processing of
new information and cast it to short-term memory. But the due to the constrains of STM, the new
input can result in non-processing of the information. It is through repeated activation that the
new information is cast to long-term memory (LTM) and becomes automatized. This account of
second language learning is basically the account of how simple information becomes complex
and the way it is made available to the learner whenever needed. Once information has been cast
into LTM as automatized units, they are available to the learner. But this account does not
explain the way it precisely happens. The moment from simplicity to complexity is considered as
linear in this account and the important issue of how the acquired units are made operative has
not been sufficiently described.
Another information-processing account has sought to overcome the limitation of the first
account by drawing a distinction between declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge
(known as Andersons Adaptive Control of Thought (ACT) Model). Ellis, (1994) has explained
Andersons ACT as comprising: (a) Declarative knowledge is all-or none in nature whereas
procedural knowledge can be partially possessed.(b) declarative knowledge can be acquired
ordinarily as by being told, where as procedural knowledge is gradual and is acquired by
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performing the skill. (c). Declarative knowledge is communicable, where procedural knowledge
is not.
A language learner, when exposed to new linguistic information, builds his declarative
knowledge of the procedure. The next stage comes when the learner works out this information
by using his/her linguistic skills. The information seems to have been learnt by the time it
becomes automatic by repeated activation of the procedural knowledge.
Pienemann, one of the main proponents of the other group of processing theorists believes
that the traditional definition of learnability (logico-mathematical) does not take the process of
acquisition and the organization of the human mind into account, and is limited by these
constrains (Pienemann 2005). His Processability Theory (PT) takes the language processer as
computational routines that operate on but are separate from the native speakers linguistic
knowledge. Pienemann writes:
Processability Theory primarily deals with the nature of those computational routines and the sequence
in which they become available to the learnerI argue that language acquisition incorporates as one
essential component the gradual acquisition of those very computational routinesthe task of
acquiring a language includes the acquisition of the procedural skills needed for the processing of the
language (Pienemann 2005, p. 2).

The main thrust of his theory is that a SLA theory has to explain the general/universal in a
language and the way it is learnt individually (processed by the mind). In other words,
teachability of a language depends upon by what the learner is developed to acquire (Pienemann,
1989). The underlying logic in PT is that the learner at any stage can comprehend and produce
only those forms of the target language which the existing stage of his language processor can
handle (Pienemann, 2008). The learner has a Hypothesis Space which develops over time based
on a hierarchy (Pienemann as quoted in Pienemann 2008).
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1. No procedure
2. Category procedure
3. Noun phrase procedure
4. Verb phrase procedure
5. Sentence procedure
6. Subordinate clause procedure.
This hierarchy is implicationally ordered (Pienemann 2008, p.15) because every procedure is a
condition for the next and this hierarchy reflects the time-course in language learning.
Pienemann has also developed a Teachability Theory based on PT. As noted above, the learning
of a language implies for PT the learning of certain routines through a rigid hierarchy, which in
turn expands a learners Hypothesis Space. This concept has given birth to what is referred to as
Teachability Hypothesis which comprises two main features: developmental stages cannot be
glossed over and maximum learning can take place if the instruction focuses on the structures
from the subsequent stage.
These approaches view the learning of an L2 as a cognitive skill , and learning this skill
involves internalization. The constraints on the learning of an L2 can be overcome or reduced if
effective information-handling techniques are applied. Once this information has been
successfully processed, the learner can develop an automatic L2 system. This internalized system
develops as the learner is exposed to further information and appropriate linguistic input, this
restructuring involves the use of learning, production of L2 and communication strategies
(McLaugh and Heredia, 2003).
Emergentist approach
there are patterns everywhere, patterns not preordained by God, by genes, by school
curriculum, or by other human policy, but patterns that emerge (Ellis 2008,p. 232).
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Theorists belong to this tribe believe that language learning is the result of general processes of
human inductive reasoning when it is applied to any particular problems of a language (Ellis,
2001). The learner not only creates new knowledge representations, he/she also develops
processing capabilities to produce and understand L2 in a real world situation (Tomlin and Villa,
1994). Learning a language involves determining structures from usage and this involves full
scope of cognition (Ellis and Robinson, 2008).
Emergentism is the name given to a set of approaches to cognition which do not subscribe to
a prewired (Ellis 2007) pre-determined, inborn faculties in the human mind and emphasize the
interaction between the mind and the environment (Gregg 2003; OGrady 2007). Emergentism
draws heavily upon connectionism: the study of the mind in terms of nervous networks (OGrady
2007). Connectionist/associationist account of the mind believes that the mind builds knowledge
on the basis of association of information through neutral networks. A language, like other
information, emerges from these neural processes and networks and is not the result of the
learning of abstract rules. Rather, the rules emerge from the associative processes. A central
belief which unites emergentists and separates them from the nativists is that whatever the
principles of mind that extract linguistic knowledge from experience, they are resolutely nonlinguistic. (Hawkins 2008, p.614). The main focus of this approach is the dynamic aspect of
second language acquisition rather than the nature of the learners language: process rather than
the structure (Pine, 2000). Researchers belonging to this tribe use computer programmes and
simulate the neural process of the human mind to know how these processes work and the way a
language emerges through these processes.
Process approaches to second language learning usually do not say much about the nature of
language and focus on its emergence. This construct has been called a construct which seeks to
characterize the nature of language learning rather than the nature of language (Mellow 2008).
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The question of a theory of knowledge and how it is acquired, as noted above, has been one
of the most fundamental questions in philosophy. The continental, specially, the Kantian tradition
of all shades has been recently reworked and reproduced as UG, whereas the English empiricist
tradition has been developed and employed by the cognitivists of all shades.
The cognitivist interest in how a language is learnt has resulted in a wealth of theories and
insights. Researchers interested in process theories use various means to analyses and
understand the process of language learning, which range from the use of psychological theories
(Andersons ACT, Pienemanns Processability Theory to the use of computer simulation in
laboratories).
There are various advantages as well limitations of these theoretical applications and
simulations. For instance, Andersons ACT does not talk about the way an automatized
knowledge becomes available to the language learner, all this model seeks to explain is the
nature of acquisition, and leaves the way the acquired skill is actually performed (and why an
acquired skill even when successfully acquired sometimes lapses). Brian anatomy and
physiology is the same for human species, if a language is learnt following computational routine
as PT explains, this then would result in identical language for learners who get the same input.
But this not does not happen in both L1 and L2 learning. The cognitivists seek to explain this by
other theories, e.g., individual differences, but this needs to be explained why individuals with
the same brain anatomy and physiology are different at all.
Cognitivists subscribe to various theories of the nature on language (e.g., Lexical Functional
Grammar and UG), but they have yet to come up with a theory of language which goes hand in
hand with their theories of the nature of language learning. This is another limitation of the
cognitivist approaches.
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