Topic: Fundamental Difference / L1 versus L2

Wow, reading the last part of Chapter 3 of John's book makes me more comfortable.  According to Chomsky's UG claims, adult foreign language learners cannot achieve the same level of grammatical intuition of sentences as native speakers.

Even though Chomsky mentioned that UG is just for the L1 and not for L2, it is still bad news for second language learners. However, Bley Vromn's contention is that adult foreign language learners have different cognitive mechanisms than native children's.

That is big relief to me, phew~~

There are lots of researchers who can relieve me more. Flynn, Whith and Felix claim that the L2 learners can acquire a second language with their own cognitive mechanisms.  These are general problem-solving systems which have been activated in their first language.

I really agree with their ideas.

My co-teacher, Noah, told me that I frequently make lots of strange expressions in the perspective of native, but he can understand what I am trying to say. However, there still are grammatical mistakes in my utterances.

I already knew some of the mistakes, but sometimes they are stuck in my tongue and my writing. I can’t figure them out intuitively. I don’t know what type of cognitive mechanism is operating in my brain.  Clearly my cognitive mechanism system needs more fuel for operating towards a more accurate way. Whenever I make the same mistakes, I really want to check how my brain looks and find some virus which ate my memories of the cognitive mechanism

Native speakers and adult second language learners have different cognitive mechanisms that can be achieved with their problem solving competency. That mechanism helps them approach UG that native speakers have.

According to Long's claim, second language learners’ acquisition of linguistic knowledge is based on the acquisition of certain linguistic rules.

However, in second language perspective, the rules may not be controlled by UG.

In Long's view, he is also admitting how many social contexts are important towards SLA field. The opponents against Chomsky pointed out the process of cognitive mechanism within social contexts. This idea could have been an alternative in SLA field in the past, but I think, many people also agree with how important social contexts influence SLA.

Topics: Emergence of Cognitivism / UG / LAD

Eventually, I was introduced to the scholar Chomsky through this book. When I studied at university, he had been known as a great scholar in the field of linguists.

I’ve been really curious about his approach towards linguistic theory.  Chomsky claimed there is an innate domain-specific language faculty for L1.  His view and the term LAD is well known known by the students who study linguistics. I already knew the term LAD, but I really didn’t know the definition or how LAD operated as a cognitive mechanism in a person.

According to his opinion, we, as second language learners, cannot achieve certain levels of speaking and understanding like a native does. We don’t need to be a native, but Chomsky’s theory is that we can’t reach some extent of a native speaker’s cognitive mechanism as a second language. Chomsky says everybody has their innate domain-specific langue faculty for their native language. It is not affected by external environments.  All native speakers already have this mechanism process in their own innate system. That is implicit, unconscious, and intuitive. It is a quite different way compared with acquiring language skills as a second language learner.

That is why Noah, who is working with me at school, can’t spontaneously answer some of the grammar questions which I ask. He knows what the proper answers are, but he finds it difficult to explain to me as a second langue learner. Even though he tried to explain in English, I often cannot understand what he is saying. That is Chomsky’s point. We have different cognitive-langue mechanisms. The same thing happens in Korean. I know some grammatical aspect of a sentence. If Noah ask me “Why do I it this way?” I would say, “Just because, there is no specific reason, it sounds more natural.”  This is just like what he did for my questions.

According to Chomsky’s theory, if his theory is correct, it is really bad news for me. According to his theory, even though I tried with all my effort to learn English, I can’t reach my wish of communicating through spoken and written language naturally like natives.

My wish will be just a dream which can’t come true. Oh Dear.~~

Bely-Vroman’s claims agreed with my opinion that second language learners can approach the ability of native speakers. That is relief to me anyway. Bely-Vroman says that adult L2 learners also differ from children acquiring the L1 in terms of “Fossilization.”  Because of this, adult learners cannot surpass a certain level no matter how hard the individual may try to overcome it.  OMG, the enemy comes again. However, I admit that certain parts of Chomsky’s claims are true though.  There exists a core grammar, a Universal Grammar or UG, of each native speaker. His opinion is quite different from behaviorism. Chomsky says that the acquisition of an innate knowledge of formal grammatical properties of language is unaffected by time and experiences is the focus of his theory.

