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1.The behaviourist account of L1/L2 learning.
Behavioural (or "behavioral") theory in psychology is a very substantial field: follow the links to the left or right for introductions to some of its more detailed contributions impinging on how people learn in the real world. How I have the effrontery to produce a single page on it amazes even me, whatever my reservations about it!
Behaviourism is primarily associated with Pavlov (classical conditioning) in Russia and with Thorndike, Watson and particularly Skinner in the United States (operant conditioning).
· Behaviourism is dominated by the constraints of its (naďve) attempts to emulate the physical sciences, which entails a refusal to speculate about what happens inside the organism. Anything which relaxes this requirement slips into the cognitive realm.
· Much behaviourist experimentation is undertaken with animals and generalised.
· In educational settings, behaviourism implies the dominance of the teacher, as in behaviour modification programmes. It can, however, be applied to an understanding of unintended learning.
Behaviorist Account of Learning:
a) Input
b) Response
c) Positive Reinforcement
d) Negative Reinforcement
L1 and L2
L1 à
The L1 terms are used to indicate that a person has acquired the languages in infancy and early childhood and generally within the family.
Besides, the L1 terms signal a characteristic level of proficiency in the language. They suggest an intuitive, native-like, full or perfect command of the language.
L2 à
The concept of L2 (non-native language, second language, foreign language)implies the prior availability to the individual of an L1, in other words some form of bilingualism.
The L2 terms may indicate a lower level of proficiency in the language in comparison with the primary language.
Behaviorist Theory & Language Learning
Core to all of behaviorism is the assumption that human and animal behaviors are determined by learning and reinforcement. Whether by classical conditioning or operatant conditioning, species acquire new skills, deepening on the effects these skills have on the specie's environment. If an action proves to have a positive outcome (e.g., if by pressing a button, a rat receives food), the organism is more likely to continue to repeat this behavior. However, if the outcome is negative (e.g., if by pressing a button, a rat rat receives a shock), the organism is less likely to repeat the behavior.
Skinner, and Stimulus-Response (S-R) adherents, believed that behaviorist theory could be used to infer a learning history. They held that one could take an animal or person, observe its/his/her behavior, and figure out what had been reinforced previously. Behaviorist reduced all responses to associations, to a pattern of positive and negative reinforcement that establishes links between stimuli and their environmental antecedents and consequences. Responses that were reinforced would be repeated, and those that were punished would not. Thus, if a dog brought its human a ball and the human pet it, the dog’s behavior would be reinforced, and it would be more apt to getting the ball in the future. Likewise, if the dog brought its human a ball and the human kicked it, the dog’s behavior would be punished, and it would be less likely to do it.
These associations between stimuli, actions, and responses could explain virtually every aspect of human and animal behavior and interaction, but one seemed particularly problematic for the behaviorist theory: language. In 1957, Skinner published his book, Verbal Behavior, in which he attempted to apply his form of operant conditioning to language learning.
A basic assumption of his was that all language, including private, internal discourse, was a behavior that developed in the same manner as other skills. He believed that a sentence is merely part of “a behavior chain, each element of which provides a conditional stimulus for the production of the succeeding element” (Fodor, Bever, & Garrett, p25). The probability of a verbal response was contingent on four things: reinforcement, stimulus control, deprivation, and aversive stimulation. The interaction of these things in a child’s environment would lead to particular associations, the basis of all language.
Skinner proposed that language could be categorized by the way it was reinforced. He claimed that there were four general types of speech: echoic behavior, mand, tact, interverbals and autoclitic.
Echoic behavior is the primary form of verbal behavior of language learners. These verbalizations include repeated utterances, as in (1)
(1) PARENT: [pointing to cookie] That’s a cookie. Can you say ‘cookie’?CHILD: Cooookie
Mands (short for deMANDS) are defined as utterances that are reinforced by the elevation of deprivation. So for instance, if a child were hungry or cold, her requests (as in (2))
(2) Cookie.
Directives such as “Stop,” “Go,” and “Wait” also count as mands.
However, in (3), the child may be simply naming the object or stating what she likes.
(3) Cookie!
Utterances that are produced when the speaker is not deprived are called tact (short for conTACT). Tacts are verbalizations that the speaker produces to provide information instead of attending to states of deprivation. While on the surface, tacts and mands may seem similar, their underlying motivations (stimuli) and their reinforcements are different. When a mand is reinforced, the need is sated. When a tact is reinforced, there is no need to sate.
