THEME 2:

GENERAL THEORIES REGARDING THE LEARNING AND ACQUISITION

OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE. THE CONCEPT OF ‘INTERLANGUAGE’.
ANALYSIS AND CORRECTION OF ERRORS.
(for the Written Exam)

Index:

 Introduction.
 Relation with Other Themes.
 Current Legislation.
 The Contribution of Linguistics to Language Teaching.
 Language Acquisition.
 Children vs. Adults.
 The Situation in Spain.
 Stages in the Acquisition Process
 Theories of Language Acquisition.
 Interference of the Mother Tongue.
 Analysis and Correction of Errors.
 Conclusion applicable to Language Teaching.
 Relevant Bibliography.

The theme I have chosen is number 2, which deals mainly with the learning
and acquisition of a foreign language. In the first place, I will talk about the
differences between learning and acquisition, mentioning how children
acquire their own mother tongue and the different stages in this acquisition
process. I will examine some of the theories that linguists have put forward
to explain this process, before explaining how the mother tongue can
interfere with the learning of a second language. Finally, I will talk about the
analysis and correction of errors., and I will finish with a conclusion relating
the content of this theme to its practical application in our secondary
classes.

This theme is directly related to others, especially number 1, which deals

with the evolution of language teaching, and numbers 3 to 6, which cover
different aspects regarding the acquisition of communicative competence.

The new Organic Law of Education (the ‘LOMCE’) came into force in 2014
and has now been introduced in Secondary Education. The law deals
comprehensively with the most suitable type of methodology to be
implemented in our secondary school classes. The official curriculum of the
autonomous community of Extremadura (or whatever community) contains
detailed information about this in the learning blocks of contents during the
different stages of Secondary Education. All of this is established and
supported by the Council of Europe in the Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages.
I will begin my theme by talking generally about the contribution of
linguistics to foreign language teaching. Linguistics is the systematic study
of language and the findings in several of its fields must be considered when
it comes to teaching a language efficiently. Areas such as phonology, syntax
and semantics have been investigated from the earliest periods, but one of
the branches of this discipline that have developed most in recent years is
psycholinguistics. Psycholinguistics is the study of the mental process

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underlying the act of speech, and one of its most important outcomes have
been the study of language acquisition in children, the main topic of this
theme.

We always refer to the fact that we learn our own mother tongue first and
then start to learn foreign languages at school, but this is not necessarily
the case. Most children begin to communicate in their mother tongue from
an early age and they do so without ever having been taught any grammar
rules. How does this happen? Quite simply, it is a natural process of
exposure to the language and imitation of it, what we know of as
acquisition.

It is a well known fact that children find it easier than adults to pick up a
foreign language. The older we are, the more difficult it becomes. How many
times have we ourselves had problems with constructions in English,
generally caused by the fact that our brains are conditioned to thinking first
of the structure in Spanish and then translating it into English? Very often,
the methods used to teach us foreign languages leave a lot to be desired:
there is usually too much emphasis on grammar and translation and not
enough on the communicative language we need to use in a variety of
situations.

Here in Spain, foreign languages are now being introduced from the age of
three, an excellent idea if children are given the right conditions. What will
almost certainly happen, unfortunately, is that primary school teachers will
attempt to ‘teach’ the foreign language to children, either through a series
of grammatical rules or by focusing primarily on vocabulary, instead of just
relying on the children’s incredible capacity to understand speech from an
early age. We can see how quickly youngsters start to use computers,
whereas older people often have serious problems adapting to new
technological developments.