I have one question which is based on behaviorism.  Let’s say there is one baby without a person to provide linguistic stimuli, such as a mother’s speech, which would support the baby’s cognitive process.  How would the baby’s innate LAD operate without any input environment?

So I agree with Bley-Vroman’s claim. He claimed that L2 acquisition is guided by general human cognitive learning capacities rather than by the same domain-specific module which guarantees child success in first language acquisitions.

I did not finish Johnson’s whole book yet, but I hope that some incredible theory will appear against Chomsky’s. Chomsky’s theory has been threatening to me as an adult second language learner and gave a fear that the way I studied may not be successful in the end.

The mainstream of this book, history of SLA theory, is very interesting. It seems like black and white movies to me as it gives nostalgic memories to remind me like old movies, to sneak what happened in the past while I am writing this vignette.

I would like to communicate more with famous, reliable scholars even though they will not answer to me instantly. Anyway it is very interesting and makes me excited.

No stress, more compelling, more expectation for what’s comes next~~~

Paradigm Shifts / Empowering Teachers/ Overview of Learning Theory

As language teachers, we have been controlled by theoreticians and researchers. Theoreticians suggest a theoretical possibility, but sometimes these are impractical and boring for students.

For examples, when we teach English to students, certain components of games and chants are really impractical.

I think researchers and theoreticians who make the curriculum and content need to cooperate with teachers as practitioners.

When teachers adjust a theory into real class situations they know the strength and weakness well.

Theoreticians should consider practitioners’ feedback and collaborate with them.

Looking back on my experience as an English teacher, in my first year I reluctantly followed the guideline that I had been given.

I didn’t exchange the component of context.  I have no power that could change the context. It is not available among our society. If I skip the part that I thought was useless that means I did not teach at all and did not my role as a teacher.

Recently, English curriculums have empowered the teachers.  They also consider the social environment such as rural or urban area. This is important especially for English as SLA usually is influenced by the learner’s social environment and culture.

Nowadays, language teachers can reconstruct contexts to make more compelling for students.

The new paradigm of SLA is considered to be active involvement on the part of teacher and students.

It is a new oriental framework that empowers all the parties involved in the process of SLA knowledge building.

Behaviorism/Strucural Linguistics/ Contrastive Analysis

After reading Chapter 2, I was looking back on how I learned English as a second language. When I was in middle school I started learning the alphabet. Every class, my English teacher would give a dictation test such as, “I am a boy, I am a student, etc."
If I received a perfect score it meant I was good at English even though I did not speak it out loud. The satisfaction with scores did not continue my motivation to study English. I got used to studying the basic words and sentences, but then my English teacher started to teach grammar. OMG.
My history of tortures might start from that moment. I began to really hate studying English. I tried to understand the rules of grammar, but it did not make sense to me.

After I read this article, I thought it seemed like taking this step in learning English was based on behaviorism. Proper compliments from my parents made me study more. It was the first step for my studying. When we look at the way a second language is acquired, it should follow the learning process of one’s L1, mother tongue.

                       

I really didn’t know that was based on behaviorist tradition. When I was a student at the University of Education, I learned about behaviorism in a children’s psychology class as a theory for revising misbehavior which used rewards and punishment.

Johnson explained well how SLA theory was related to behaviorism. Specially, the process of learning L1 based on keeping rapid movements of utterance. These movements could be habits of an utterance's muscles through stimuli and responses. Hence, a mechanism of learning system for L1 is established to acquire from external environments.

Also, Bloomfield's structural linguistics is focused on oral language (speech) being more important than written language. Language structural linguistics has a systemic, bottom-up mechanism that moves from lower level up to the higher level. He mentioned that SLA has the same structure.

A more interesting theory is Error analysis. In accordance with Error analysis, an error is not only a mistake of the leaner, but also can provide significant information to the teacher and language leaner.

When a language leaner makes an error, the learner may not realized it was as an error. If the learner knew the error, he would not say it out loud.

So what?

How can language teachers provide more effective material within a learner's mechanism? Errors should be corrected by teachers. It could also be useful for learners so that they can develop by themselves as errors occur through innate learning mechanism.

This behaviorist approach considers the attention from the learner's external environment more than the learner's internal process.