English for Children
Seminar Paper by Helen Doron - part 2
iii) The dual competence paradigm
This is Krashen's Monitor Model (1981). Krashen distinguishes between 'acquisition' and 'learning', arguing the 'learning' uses a monitor in language performance in which utterances are edited according to knowledge learnt. Accordingly Ellis interprets the data to mean that J has 'acquired' the 'no' + V rule, but 'learnt' the 'don't' + V rule which is monitored in careful spoken English. Ellis says that this interpretation fails as the social circumstances are the same, J was focused on meaning, and it is unlikely that J had any metalinguistic awareness of the 'don't' + V rule.
iv) The multiple competence paradigm
This paradigm posits that the learner does not possess a single IL system, but a number of separate and overlapping systems; these share some rules, but also have some unique rules. All these ILs create discourse domains according to the different situational factors. According to this paradigm, Ellis interprets J's data as being that J has two different domains - in one of these domains, J has constructed the rule 'no' + V; in the other domain, J has constructed the rule 'don't' + V. Again in this case, Ellis does not find this argument convincing as J's situational context was the same in both cases.
Ellis goes on to abandon the idea of systematic variability in this case and to posit non-systematic variability. He gives five criterion for non-systematic variability:
- the two forms occur in the same situational context,
- the two forms help perform the same illocutionary meaning,
- the two forms occur in the same linguistic context,
- they occur in the same discourse context, and
- there is in the matter of their production, no evidence of any difference of the amount of attention paid to the form of the utterances.
He concludes that J's two negative utterance rules are in free variation in his IL.
It seems however, that Ellis has not taken into account an important and basic factor: J's L1 interference. It may be that reason for this is a pure horizontal description, without reference to L1 interference. None-the-less; it appears that all such horizontal descriptions fail to reach explanatory adequacy (Chomsky, 1965). Chomsky describes explanatory adequacy as the extent to which a theory:
offers an explanation for the intuition of the native speaker on the basis of an empirical hypothesis concerning the innate predisposition of the child to develop a certain kind of theory to deal with the evidence presented to him.
It would seem to be intuitively satisfying to the average native speaker to understand that a foreign speaker of a language will adopt structures from his/her L1 into L2 in the initial stages of learning. However, it would appear that a horizontal description of IL does not aim to show where the existing structures of the IL came from and in which direction they appear to be heading. The level of explanation that Ellis seems to be seeking appears to be on the level of here and now description, not with any predictive value.
- English for Children - Seminar2 - part 1
- English for Children - Seminar2 - part 2
- English for Children - Seminar2 - part 3
- English for Children - Seminar2 - part 4