English for Children
Seminar Paper by Helen Doron - part 3
Spolsky (1989) begins his book Conditions for Second Language Learning by recognizing IL as a most basic condition:
Condition 1
Language as System condition (necessary): A second language learner's knowledge of a second language forms a systematic whole.
However, his next condition already presumes direction and a continuum of progress:
Condition 2
Native Speaker Target condition (typical, graded): Second language learners language approximates native speaker language.
This already takes us out of the pure horizontal axis into the vertical axis of goal over time. Further on, Spolsky states:
Condition 36
Contrastive Feature condition (necessary, graded): Differences between two languages interfere when speakers of one set out to learn the other.
This condition comes as a complement to:
Condition 34
Language Distance Condition (necessary, graded): The closes two languages are to each other genetically and typologically, the quicker a speaker of one will learn the other.
This implies that although IL is a complete system, it has a source and a goal. One of the factors affecting it is L1. As J's L1 is Portuguese with a 'no' + V negative utterance structure, it is implied that it would have been easier for him to learn a language with a structure closer to that of his own. If, for example, L2 had been Spanish with a similar negative utterance structure, this would have been easier for him to acquire correctly from the beginning.
Taking this in account, we may say that paradigm three, Krashen's Monitor Model, is the closest to an explanation of the data. It needs to be added that the 'acquired' 'no' + V model came from L1 interference as this is the sentence structure for negative utterances in Portuguese. J will most probably have acquired this as a direct transfer from his L1, and also will have this reinforced by others around him, especially older relatives of Portuguese descent, who continue to use the 'no' + V form. The data, however, show that J is going in the direction of the Target Language (TG) and over the 6 months period that the data were collected, the 'don't' + V form almost completely takes over.
This is a systematic move form an L1 structure to a TG structure. If we study this completely horizontally, we overlook this very important information and deform the analysis of the data. It is analogous to a person who asks "what do bees do?" and receives the answer that "they fly from flower to flower". That is a true answer; but it is but a superficial part of the truth. The ultimate goal of the bees is to bring the pollen back to the hive to produce honey, eat and procreate. Ellis' horizontal analysis is like saying: "The bees fly. They do so non-systematically as we cannot always predict to what flowers they will fly and when." While this reply has descriptive value, it does not meet the criterion of explanatory adequacy.
- English for Children - Seminar2 - part 1
- English for Children - Seminar2 - part 2
- English for Children - Seminar2 - part 3
- English for Children - Seminar2 - part 4