The basic requirement when it comes to acquiring a language is the ability

to understand the speech of others and then to produce it in a spontaneous
way. Do children always understand what we are saying? This is extremely
doubtful; we only have to look at an example to see that they probably do
not understand complete sentences at an early age, but just pick up
relevant words and associate them with things like intonation to take in the
message. If a mother says to her two-year-old son “Go and get your
pyjamas from under the pillow and put them on”, it is highly unlikely that
the boy can understand such a complex construction, especially one
employing a phrasal verb. What the child would grasp here, however, is the
word pyjamas, know where they are kept and know that it is time for bed.
Acquisition of one’s mother tongue comes in stages. It is a process of
listening, imitation and repetition. We learn to speak by copying what we
hear, even to the extent that we end up with the same accent of our
parents, family and friends. There is no evidence to suggest that young
children have any idea of grammatical forms; indeed, it is a waste of time
teaching them correct constructions. Even later in life we can see this: many
English adults still think that the conditional perfect is would OF instead of
would HAVE, caused by the fact that they have always heard the weak
form //. We could just as easily find the same problem in Spanish adults
who confuse haber with a ver.

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The first stage is what is known as the ‘babbling’ stage. Here, babies start to
babble, that is to say they produce monosyllabic sounds like ka and then go
on to repeat this syllable to reproduce dada or tutu. Some basic form of
grammar appears when children start to use verbs like gone, nouns like cat
or pronouns like me. This is where children somehow begin to appreciate
the importance of things like intonation. A child may well say dada? with
rising intonation if he hears the door opening, dada with falling intonation
when he sees that it is his father, and dada! with level intonation when he
holds his arms out to give his father a hug.

Around the age of a year and a half, children start to string two or more
words together, forming intelligible sequences. We could hear things like
mummy fall or doggy bad or here daddy, and of course we would instantly
recognise what the child was conveying.

Sentences tend to be longer after the age of two, although there is still no
real grammar. Articles and the verb to be have still not appeared, neither
have verbal endings. A typical sentence at this stage would be something
like baby watch telly, meaning that the baby is watching the television. After
the age of three, more complex sentences appear. We only have to listen to
a three-year-old Spanish girl using sentences with the subjunctive tenses to
wonder how on earth this comes about.

Needless to say, many theories have been put forward to explain the nature
of the acquisition process but, as we have seen, it is absolutely natural. In
the area of foreign language learning, many linguists have attempted to
claim that students of foreign languages can follow the same stages and
thus ‘acquire’ the new language. This, to be perfectly honest, is not really
possible, but we can have a quick look at some of the ideas that have been
suggested.

Back in the 1950s, the behaviourists saw foreign language learning as a

process of imitation and reinforcement. They considered that learners could
transfer structures and sounds from their own language to the foreign
language, thus establishing a series of acceptable habits.

Others thought differently. What we now know of as the ‘Cognitive View’

credits learners with the ability to work out rules in the foreign language for
themselves.

Stephen Krashen, an influential American linguist, was the first to see a

sensible relationship between acquisition and learning. He saw learning as a
conscious process which monitors acquisition and which progresses in the
same way as with one’s mother tongue. He put forward different
hypotheses, which I will now examine in more detail.

According to Krashen, acquisition involves the subconscious acceptance of

knowledge where information is stored in the brain through the use of
communication; this is the process used for developing native languages.
Learning, on the other hand, is the conscious acceptance of knowledge
about a language, that is to say the grammar or form. Krashen states that
this is often the product of formal language instruction. According to this
theory, the optimal way a language is learned is through natural
communication.

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The monitor hypothesis explains how acquisition and learning are used; the
acquisition system initiates an utterance and the learning system ‘monitors’
the utterance to inspect and correct errors. Krashen states that monitoring
can make some contribution to the accuracy of an utterance but its use
should be limited. He suggests that the ‘monitor’ can sometimes act as a
barrier, as it forces the learner to slow down and focus more on accuracy as
opposed to fluency.

According to Krashen, learners acquire parts of language in a predictable

order. For any given language, certain grammatical structures are acquired
early while others are left until later in the process. This hypothesis
suggests that this natural order of acquisition occurs independently of
deliberate teaching and therefore teachers cannot change the order of a
grammatical teaching sequence.

