Week 02 2023 II

UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE EDUCACIÓN
ENRIQUE GUZMÁN Y VALLE

“Alma Mater del Magisterio Nacional”
FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS SOCIALES Y HUMANIDADES
Departamento Académico de Lenguas Extranjeras
Second Language Acquisition
Week 02: Overview of SLA & Foundations

of Second Language Acquisition
Professor:
Mg. Roger Isidro Fabián
Learning Outcome
At the end of this lesson,

students will have learnt
about the foundations of
second language acquisition.
Welcome to our SLA Class
Famous Quotes
“Education must provide the opportunities

for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a
rich and challenging environment for the
individual to explore, in his own way.”
Noam Chomsky
Welcome to English class!
Be on time
Participate in class
What is SLA?
Second Language Acquisition (SLA) refers both to the study

of individuals and groups who are learning a language
subsequent to learning their first one as young children, and
to the process of learning that language. The additional
language is called a second language (L2), even though it
may actually be the third, fourth, or tenth to be acquired
What is SLA?
In trying to understand the process of second language

acquisition, we are seeking to answer three basic questions:
(1) What exactly does the L2 learner come to know?

(2) How does the learner acquire this knowledge?
(3) Why are some learners more successful than others?
What is SLA?
SLA has emerged as a field of study primarily from within

linguistics and psychology (and their subfields of applied
linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and social
psychology), as a result of efforts to answer the what, how,
and why questions posed above. There are corresponding
differences in what is emphasized by researchers who come
from each of these fields:
What is SLA?
• Linguists emphasize the characteristics of the differences

and similarities in the languages that are being learned,
and the linguistic competence (underlying knowledge) and
linguistic performance (actual production) of learners at
various stages of acquisition.
• Psychologists and psycholinguists emphasize the mental

or cognitive processes involved in acquisition, and the
representation of language(s) in the brain.
What is SLA?
• Sociolinguists emphasize variability in learner linguistic

performance, and extend the scope of study to
communicative competence (underlying knowledge that
additionally accounts for language use, or pragmatic
competence).
• Social psychologists emphasize group-related

phenomena, such as identity and social motivation, and
the interactional and larger social contexts of learning.
1.The world of second languages
Multilingualism refers to the ability to use two or more

languages. (Some linguists and psychologists use
bilingualism for the ability to use two languages and
multilingualism for more than two, but we will not make that
distinction in this course.)
Monolingualism refers to the ability to use only one.
G. Richard Tucker concludes that there are many more
bilingual or multilingual individuals in the world than there
are monolingual. In addition, there are many more
children throughout the world who have been and
continue to be educated through a second or a later-
acquired language, at least for some portion of their
formal education, than there are children educated
exclusively via the first language. (1999:1)
L2 users differ from monolinguals in L1 knowledge;
advanced L2 users differ from monolinguals in L2
knowledge; L2 users have a different metalinguistic
awareness from monolinguals; L2 users have different
cognitive processes. These subtle differences consistently
suggest that people with multicompetence are not simply
equivalent to two monolinguals but are a unique
combination. (Cook 1992:557)
Multilingual competence vs monolingual competence

Approximately 6,000 languages are spoken in the world.
The four most commonly used languages are Chinese,
English, Spanish, and Hindi, which are acquired by over 2
billion as L1s and almost 1.7 billion as L2s, as shown in
2.1 (based on Zhu 2001 and Crystal 1997b):
2.1 Estimated L1/L2 distribution of numerically dominant languages
L1 speakers (in millions) L2 speakers (in millions)
Chinese 1,200 15
English 427 950
Spanish 266 350
Hindi 182 350

2. The nature of language learning
Much of your own L1 acquisition was completed before you

ever went to school, and this development normally takes
place without any conscious effort. By the age of six months
an infant has produced all of the vowel sounds and most of
the consonant sounds of any language in the world,
including some that do not occur in the language(s) their
parents speak.
If children hear English spoken around them, they will learn
to discriminate among those sounds that make a difference
in the meaning of English words (the phonemes), and they
will learn to disregard those that do not.
If the children hear Spanish spoken around them, they will

learn to discriminate among some sounds the English
speaker learns to ignore, as between the flapped r in pero
‘but’ and the trilled rr in perro ‘dog,’ and to disregard some
differences that are not distinctive in Spanish, but vital to
English word-meaning, as the sh and ch of share and chair.
2.1The role of natural ability
Humans are born with a natural ability or innate capacity to

learn language. Such a predisposition must be assumed in
order to explain several facts:
• Children begin to learn their L1 at the same age, and in

much the same way, whether it is English, Bengali, Korean,
Swahili, or any other language in the world.
• Children master the basic phonological and
grammatical operations in their L1 by the age of about five
or six, as regardless of what the language is.
• Children can understand and create novel utterances;

they are not limited to repeating what they have heard, and
indeed the utterances that children produce are often
systematically different from those of the adults around
them.
• There is a cut-off age for L1 acquisition, beyond
which it can never be complete.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43947365
• Acquisition of L1 is not simply a facet of general

intelligence.
In viewing the natural ability to acquire language in terms of

innate capacity, we are saying that part of language
structure is genetically “given” to every human child.
As children mature, so do their language abilities. Since
certain grammatical processes are more complex than
others, they require a higher maturational level than simpler
ones.
As Jean Piaget observed several decades ago (e.g. 1926),

in order to master complexities in their L1 which are beyond
their present linguistic grasp, what normal children need is
additional time, not additional stimuli.
Reflect on today’s session:
● What have we learnt today?
● How have we learnt?
● Did you like the class?

GOOD BYE !

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UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE EDUCACIÓN

ENRIQUE GUZMÁN Y VALLE

Second Language Acquisition

Week 02: Overview of SLA & Foundations

At the end of this lesson,

“Education must provide the opportunities

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) refers both to the study

In trying to understand the process of second language

(1) What exactly does the L2 learner come to know?

SLA has emerged as a field of study primarily from within

• Linguists emphasize the characteristics of the differences

• Psychologists and psycholinguists emphasize the mental

• Sociolinguists emphasize variability in learner linguistic

• Social psychologists emphasize group-related

Multilingualism refers to the ability to use two or more

Multilingual competence vs monolingual competence

English 427 950

Spanish 266 350

Hindi 182 350

Much of your own L1 acquisition was completed before you

If the children hear Spanish spoken around them, they will

Humans are born with a natural ability or innate capacity to

• Children begin to learn their L1 at the same age, and in

• Children can understand and create novel utterances;

• Acquisition of L1 is not simply a facet of general

In viewing the natural ability to acquire language in terms of

As Jean Piaget observed several decades ago (e.g. 1926),

● What have we learnt today?

● How have we learnt?

● Did you like the class?

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