Universal Grammar in the classroom: the effects of formal instruction on second language acquisition

1991 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sascha W. Felix ◽  
Wilfried Weigl
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Second Language ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Learning Situation ◽  
School Students ◽  
Formal Instruction ◽  
L2 Learners

One of the dominating issues in recent second language acquisition research has been the question of whether or not L2 learners have access to principles of Universal Grammar. It seems that currently there is fairly strong evidence both for and against UG-access by L2 learners. Consequently, the question arises what kinds of factors may potentially further or block UG-access and whether such factors can be related to certain properties of the learning environment. In this paper we wish to approach this question by looking at a somewhat extreme learning situation, namely the acquisition (or maybe non-acquisition) of English as a second language by 77 German high school students who learned and were exposed to English exclusively during classroom hours. These students were tested for their ability to correctly judge grammaticality contrasts in English that are standardly attributed to UG principles. The results suggest that - even under a most liberal interpretation - these students did not show any evidence of having UG-access. Rather, they utilized a number of strategies that (a) tied them very tightly to properties of German and (b) prevented them from making any generalizations that went beyond what had been explicitly taught in the classroom.

scholarly journals Study of Influence of Negative Transfer of L1 Thinking on Second Language Acquisition

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Jingyi Guo
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Second Language ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Junior High School ◽  
Junior High ◽  
Junior High School Students ◽  
School Students ◽  
Grade One

Language transfer is always the hot topic in the history of Linguistic researches. The influence of L1 thinking absolutely exists in the process of second language acquisition and varies with second language learners’ personal language acquisition ability. According to Piaget, junior high school students are in the transitional stage from the Concrete Operation to the Formal Operation, and some of them may belong to the later. Also, the learning years in junior high school is the initial time to study English grammar and write compositions, so this research takes junior high school students of Grade-one as research participant, and mainly focuses on the errors occur in their English compositions. Through the analysis of the reason why they made such errors, the author aims at revealing the influence of L1 thinking on Chinese students’ second language acquisition, also, the author intends to help educators to have clearer thoughts when sorting out educational plans and strategies, and enable both teachers and students to realize the importance of cultivating students’ second language thinking in junior high school.

Is there linguistic life after high school? Longitudinal changes in the bilingual repertoire in metropolitan Barcelona

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 617-648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Woolard
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Second Language ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Peer Relations ◽  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
School Students ◽  
Workplace Romance ◽  
Age Related

AbstractDo linguistic identities formed in high school endure after adolescence? Do age-related linguistic differences represent community trends over historical time, or are they age-graded practices that change over biographical time? Catalan advocates worry that perceived Castilian dominance in adolescents' peer relations and media consumption forecasts the community's sociolinguistic future. To investigate the possibility of change in bilingual repertoires after adolescence, participants in a 1987 ethnographic study of high school students in metropolitan Barcelona were reinterviewed after twenty years. The reinterviews of L1 Castilian-speakers showed increased mastery and use of Catalan even among those who had been functionally monolingual and most resistant to Catalan in high school. Higher education, the workplace, romance, cosmopolitan travel, and parenthood were triggers of such postadolescent change in the linguistic repertoire. Informants produce a common narrative attributing linguistic transformations to maturational processes that reduce the shame and intolerance of difference that inhibit adolescent second language use. (Bilingualism, second language acquisition, longitudinal research, language and identity, adolescence, Catalan, Catalonia)*

scholarly journals High School Students’ Foreign Language Acquisition and Their English Achievement

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 495
Author(s):  
Rohfin Andria Gestanti ◽  
Elok Putri Nimasari
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
School Students ◽  
Foreign Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Competency ◽  
Early Production ◽  
Basic Level

This present study aims to examine language proficiency levels of high school students in particular assessment form and describe how such level of skills is appropriately matched for particular level of learners. While a proper language literacy investigation may be biased to perception that it can fairly measures students’ comprehension, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theories view that learner’s age may influence how they acquire a new language. In responding to such issue, this observational study seeks for the information through document observation on students’ scores of an English test conducted by the school as the main data. This observation allows the researchers to analyze the scores and describe it according to justified language competency and language acquisition. The data are classified and clarified by underpinning the theories related to the issues. The result showed that senior high school students generally obtain average scores that allow them to be categorized as Minimal and Basic level of proficiency. As per this level, the justification of language acquisition reveals that the students are included in pre-production and early production stage. Students in this stage are considered able to have average competency, especially in receptive English.

Child Second Language Acquisition of Syntax

1995 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Usha Lakshmanan
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
L2 Learners

Recent advances in linguistic theory within the principles and parameters framework have exerted considerable influence on the field of second language acquisition. SLA researchers working within this framework of syntactic theory have investigated the extent to which developing second language grammars are constrained by principles of Universal Grammar (UG). Much of the UG-based SLA research in the 1980s focused on adult L2 acquisition, but the role of UG principles in child L2 acquisition remained largely unexplored. More recently, however, this state of affairs has begun to change as SLA researchers are becoming more and more interested in child second language syntactic development. In this paper, I review recent and current developments in UG-based child SLA research, and I argue that child SLA has a valuable role to play in enabling us to arrive at a better understanding of the role of biological factors in language acquisition and in strengthening the links between SLA and linguistic theory. Specifically, I discuss the findings of child SLA studies with respect to the following issues: the role of UG parameters in child SLA, the status of functional categories and their projections in child SLA, and the nature of the evidence available to and used by child L2 learners. The overall picture emerging from these studies suggests that child L2 developing grammars are indeed constrained by Universal Grammar. While it is not fully clear at the present time whether the child L2 learners& knowledge is a result of direct access to UG or indirect access to UG (i.e., through the mediation of the L1), the evidence indicates that L1 transfer (at least in certain syntactic domains) cannot be entirely ruled out.

