二语习得复习提纲

Chapter I Introduction Describing and Explaining L2 Acquisition 1.1What is second language acquisition?

Second language refers to any language that is learned subsequent to the mother tongue.

1.2What are the goals of second language?

The goals of SLA are to describe how L2 acquisition proceeds and to explain this process and why some learners seem to be better at it than others.

1.3Two case studies of L2 learners

1.3.1 A case study of an adult learner

1.3.2 A case study of two child learners

What do these case studies show us?

a. They raise a number of important methodological issues relating to how L2 acquisition should be studied

b. They raise issues relating to the description of learner language

c. They point out some of the problems researchers experience in trying to explain L2 acquisition.

1.4Methodological issues

What is that needs to be described?

a. What it means to say that a learner has acquired a feature of the target language?

b. Whether learners have acquired a particular feature?

c. How to measure whether acquisition has taken place? (Learner’s overuse of linguistic forms.)

1.5Issues in the description of learner language

a. Learners make errors of different kinds.

b. Learners acquired a large number of formulaic chunks, which will influence their performance

in communication and the fluency of their unplanned speech.

c. Whether learners acquire the language systematically?

1.6Issues in the explanation of L2 acquisition

Item learning: formulaic chunks

System learning: rules

Internal (mentalist) account:

External account:

Chapter2 the Nature of Learner Language

2.1Errors and error analysis

2.1.1 Identifying errors

2.1.1.1 Compare the learner’s language with the normal ones.

2.1.1.2 Distinguish errors and mistakes.

Definition: Errors reflect gaps in a learner’s knowledge

Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance.

Methods: a. Check the consistency of learners’ performance.

b. Ask them to correct their own utterance.

Errors and mistakes:

2.1.2 Describing errors

Methods: a. error type oriented:

b. error maker oriented:

Meaning: Classifying errors in these ways can help us to diagnose learners’learning problems at any one stage of their development and, also to plot how changes in error patterns occur over time.

2.1.3 Explaining errors

Errors are systematic, predictable, and some of them are universal: (Learners has constructed some kind of “rule”, albeit a rule different from that of the target language) Eg: omission: leave out the article “the”, leave out the –s in plural nouns

Overgeneralization error: eated---ate

Transfer errors reflect learners attempt to make use of their L1 knowledge.

2.1.4 Error evaluation

Types of errors: Global errors: violate the whole structure of the sentence

Local errors: affect only a single constituent in the sentence

2.2Developmental patterns

2.2.1 The early stage of L2 acquisition

Silent period: children make no attempt to say anything to begin with.

This period makes a preparation for subsequent production.

Trials and errors: Mulaic chunks: they provide learners with the means of performing useful

language functions such as greetings and requests.

Eg:“How do you do?”

“My name is___”

Propositional simplification: leave words out

Eg: “Me no blue”