Lecture Two: Theories of SLA

Input, output and the role of noticing

How does SLA take place?

SLA theories reviewed:
 Behaviourist
 Nativist
 Cognitive
 Social interactionist
....

 Behaviourist
 Skinner – learning is habit formation.
 Frequent & continuous repetition essential
 In Language teaching: Audiolingualism

 Nativist
 Importance of genetically inherited abilities
 Chomsky (1965)- UG – LAD (Language Acquisition Device): helps the learner to
discover the rules of grammar
 Language is an autonomous faculty, separate from intelligence, that infants are
innately driven to acquire.

 Cognitive

The Cognitive Perspective:

 information processing
 input
 processing
 output

 input: provides the L data necessary for acquisition to occur;

 processing: 3 steps noticing linguistic features
1) making comparison between newly processed input and existing
knowledge
2) developing new hypotheses about language structure,

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 3) altering the existing system
 output: when producing utterances the students get to test their hypotheses.
Corrective feedback can serve as new input.

Definition of noticing
Noticing is
 conscious registration of form in input, i.e. being aware that a particular
form has just been encountered in input.
 detection plus rehearsal in short term memory, prior to encoding in long term
memory.
 a very low level form of consciousness
 plays a key role in converting input into ‘intake’ in SLL.

SLA & Language Teaching

The ‘classical’ approach to teaching Grammar and Functions: PPP

 Presentation:
noticing necessary for input to become intake
 Practice: proceduralize declarative knowledge
 Production: free use

 Social interactionist model

 Biological factors alone are insufficient to ensure that language will develop.
 Interaction rather than exposure to language is needed.
 Language is a facet of communicative behavior that develops through
interaction with other human beings. – Language Acquisition Socialization
System (LASS, Bruner, 1985)

Communicative Language Teaching

Question:
Teacher: Should we teach grammar in Communicative LT or just let the students communicate?

SLA researcher’s response:

Empirical research (No survey!!!)

Important concepts:

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 Implicit learning = no rules are formulated
(DeKeyser, 1994, p.85)
 Explicit learning = learning with awareness at the point of learning
ðconscious, done with attention
a) explicit instruction by teacher (presentation & explanation of grammar rules)
b) spontaneous rule discovery by learner
(Hulstijn & Rick de Graf, 1994, p.97)

D. Peckham, 2002
 Study with Hungarian learners N=26
 Grammar and vocabulary (tasks in the Appendix)
 RQ: Does instruction have an effect of helping learners to notice forms of
input?
 Method
Participants: 26 students in two groups
Instrument:
 two reading texts
 exercises to focus sts’ attention on grammar or vocab and to practice
 tests: remember / know / guess/not sure.
 3 post tests
PT 1: end of the week
PT 2: two weeks after instruction
PT 3: six weeks after instruction

Results
Grammar
 Instruction group outperformed exposure group
 Difference btw groups significant at 1st testing time

Vocabulary
Instruction group significantly outperformed exposure group at 1st testing time

Conclusions:
Support:
Make learners aware of input:
 instruction leads to higher levels of noticing grammar
 vocabulary is easier to become aware of naturally than grammar

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 create tasks which encourage the noticing of input
 learning does not stop after the lesson

Question
 What is the role of the production stage? ð output
 The output hypothesis claims that producing language serves second
language acquisition in several ways.
Question:
 Can we claim that practice makes perfect?
Answer:
 No.
 Fluency and accuracy are different dimensions of language performance and
although practice may enhance fluency, it does not necessarily improve accuracy.
What matters is:
êêê
Noticing
Hypothesis testing

Reading:

Peckham, D. (2002). Noticing grammar and vocabulary as a goal of instruction.

novELTy, 9(2), 4-22.)