The fourth type of utterance is the interverbals. These include such things as “Please” and “Thank you.” These utterances are not necessary to provide information. Rather, they are used in discourse situation and pertain to the interactive nature of dialog. So for example, in (4), the second utterance, the response to the question, is an interverbal. Likewise, the associative response in number (5) is also an interverbal.
(4) SPEAKER A: Who’s your favorite graduate student? SPEAKER B: You
(5) WORD: CAT RESPONSE: Dog
With the final category, autoclitics, Skinner attempted to deal with internal speech, or thought. Autoclitics, by his account, are subject to the same effects of reinforcement as verbalized speech and that previously reinforced internal, or thought behaviors, will influence not only current and future thought but also current and future verbal behavior.
Whether the speech was internal or dialogic, reinforced positively or negatively, all language can be considered behavior that is conditioned and learned. When Skinner wrote Verbal Behavior he attempted to explain the most complex human behavior: communication. This included all forms of language comprehension, from dialog to thought.
Though a tribute to the behaviorist paradigm, Skinner’s book generated more questions and concerns than it explained. After his book was published and critiqued by Noam Chomsky, Skinner failed to respond immediately to the issues and problems raised. His slow response coupled with both a growing disdain for the behaviorist paradigm and the influence of technology, computers, and information processing led to the strengthening of the cognitive movement in psychology and other social sciences.
2. Noam Chomsky's views on language acquisition.
According to this view, children are able to learn the "superficial" grammar of a particular language because all intelligible languages are founded on a "deep structure" of grammatical rules that are universal and that correspond to an innate capacity of the human brain.
According to Noam Chomsky, the mechanism of language acquisition formulates from innate processes. This theory is evidenced by children who live in the same linguistic community without a plethora of different experiences who arrive at comparable grammars. Chomsky thus proposes that "all children share the same internal contraints which characterize narrowly the grammar they are going to construct." (Chomsky, 1977, p.98) Since we live in a biological world, "there is no reason for supposing the mental world to be an exception." (Chomsky, 1977, p.94) And he believes that there is a critical age for learningn a language as is true for the overall development of the human body.
Chomsky's mechanism of language acquisition also links structural linguistics to empiricist thought: "These principles [of structuralism and empiricism] determine the type of grammars that are available in principles. They are associated with an evaluation procedure which, given possible grammars, selects the best one. The evaluation procedure is also part of the biological given. The acquisition of language thus is a process of selection of the best grammar compatible with the available data. If the principles can be made sufficiently restrictive, there will also be a kind of 'discovery procedure.' " (Chomsky, 1977, p.117)
Noam Chomsky originally theorized that children were born with a hard-wired language acquisition device (LAD) in their brains.[2] He later expanded this idea into that of Universal Grammar; a set of innate principles and adjustable parameters that are common to all human languages. According to Chomsky, the presence of Universal Grammar in the brains of children allow them to deduce the structure of their native languages from "mere exposure".
Much of the nativist position is based on the early age at which children show competency in their native grammars, as well as the ways in which they do (and do not) make errors. Some research suggests that infants are born able to distinguish between phonemes in minimal pairs, distinguishing between bah and pah, for example.[3] Another source of support for this viewpoint is that young children (under the age of three) do not speak in fully formed sentences, instead saying things like "want cookie" or "my coat"; however, they do not say things like "want my" or "I cookie", statements that would break the syntactic structure of the phrase, a component of universal grammar.[3] Children also seem remarkably immune from error correction by adults which nativists say would not be the case if children were learning from their parents.[4]
3. L1 acquisition in the light of the Critical Period Hypothesis.
4.L2 acquisition in the light of the Critical Period Hypothesis
How children acquire native language (L1) and the relevance of this to foreign language (L2) learning has long been debated. Although evidence for L2 learning ability declining with age is controversial, a common notion is that children learn L2s easily and older learners rarely achieve fluency. This assumption stems from ‘critical period’ (CP) ideas. A CP was popularised by Eric Lenneberg in 1967 for L1 acquisition, but considerable interest now surrounds age effects on second language acquisition (SLA). SLA theories explain learning processes and suggest causal factors for a possible CP for SLA, mainly attempting to explain apparent differences in language aptitudes of children and adults by distinct learning routes, and clarifying them through psychological mechanisms. Research explores these ideas and hypotheses, but results are varied: some demonstrate pre-pubescent children acquire language easily, and some that older learners have the advantage, and yet others focus on existence of a CP for SLA. Recent studies (e.g. Mayberry and Lock, 2003) have recognised that certain aspects of SLA may be affected by age, though others remain intact. The objective of this study is to investigate whether capacity for vocabulary acquisition decreases with age.
