Week 8 Flashcards
(12 cards)
Interlanguage
- Interlanguage grammar is a system of mental representation that falls between L1 and L2
- IL changes as learner’s knowledge of the L2 changes
- When the IL stops changing, it is said to have fossilized
- IL is systematic and variable
L1 Influence: Positive Transfer
- Influence from the L1 can sometimes be beneficial if the learner uses L1 patterns that are also present in the L2
- English: I love paris (SVO) French: j’adore paris (SVO)
- This is called positive transfer
L1 Influence: Negative transfer/interference
- There is also interference, i.e., negative transfer in which L1 structures are incorrectly carried over to the L2
- English: He wants them -> SVO French: il veut les -> SOV
- This is called negative transfer/interference
L2 phonology: Segmental phonology
- Deals with the characteristics of phonological segments
- E.g., consonants, vowels
L2 phonology: Prosodic (suprasegmental) phonology
- Deals with phonological phenomena that affect more than a single segment
- E.g., syllables, stress, intonation
L2 Error Classification
- Phonological: Sounds
- Morphological: Word formation (e.g., suffixes)
- Syntactic: Sentences (i.e., word order, articles)
- Lexical: word choice
- Sociolinguistic: social context
Factors affecting SLA
- Age
- Affective factors
- Cognitive factors
- Motivation
- Etc.
Individual Differences
- Affective factors e.g., empathy, anxiety, inhibition, motivation: Have to do with the emotional side of learning
- Cognitive factors e.g., different cognitive styles and learniing strategies: Involve the mechanics of how an individual learns something
Motivation for leaning an L2
- Instrumental: Wanting to learn the L2 for a specific goal or reason (e.g., job or degree requirement)
- Integrative: Wanting to learn the L2 to learn more about a particular culture or fit into it better (e.g., learning Japanese in order to know more about its culture)
Cognitive Differences: Field independence
- Ability to observe parts and details from a whole
- Learners are not distracted by background information when trying to learn something (‘see the trees without being distracted by the forest’)
- Tend to do better on grammatical accuracy tasks
Cognitive Differences: Field Dependence
-ability to observe the whole picture and general ideas
-Learners integrate foreground and background information (‘see the forest but miss characteristics of individula trees’)
- Tend to do better on fluency (getting the message across)
Affective Filter Hypothesis
Coined by Stephen Krashen
- Negative feelings such as lack of motivation, lack of self-confidence and learning anxiety act as filters that hinder and obstruct language learning
