The Bloomsbury Companion to Second Language Acquisition

Ernesto Macaro, Ernesto Macaro

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781441136923
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Bloomsbury Companion to Second Language Acquisition is designed to be the essential one-volume resource for advanced students and academics. It offers a comprehensive reference resource: it features an overview of key topics in SLA as well the key research methods. It then goes on to look at current research areas and new directions in the field by examining key relationships in the field, including the relationship between first and second language acquisition and the relationship between L2 input and L2 output. It is a complete resource for postgraduate students and researchers working within second language acquisition and applied linguistics.

Part 1

The Second Language Acquisition Landscape

1	Second Language Acquisition: The Landscape, the Scholarship and the Reader Ernesto Macaro

Chapter Overview

Second Language Acquisition

Origins of the Study of SLA

Books on Second Language Acquisition

A Companion to SLA

Journals of Second Language Acquisition

Second Language Lexis and Second Language Rules

Second Language Skills

Interaction

Belief Systems

Teaching Approaches

Advice to the Reader of SLA Literature

Notes

In the twenty-first century the majority of people in the world speak more than one language. A considerable number speak three languages or more. In the first quarter of the century the second language that the majority of non- anglophones speak is, undoubtedly, English. There are at least two languages, other than English, which are spoken as first languages by billions of people: Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. These languages may well come to rival English as second languages that people aspire to learn as the century progresses. Already, in the USA there are indications that more television programmes are watched in Spanish than in English.¹

Second languages are learnt in school, at university, in the workplace and in the street. They are learnt at home by speaking to families, carers and friends. Some are learnt alone, through formal self-study. Some are learnt informally, simply by reading a book or newspaper on the train. As an object of learning, a second language has no rival. No other subject is learnt by so many people over such long periods of time. Some people may decide or are compelled to change the second language that they are learning, upgrade or downgrade the intensity with which they are learning a language or simply ‘use’ a second language with no real intention of making any noticeable progress with it. But even if someone is simply using a second language in order to conduct their everyday business, the process of noticing something new, the questioning of something already known, and the process of language maintenance, are in themselves forms of learning.

Second language learning is neither cumulative nor neat and tidy. And it is in that messy, non-linear, but semi-permanent process of learning the subject, and in the myriad situations in which a second language is engaged, that the complexity of second language learning resides.

I would like to make an initial note to the reader. In this chapter, a number of concepts and technical terminology will be introduced. Most are explained in the ‘compendium of key concepts’ provided in the next chapter. However it should be possible for the reader new to the field of second language acquisition to get a reasonably satisfying impression of the landscape I am about to describe without having to constantly refer to the explanations of these key terms. But of course it’s up to you how you decide to read this chapter. A principle of applied linguistics is that the reader is the boss, not the writer!

Second Language Acquisition

What is second language acquisition (SLA)? Is it different from second language learning? Absolutely not. SLA is simply a term given to the methodical study of second language learning or, for that matter, third language learning. SLA scholars are ‘applied linguists’. Unlike scholars of general linguistics their prime objective is not to describe a language. Rather, they look for relationships between a language and the people who are speaking it or attempting to speak it. They wonder what might be the complex influences that contribute to the huge range of second language learning outcomes. They ask themselves why some learners learn faster than others and why some learners achieve ultimately higher levels than others. They investigate why some learners have a burning desire to learn a language while others do it simply because they are forced to. SLA researchers want to know whether there is something about the second language that causes this variation or whether it is something inherent in the learner’s first language. Like other ‘social scientists’ SLA researchers also investigate the ‘old chestnut’ about the balance between nature and nurture. Is second language learning ability something we are born with or is it the case that aspects of the society we are in enable some people to learn better than others? All these questions, then, are of interest to SLA scholars.

Nor is a distinction nowadays being made (as Stephen Krashen once attempted to make) between acquisition, which was supposedly subconscious, and learning which was supposedly conscious. It is now generally accepted that totally subconscious acquisition/learning could really only take place when you are asleep, in a coma or through some kind of subliminal device such as is sometimes (illegally) attempted in advertising.