Krashen’s Input Hypothesis suggests that language acquisition occurs when

learners receive messages that they can understand, a concept also known
as comprehensible input. However, Krashen also suggests that this
comprehensible input should be one step beyond the learners’ current
language ability, in order to allow for a continuation in the progress of their
language development.

In Krashen’s opinion, one obstacle that manifests itself during language

acquisition is the affective filter; this is a ‘screen’ that is influenced by
emotional variables that can prevent learning. This hypothetical filter does
not impact acquisition directly but rather prevents input from reaching the
language acquisition part of the brain. According to Krashen the affective
filter can be prompted by many different variables, including anxiety, self-
confidence, motivation and stress.

Most of us would agree to a certain extent with those who say that
grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order. Obviously, a
child will use the present simple before moving on to more complex verbal
forms and tenses; the same thing will happen when learning a foreign
language.

One thing I have previously mentioned is the fact that children find it much
easier than adults to learn languages. Correct pronunciation of a second
language is much more difficult to acquire if we have been accustomed to
speaking our mother tongue for, say, 20 years or more.

At this point, I need to mention how the mother tongue can interfere with
the learner’s acquisition of the second language. If we think of a Spanish
student of English, there are many ‘positive’ transfers, such as the fact that
both languages form the plural with the addition of s. However, there are
many ‘negative’ transfers, as we can immediately see if we think of things
like word order: Spanish adjectives tend to come after the noun, as in el
libro rojo, which is just the opposite of the red book in English.

Many learners, quite often subconsciously, construct their own internal

linguistic system between their language and the target language. This is
what is now known as ‘Interlanguage’, and should not be confused with
what is becoming increasingly trendy these days: ‘Spanglish’.

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In order to see how the learning and acquisition processes can work side by
side, we need to look at the analysis and correction of errors. The
Behaviourists did not really take into account the fact that habits acquired in
one’s mother tongue can produce problems when learning a second
language. A Spanish student learning English could easily come out with the
sentence I have cold, instead of I AM cold to express tengo frio, while the
English student learning Spanish might well think that the correct form of
tengo calor is estoy caliente.

Errors do not always come from the influence of the mother tongue. Our job
as teachers is to identify the error and correct it at an early stage. If we take
the sentence The boy study English, we immediately realise that it is
grammatically unacceptable. But why? It could be that the noun should be
in plural, thus giving us The BOYS study English; it could also possibly be a
problem with the verb, as the student does not realise that the third person
singular STUDIES should be used; it could even be a misuse of the present
simple, where the present continuous would be a better choice, giving us
The boy IS STUDYING English.

Obviously, Spanish is going to interfere negatively in the learning process of

English in different areas. We can find problems in pronunciation, where a
Spanish student would automatically place an extra e before s plus
consonant constructions, giving us words like estop or estudent. There are
many problems related to grammar, especially with things like word order or
verbal forms. We all know that Hablo muy bien el ingles is I speak English
very well and not I speak very well the English *. Double negatives do not
exist in English and most Spanish students prefer lexical verbs to phrasal
verbs. Spelling can present problems, as can the large number of ‘false
friends’.

To conclude, in an ideal world we would not learn foreign languages but

rather acquire them. In the real world, however, and especially in our world,
that of Secondary Education, we should do our best to make the students’
learning process as natural as possible. Hopefully, by the time they reach
our classrooms at the age of 13 or 14, they will have already acquired part
of this natural process and therefore our job will be much easier. Let’s hope
so!

The bibliography I have used for this theme has been The Practice of English
Language Teaching, by Jeremy Harmer, Second Language Acquisition and
Second Language Learning, by Stephen Krashen, and The Communicative
Approach and its Application, by Henry Widdowson.

I hope you agree with me that my theme has covered all the necessary
points and that it has demonstrated the importance of using up-to-date
methodological principles in our classes, something which can only be of
benefit to our students.

Thank you very much for your attention. (only if you need to read the
theme)