A review of SLA theories and their explanations for age-related differences is necessary before considering empirical studies. The most reductionist theories are those of Penfield and Roberts (1959) and Lenneberg (1967), which stem from L1 and brain damage studies; children who suffer impairment before puberty typically recover and (re-)develop normal language, whereas adults rarely recover fully, and often do not regain verbal abilities beyond the point reached five months after impairment. Both theories agree that children have a neurological advantage in learning languages, and that puberty correlates with a turning point in ability. They assert that language acquisition occurs primarily, possibly exclusively, during childhood as the brain loses plasticity after a certain age. It then becomes rigid and fixed, and loses the ability for adaptation and reorganisation, rendering language (re-)learning difficult.
Cases of deaf and feral children provide evidence for a biologically determined CP for L1. Feral children are those not exposed to language in infancy/childhood due to being brought up in the wild, in isolation and/or confinement. A classic example is 'Genie', who was deprived of social interaction from birth until discovered aged thirteen (post-pubescent).
Such studies are however problematic; isolation can result in general retardation and emotional disturbances, which may confound conclusions drawn about language abilities. Studies of deaf children learning American Sign Language (ASL) have fewer methodological weaknesses. Newport and Supalla (1987) studied ASL acquisition in deaf children differing in age of exposure; few were exposed to ASL from birth, most of them first learned it at school.
Results showed a linear decline in performance with increasing age of exposure; those exposed to ASL from birth performed best, and ‘late learners’ worst, on all production and comprehension tests. Their study thus provides direct evidence for language learning ability decreasing with age, but it does not add to Lennerberg’s CP hypothesis as even the oldest children, the ‘late learners’, were exposed to ASL by age four, and had therefore not reached puberty, the proposed end of the CP.
Other work has challenged the biological approach; Krashen (1975) reanalysed clinical data used as evidence and concluded cerebral specialisation occurs much earlier than Lenneberg calculated. Therefore, if a CP exists, it does not coincide with lateralisation.
Although it does not describe an optimal age for SLA, the theory implies that younger children can learn languages more easily than older learners, as adults must reactivate principles developed during L1 learning and forge an SLA path: children can learn several languages simultaneously as long as the principles are still active and they are exposed to sufficient language samples (Pinker, 1995).
There are, however, problems with the extrapolation of the UG theory to SLA: L2 learners go through several phases of types of utterance that are not similar to their L1 or the L2 they hear. Other factors include the cognitive maturity of most L2 learners, that they have different motivation for learning the language, and already speak one language fluently.
5. Universal Grammar and its role in L1/L2 acquisition.
Universal grammar (UG) is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans (linguistic nativism). It attempts to explain language acquisition in general, not describe specific languages. Universal grammar proposes a set of rules intended to explain language acquisition in child development.
Some students of universal grammar study a variety of grammars to abstract generalizations called linguistic universals, often in the form of "If X holds true, then Y occurs." These have been extended to a range of traits, from the phonemes found in languages, to what word orders languages choose, to why children exhibit certain linguistic behaviors.
The idea can be traced to Roger Bacon's observation that all languages are built upon a common grammar, substantially the same in all languages, even though it may undergo in them accidental variations, and the 13th century speculative grammarians who, following Bacon, postulated universal rules underlying all grammars. The concept of a universal grammar or language was at the core of the 17th century projects for philosophical languages. Later linguists who have influenced this theory include Noam Chomsky, Edward Sapir and Richard Montague, developing their version of the theory as they considered issues of the Argument from poverty of the stimulus to arise from the constructivist approach to linguistic theory. The application of the idea to the area of second language acquisition (SLA) is represented mainly by the McGill linguist Lydia White.
Universal Grammar, as proposed by Chomsky, has long been controversial due to its strong innatist assumptions. While syntacticians generally concede that there are parametric points of variation between languages, heated debate occurs over whether UG constraints are essentially universal due to being "hard-wired" (Chomsky's Principles and Parameters approach), a logical consequence of a specific syntactic architecture (the Generalized Phrase Structure approach) or the result of functional constraints on communication (the functionalist approach).[1]
Linguist Noam Chomsky made the argument that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language. In turn, there is an assumption that all languages have a common structural basis. This set of rules is known as universal grammar.