Thus the study of SLA is not different from the study of second language learning. There is no suggestion that what scholars are interested in is drawing a clear line between some kind of idealized mental process, sanitized by the laboratory setting, and the complex, often chaotic linguistic environment where those other humans present might influence one’s thoughts, one’s emotions and one’s ability to learn. Well, at least not many scholars would admit to wanting to draw that clear line! Perhaps some, in their heart of hearts, would love to operate like natural scientists and isolate their subjects in cages, bring them out from time to time onto the laboratory bench, feed them a particular language diet and then see the progress their subjects made. But they know that they would be ridiculed, not to say imprisoned. So instead SLA researchers, like other social scientists, try to control for as many factors as possible when studying humans’ relationship with language, while accepting that they have to take account of a human being’s relationship with other human beings around them, and the situation in which they are in.

Whatever, the operational parameters of SLA researchers, stated or otherwise, all would agree that the SLA phenomenon exists – people do learn a second language. They also agree that it is worth the effort of trying to explain how the phenomenon occurs and what predicts that it will occur in a particular way. In other words, researchers are convinced that it is worth studying the fact that people are able to learn a language in addition to the one they are confronted with from the moment of birth and that some learn this second language (L2) to a level at which it is, to all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from a native speaker of that language; others do not reach those lofty heights. The latter, of course, may well have a perfectly valid reason for not wishing to do so.

Origins of the Study of SLA

When did the study of SLA begin? That’s a tricky question. Some would point out that it has been informally studied for centuries. Others might argue that its birth was not noticed until the beginning of the twentieth century when links between language learning and the description of a language were first being made. However, with far greater conviction, we can pinpoint the late 1960s as a time when authors first began to draw on many fields of learning including the fields of linguistics, language teaching, sociology and psychology, and in doing so started a process of systematic reflection on language learning, based on collecting research evidence and theory building. Then in the 1980s the production of SLA research underwent a veritable explosion, in part linked to the expansion of English language teaching world-wide (both as a second and as a foreign language) and in part as a result of a perceived need to establish an equilibrium between those who saw second language learning as merely a continuation of first language learning and those who saw it as a completely different enterprise. In fact this debate about whether learning to speak an L2 is as natural as learning to speak the first language, or whether it involves radically different mental capacities and processes, has remained at the heart of SLA research to the present day and is extensively discussed by Vivian Cook in this volume.

Interestingly, it is around the late 1980s and 1990s that a growing rift can be observed between researchers working in first language acquisition and development, and those working in SLA. The reason for this was probably that first language researchers detected two problems that needed solving. First, the overwhelming majority of children learn the oral form of their first language without difficulty, and therefore the researchers presumed the remaining few must be undergoing some kind of language deficit or difficulty which needed to be treated – that is, these children were considered to have specific learning impairments and these required examination by speech experts. Secondly while the overwhelming majority of children learn the oral form of their L1 without difficulty, a considerable minority either have delayed literacy (the development of reading and writing) with their L1 or indeed have persistent difficulties well into adolescence and beyond (dyslexia). Neither of these two themes appears to be of immediate concern to most SLA researchers who seem more concerned with difficulties experienced in the L2 by learners who have had no signs of difficulty in the L1.

Books on Second Language Acquisition

How has the study of SLA been documented and disseminated? Largely it has been done through books and academic journals, although more recently online information services and ‘Centres’ have been posting findings of research on line. Let us first take the case of books. It is almost impossible to enumerate and list with any certainty all the volumes that have been dedicated to SLA. It is however possible to categorize their objectives and their readership. For example, there has recently been a trend to produce and publish ‘handbooks of SLA’ (e.g., Doughty and Long 2003) which are primarily intended to offer the student of SLA or language teachers a brief introduction by experts in the field to an area of SLA study. These publications should be handled with care by students and practitioners alike as they are both highly selective and often subjective summaries of years of research endeavour, summaries which might appear to be providing the ultimate judgement on the trustworthiness of a particular theory or body of research.

