第二语言习得概论 考研复习

★1. SLA (Second language acquisition)is the process by which a language other than the mother tongue is learnt in a natural setting or in a c l a s s r o o m. ★2. Acquisition vs. Learning (Krashen1982)

Acquisition refers to the learning of a language unconsciously under natural settings where learners pay attention only to the meanings or contents rather than forms or grammars.

Learning refers to the learning of a language consciously under educational settings where learners mainly pay attention to forms or grammars.

3. Factors affecting SLA

Social factors (external factors)

Learner factors (internal factors)

Social factors (external factors)

Social context

Language policy and the attitude of the public sector;

Social demand

With the trend of globalization of the world economy , it is widely accepted among educators and national leaders that proficiency in another language is an indispensable quality of educated people

Learner factors (internal factors)

Motivation ，Age ，Learning strategy

4.Behaviorist learning theory

Behaviorist learning theory is a general theory of learning (i.e. it applies to all kinds of learning, not just language learning).

It views learning as the formation of habits. The association of a particular response with a particular stimulus constituted a habit. It is formed when a particular stimulus became regularly linked with a particular response.

When applied to SLA, the process of second language acquisition is regarded as a process of habit formation.

5. The causes of errors according to behaviorism

Differences between the first and second language create learning difficulty which results in errors.

Behaviorist learning theory predicts that transfer will take place from the first to the second language. Transfer will be negative when there is proactive inhibition. In this case errors will result.

Errors, according to behaviorist theory, were the result of non-learning, rather than wrong learning.

The means used to predict potential errors by behaviorists is Contrastive Analysis.

6. Structuralism

Language was viewed as a coded system consisting of structurally related elements (phonemes, morphemes, words, structures and sentence patterns) 7. What is contrastive analysis (CA)?

Contrastive analysis is an inductive investigative approach based on the distinctive elements in a language. It involves the comparison of two or more languages or subsystems of languages in order to determine both the differences and similarities between them. It could also be done within one language. Contrastive analysis can be both theoretical and applied according to varied purposes.

8. Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH)

Contrastive analysis is a way of comparing languages in order to determine potential errors for the ultimate purpose of isolating what needs to be learned and what does not need to be learned in an L2 situation.

According to CAH, L2 errors are result of differences between the learner’s first language and the target language. The strong form of the hypothesis claims that these differences can be used to predict all errors that will occur. The weak form of the hypothesis claims that these