Speakers proficient in a language know what expressions are acceptable in their language and what expressions are unacceptable. The key puzzle is how speakers should come to know the restrictions of their language, since expressions which violate those restrictions are not present in the input, indicated as such. This absence of negative evidence—that is, absence of evidence that an expression is part of a class of the ungrammatical sentences in one's language—is the core of the poverty of stimulus argument. For example, in English one cannot relate a question word like 'what' to a predicate within a relative clause (1):
(1) *What did John meet a man who sold?
Such expressions are not available to the language learners, because they are, by hypothesis, ungrammatical for speakers of the local language. Speakers of the local language do not utter such expressions and note that they are unacceptable to language learners. Universal grammar offers a solution to the poverty of the stimulus problem by making certain restrictions universal characteristics of human languages. Language learners are consequently never tempted to generalize in an illicit fashion.
6. Neurolinguistic aspects of L2 acquisition.
7. The similarities and differences between L1 acquisition and L2 learning.
A continuing theme has been whether people acquire a second language in the same way as a first. If the L2 stages outlined above are also followed by L1 children, both groups are probably using the same learning process. The L2 sequence for English grammatical morphemes was similar, though not identical, to that found in L1 acquisition by Brown (1972), the greatest differences being the irregular past tense (broke), articles (the), copula and auxiliaries (Dulay, Burt & Krashen, 1982). Other similar sequences of syntactic acquisition have been found in L1 and L2 learning. L2 learners, like L1 learners, start by believing that John is the subject of please in both John is easy to please and John is eager to please and only go on to discover it is the object in John is easy to please after some time (Cook 1973; d’Anglejan & Tucker 1975). L2 learners, like L1 children, at first put negative elements at the beginning of the sentence No the sun shining and then progress to negation within the sentence That’s no ready (Wode 1981).
A sub-theme underlying several of the questions discussed here is that L1 acquisition is completely successful, L2 learning is not. Take two representative quotations: ‘Very few L2 learners appear to be fully successful in the way that native speakers are’ (Towell & Hawkins 1994: p.14); ‘Unfortunately, language mastery is not often the outcome of SLA’ (Larsen-Freeman & Long 1991: 153). The evidence for this deficiency is held to be the lack of completeness of L2 grammars (Schachter 1988) or the fossilisation in L2 learning where the learner cannot progress beyond some particular stage (Selinker 1992), both familiar ‘facts’ in some sense. Part of the interest in SLA research is explaining why L2 learners are usually unsuccessful. However, this alleged failure depends upon how success is measured, as we shall see.
The answer to the question is far from settled. While there are many similarities between L1 and L2 learning, the variation in situation and other factors also produces many differences. One difficulty is filtering out differences that are accidental rather than inevitable. L1 children mostly acquire language in different settings with different exposure to language than L2 learners and they are at different stages of mental and social maturity (Cook 1969). It may be inherently impossible to compare equivalent L1 and L2 learners. A more precise version of this question asks whether adults still have access to Universal Grammar in the mind.
8. The acquisition of morphemes in L1 and L2 learning.
The study of grammatical morphemes has been particularly fruitful for understanding the mechanisms involved in second language acquisition by adults. Aside from merely telling us in what order certain structures are in fact acquired, these studies have also been of value in revealing the domain of the acquired and learned grammars, when performers appeal to conscious learning and when they do not.
The history of morpheme studies in language acquisition begins with Brown's demonstration (Brown, 1973) that children acquiring English as a first language show a similar order of acquisition for grammatical morphemes in obligatory occasions. Certain morphemes, such as ing and plural, tend to be acquired relatively early, while others, such as the third person singular /s/ on verbs in the present tense (III sing.) or the possessive 's marker tend to be acquired late. Brown's longitudinal findings were confirmed cross-sectionally be de Villiers and de Villiers (1973). This discovery was extended to child second language acquisition by Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974a, 1975) in several cross-sectional studies, by Kessler and Idar (1977), and by Rosansky (1976) (who has a rather different view of her results, to be discussed below). The child second language order was not identical to the child first language order, but there were clear similarities among second language acquirers. (As I have pointed out in several places (Krashen, 1977a; Krashen, Butler, Birnbaum, and Robertson, 1978), this appears to be due to differences in the rank order of free morphemes, especially copula and auxiliary, which tend to come later for the first language acquirer.)
The discovery of the "natural order" has allowed us to probe the interaction between language acquisition and language learning in the adult performer: we have interpreted the presence...
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