A much longer history can be traced in those books which propound a particular theory of how L2s are learnt, offer some research evidence for that theory and propose a future agenda for testing and refining the theory. Most of these are edited books, but some might also be single-authored books (e.g., Kramsch 2002; Krashen 1981; Lantolf and Appell 1994; Robinson 2001; VanPatten 1996). All claim to offer either a total or partial explanation for the phenomenon that is SLA through some kind of unifying theory. The student who wishes to develop an in-depth understanding of how, historically, different authors have taken these different ‘positions’ on SLA and how they have come from different disciplines in order take those positions, would do well to read all these in the original. Similarly there are edited books that explore an area rather than a theoretical framework. Often these are books which attempt to bring together a community of practitioners all working in the same area (Cohen and Macaro 2007; Cook and Bassetti 2005; Muñoz 2006; Schmitt 2004). Here the reader will find chapters written by different experts in the field, usually offering a single study that they have carried out, or a synthesis of a cluster of studies.

Books which attempt to make theories easily accessible to the student of SLA are the following: Cook (2001); Lightbown and Spada (1993/2006); McLaughlin (1987); Mitchell and Myles (1998); Sharwood-Smith (1994); VanPatten and Williams (2006). These are books which give brief explanations of a number of theories of SLA and discuss them in the light of the evidence available. Similarly there are books which are, as it were, compendiums of recent and relevant research to SLA. The focus here is less on what the theory is but more on the accumulation of evidence around a theme (Chaudron 1988; Ellis 1994/2008; Macaro 2003).

Lastly, there are books which are written with the SLA student specifically in mind. For example De Bot, Lowie and Verspoor (2005) and Gass and Selinker (2008), can be considered as coursebooks in that they have a planned curriculum of SLA learning, and some with activities for the student to undertake.

A Companion to SLA

So what kind of a book is a ‘Companion to SLA’? I don’t think there is really an established definition of what a Companion is but I can tell you what this one is trying to do. This book tries to cater essentially for students of SLA, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level, but also for practitioners wishing to update their knowledge of some of the principles underlying language teaching. It tries to strike a balance between making theories and research findings clear and accessible and not being condescending to its reader through oversimplification of complex ideas. First, the Companion offers an overview of the field. This is what this chapter is attempting to do at the moment and will continue to do after a brief deviation. Providing an overview is an objective shared by Chapter 2 and 3 of Part 1. Chapter 2 (written by Ernesto Macaro, Robert Vanderplank and Victoria Murphy) offers explanations of key concepts in SLA thus making them accessible to someone first embarking on the subject. These key concepts are cross-referenced, demonstrating the strong interconnected nature of SLA research. The objective in this collection of key terms was to go beyond the brief definition of a concept and to provide what we might call an ‘exposition’ of an idea, hypothesis or theory which has been of interest to SLA researchers. In this chapter the authors limited themselves to between 200 and 300 words for each exposition, attempting to provide where possible both an initial definition and a brief account of how the concept has been tackled or has developed over time as well as offering the reader one or two key references to follow up.

Chapter 3 on research methods (written by Andrew Cohen and Ernesto Macaro) does not provide the reader with a handbook guide to carrying out research. A comprehensive explanation of research methods would be beyond the scope of a single chapter. Instead, first the reader is guided to those authors who have approached applied linguistics research methods in a number of different ways. Secondly the chapter provides an overview of the types of research methods that have been used by SLA researchers in the early years of the twenty-first century. Thirdly it offers some critiques and observations on these methods and argues for certain improvements that could be made and that the novice SLA researcher may want to take on board.

The last section comprises seven chapters written by different authors with a strong interest in a particular field of SLA. These chapters are meant to be challenging for any reader interested in language acquisition. For each chapter the author was asked to tackle not a single concept or domain but the possible relationships between two concepts or domains and I shall refer to these themes and authors as this introductory chapter progresses.

I hope that this combination of approaches is a suitable interpretation of what a ‘Companion’ to an academic subject is. Personally I like my academic ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series
• Part 1  The Second Language Acquisition Landscape
• Part 2  Issues and Relationships in Second Language Acquisition
• Conclusions
• References
• Index