scholarly journals Impact of Language Ego, the Native Language Effect on Oral English Learning of High School Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Guo Xiashi ◽  
Yuewu Lin
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Second Language ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Negative Transfer ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
English Learning ◽  
School Students

Language transfer, especially the native language effect on the process of second language acquisition, has always been a hot issue of various linguists. Language transfer is inevitable in the process of second language acquisition, which can be divided into positive transfer and negative transfer. The positive transfer will promote the foreign language learning while negative transfer of mother tongue will hinder the second language learning. In English learning, compared with reading and writing, oral English learning is more important and more complex. Chinese high school students are often disturbed by negative effect of their mother tongue in oral English communication. In China, experts and scholars have done a lot of researches on the negative native language effect in English learning, but most of the researches focus on writing and translation skills, while few of them emphasize on listening and speaking skills.At present, English teaching is undergoing a profound reform, and English teachers and learners are paying an increasing number of attention to the study of spoken English. In order to fill the gap and correctly understand the influences of oral English acquisition of high school students, through the analysis of the principle of native language effect, this paper finds that the vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and pragmatics of mother tongue all have negative transfer to foreign language learning. What’s more, language ego, as an important part of affective principles, has a profound impact on the process of oral English learning. There is a strong and negative correlation between language ego and oral English learning to some extent. The less students´language ego is, the more oral English output students will produce.

Taal(on)Bewustzijn en Tweede-Taalverwerving

2002 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 27-37
Author(s):  
Ineke van de Craats
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Language Awareness ◽  
Input Enhancement ◽  
Formal Instruction ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
L1 And L2

In this paper, the question is raised as to what extent language awareness can contribute to second-language acquisition. It is argued here that adults (without skills in any other language than their mother tongue) acquiring a second language undergo a process of increasing language awareness when they learn a second language without any formal instruction. Confronted with an unknown language the code of which they have to crack without any help, these learners seem to become aware of the features of their own language before they focus on the structure of the new language. There is no direct access to this process of language awareness, but I believe that double constructions and self-corrections produced by these learners provide evidence that they become aware of differences between L1 and L2. Finally, it is suggested that noticing and input enhancement, even some explicit contrastive information on L1-L2 differences (which spontaneous learners try out to find for themselves) might benefit L2 learners who are unaware of the fact that they still use an L1 grammatical system.

scholarly journals Comparing and explaining the trajectories of first and second language acquisition: in search of the right mix of psychological and linguistic factors

1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
GERARD KEMPEN
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Parameter Setting ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
L1 And L2

When you compare the behavior of two different age groups which are trying to master the same sensori-motor or cognitive skill, you are likely to discover varying learning routes: different stages, different intervals between stages, or even different orderings of stages. Such heterogeneous learning trajectories may be caused by at least six different types of factors:(1) Initial state: the kinds and levels of skills the learners have available at the onset of the learning episode.(2) Learning mechanisms: rule-based, inductive, connectionist, parameter setting, and so on.(3) Input and feedback characteristics: learning stimuli, information about success and failure.(4) Information processing mechanisms: capacity limitations, attentional biases, response preferences.(5) Energetic variables: motivation, emotional reactions.(6) Final state: the fine-structure of kinds and levels of subskills at the end of the learning episode.This applies to language acquisition as well. First and second language learners probably differ on all six factors. Nevertheless, the debate between advocates and opponents of the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis concerning L1 and L2 acquisition have looked almost exclusively at the first two factors. Those who believe that L1 learners have access to Universal Grammar whereas L2 learners rely on language processing strategies, postulate different learning mechanisms (UG parameter setting in L1, more general inductive strategies in L2 learning). Pienemann opposes this view and, based on his Processability Theory, argues that L1 and L2 learners start out from different initial states: they come to the grammar learning task with different structural hypotheses (SOV versus SVO as basic word order of German).

scholarly journals An Experimental Study of L2 Acquisition of Mandarin Unaccusative Verbs by English-Speaking Learners

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Shee Hei Wong ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Unaccusative Verbs ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
English Speaking

The present study investigates the acquisition of Chinese Mandarin unacussative verbs by English-speaking L2 leaners of Chinese, in light of Universal Grammar and Interlanguage (IL) phenomenon. The results of the experiment show that there is no strong evidence for the overpassivization of Mandarin unaccusative verbs, which calls into question the claim that the overpassivization phenomenon of unaccusative verbs is universal in second language acquisition (SLA). The L2 learners in our experiment performed better with non-alternating unaccusative verbs than alternating unaccusative verbs, which might suggest that learners were probably treating the alternating unaccusative verbs in our experiment as underlyingly transitive and thus accepted the ungrammatical passivized unaccusative verbs in the Grammaticality Judgement task. This phenomenon is consistent with child’s L1 development. We attribute the overpassivization of the Chinese unaccusative verbs in our experiment to the hypothesis of non-target lexical causativization as in L2 acquisition of English.

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