second language acquisition theories week 6. contrastive analysis hypothesis (cah) theoretical...
TRANSCRIPT
Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis
(CAH)
•Theoretical bases: structural linguistics and behaviourist psychology
•Structural linguistics: detailed descriptions of particular languages from a collection of utterances produced by native speakers (i.e. corpus)
•Behaviourist psychology:
•habit formation by means of ‘stimulus-response-reinforcement’
the ability to perform any tasks
•new learning situations helped
by means of the transfer of the
old habits
•CAH logic: if the acquisition of the L1
involved the formation of a set of habits,
then the same process must also be
involved in SLA
•1950s - 1960s: language seen as habit
•L1 seen as the major cause for lack of success
•Types of habit formation in SLA
•L1 = L2 habits
•L1 habits modified or eradicated in the context of L2
•Newly-acquired L2 habits
•CAH tenets: detailed comparisons
between the two languages in order
to determine areas that will be easy
or difficult to learn for pedagogical
purposes
•Teaching method: Audiolingualism
•stimulus, reinforcement and reward
•Strong view: prediction of learning
difficulties and success (of teaching
materials) based on comparison
between two languages i.e. predictive
contrastive analysis
•Language transfer: positive (easy)
and negative (difficult) transfer
•Hierarchy of difficulty
(most difficult --> easiest)
(NL)S1S1 a
S1 b(TL)
English ‘know’ Italian ‘sapere’ ‘conoscere’
•Differentiation (Split)
•Underdifferentiation/ Overdifferentation
English Vs. Japanese (The Article system)
English --> Japanese
(absent or underdifferentiation)
Japanese --> English
(new or overdiffirentiation)
•Criticisms
•English Vs.French
English: postverbal pronoun placement
He wants them again.
The dog has eaten them.
1. Overprediction L1-L2 contrast learning difficulty
French: preverbal pronoun placement
Il les veut encore.
Le chien les a mange.
•Negative transfer: English --> French
*Il veut les encore.
*Le chien a mange les.•Positive transfer: French --> English
•no errors produced
2. Underprediction
L1-L2 similarity positive transfer
Spanish Vs. English: copular Vs. be
*That very simple.
*The picture very dark.
3. Only a small number of errors as a
result of contrasting properties
between L1 and L2, i.e. 25%
*He comed yesterday.
4. Difficulty errors
But in that moment it was 6:00.
•Difficulty in tense usage rather
than the preposition from the
learner’s viewpoint
5. Evidence from morpheme studies
Dulay and Burt (1974)
Natural sequences in child second
language acquisition
Subjects: 60 Spanish and 55 Chinese childrenMethodology: Bilingual Syntax Measure (BSM)
•seven coloured pictures to elicit
responses on English grammatical
morphemes
Pronoun caseArticle
Singular form of to be
Singular auxilary
Possessive
Past -regular -irregular
-ing
Plural
3rd person singular
•Conclusion
•language learners = active participants
•learning guided by universal innate mechanisms
•transfer no longer seen as a major
factor, i.e. lack of importance of L1
influence
•Criticisms
1. BSM biased the results
•Same results in other studies not using BSM
2. Morphemes with different
meanings grouped together ,i.e.
English articles
3. Accuracy order = developmental sequences?
• Correct forms not necessarily mean correct underlying rules
4. Grouped data obscured individual
variation
Error analysis (EA)
•Corder’s 1967: ‘The significance of
learner’s errors’
•Errors = evidence of the state of the
knowledge of L2 learners, not products
of imperfect learning
•Errors = evidence of an underlying
rule-governed system
•Errors vs. Mistakes
•Errors = systematic, not usually recognisable
•Mistakes = slips of the tongue
•From TL norm, deviant forms are errors but from the learner’s linguistic norm, they are mistakes.
•EA methodology: comparison between L2 learners’ errors and the TL system
•Criticisms
•Total reliance on errors (other
information needed)
Schachter (1974)’s study of the
production of relative clauses by
Persian, Arabic, Chinese and
Japanese students
•Discrepancy between what linguists
interpreted and the learner’s actually
performance
•Cause of errors: wrong assumption
that correct usage of a structure
implies correct rule structures
•absence of errors may be due to a limited sampling bias
•Source of errors: multiple sources of errors possible
•The English article system
•absence of the learner’s L1
•many functions of English articles
•EA only provides a partial picture to the linguistic system of L2 learners
•Interlangauge
•Transitional competence
•Approximative system
•Interlanguage
•‘A separate linguistic system based on the observable output which results from a learner’s attempted production’ (Selinker1972: 214)
•L2 learners = creators of their own linguistic systems
•Independent of L1 and L2 influence
•Errors = indicators of progress, learning strategies, procedures
•Errors = window to the learner’s built-in syllabus
•Permeability: ‘the penetration into an IL system of rules foreign to its internal systematicity, or the overgeneralisation or distortion of an IL rule’
•basic grammar --> complicated grammar
•Fossilisation: ‘a cessation of further systematic development in the IL’
•imperfect L2 system
•Language transfer
•Interlingual identification (units of equivalence)
•same units --> positive transfer
•different units --> errors
•not an all-or-nothing process (i.e. selective transferability)
•Role of L1 influence (Cross-linguistic influence)
•Avoidance
•3 possible causes
•L1 different from L2
•L1 same as L2
•complexity of L2 structures
•Rate of learning
•L1 = L2 --> faster learning
•Route of learning
•acquisition of English ‘the’ by
Chinese and Spanish learners
Chinese: this Spanish: this/ the
•Overproduction
•Topic prominent structures by Chinese and Japanese learners of English
•Phonology
Eckman’s Markedness differential hypothesis
unmarked --> marked: difficult to learn
marked --> unmarked : easy to learn
•Psychotypology
•Learners’ perception of the
distance between L1 and TL
•Transferability and selectivity
•some structures are more
sensitive to transfer than others
•CAH and Interlanguage
•CAH serves as a tool that helps L2 learners to find some equivalent between L1 and TL.
•Source for testable hypotheses
•CAH provides a picture of what L2 learners may do in learning TL structures.
•Indication of the learner’s progress