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The SLA Puzzle | ||
Tags: Native Fluency | Scientific Research | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6154 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 13 06 January 2015 at 11:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Second Language Acquisition research has a puzzle at its heart. Why do almost all people acquire a first language to native like proficiency, but very few people achieve the same with a second language ? Is it simply a difference between time, exposure and necessity between the first and second languages, or is there something more fundamental at play ? Do we acquire a second language using the same cerebral mechanisms as we acquired our first ?
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| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4654 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 2 of 13 06 January 2015 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Nope, First Language Acqusition differs from SLA greatly (unless we're talking bilingual kids, in which case it's difficult to say which language is the first and which the second).
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| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4668 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 3 of 13 06 January 2015 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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An experiment that will never be done
Put a single 20 year old in a supportive environment with two caretakers who look after his or her every need. No L1 present at all and the L2 is not related in any way to the L1, not even by a shared system of written characters. The first five to six years of this "new life" the person learns how to name everyday objects, feelings, basic needs, and how to tell (very) simple stories. Then he or she starts going to school and learning how to read and write the language. Then comes making friends and forming relationships in the language, along with ever increasingly complicated academic subjects. Finally comes studying a specialty, getting a job using that language, having longer-term relationships, etc. What would be the results, in terms of accent, grammatical correctness, and conversational fluency? I won't pretend to know, but it's neat to wonder about. Edited by tastyonions on 06 January 2015 at 9:54pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 4 of 13 08 January 2015 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Although I'm very sympathetic to the question, I don't think that the contrast between first language
acquisition by children and second language acquisition by adults is a puzzle at the heart of SLA. There's not much of a puzzle at all. Second language acquisition by adults and first language acquisition by children are two very different processes that are quite well understood, or at least studied. What is more of a puzzle, and much more at the heart of SLA research, is why some adults are better learners than others, or what methods produce the best results. Second language learning by children is pretty straightforward, lots of active and passive exposure will produce excellent results. With adults it's a lot more complicated. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4625 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 5 of 13 08 January 2015 at 9:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In terms of learning a second language, I think tons of immersion and no option to fall back on ones native tongue works just as well with adults as it does with kids. The trouble is, an adult's lifestyle may not be best suited to learning languages. Children go to school and are therefore surrounded by hundreds of natives on a daily basis. The social pressure to learn the language is enormous and failure to do so will lead to immediate isolation. Children can be a fairly unforgiving bunch. Then there is the education itself. Adults can often find ways to get away with just learning what they need to know in order to survive.
That said, many adults are thrown into situations where they just have to sink or swim from day one. Also, I would interested to know how kids fare if they have a heritage network beyond the home among their peers. Here in Scotland, many Polish immigrants have arrived over the last 10 years and Polish communities have formed. If a 10-year-old kid arrives with virtually no English and is able to slot into a convenient Polish-speaking bubble, surely his English will progress at a slower rate than expected? Similarly, there are English-speaking "international schools" in many major cities. If a British person works abroad and sends their children to one of these establishments, it must affect their ability in the local language and they will not magically produce accent-free Spanish, for example, after 2 years. I think environment plays the most important role, unless we are talking about really young kids. Then cognitive factors come into play. But a 12-year-old is already a highly-competent speaker of his mother tongue, even more so if he was previously educated through this medium. Developing skills in a new language requires engagement and opportunity, whether you are 12 or 22. Edited by beano on 08 January 2015 at 9:51am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4447 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 6 of 13 08 January 2015 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Acquiring language to a level where you can read newspapers, watch TV programs is achievable. Most people
tend to have problems communicating whether it is an issue of accent or mispronouncing words. Over the Christmas break, I went to a party where there were 4 people who passed their Gr. 6 piano exam but not a single person feel comfortable playing a song. Like learning foreign languages, reading music notations is something most people learned to do but giving a performance even in front of relatives and friends isn't what many people feel comfortable doing. Like playing music, being glued to a textbook isn't going to get you anywhere. You need every opportunity you can get to practice the language by engaging in active dialogue with other speakers. Last week I was watching a TV show 外国人在中国, a show about foreigners living in China. 1 man from Africa (Mali) moved to a small city in China and married a Chinese. He opened a primary school teaching English to the Chinese. I don't know how many languages he acquired. Coming from W. Africa, most people would know French along with their native language. Mandarin is probably the last language he acquired. He sounded very native when speaking Mandarin to the show host and other people on the wife's side of the family. In order to maintain a certain fluency in a language, you need to be in a country where the language is spoken or interact with people who are native speakers on a regular basis. You also need to be conscious about your own pronunciations. I know people who live in Canada for many years and able to speak English fluently. They would mispronounce certain common words because they are not aware of their mistakes. Like a news anchor on TV where shows are recorded, you would record yourself to hear how you sound and correct your speech accordingly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5535 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 13 08 January 2015 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
If you don't mind a bit of accent, quite a few people get pretty close. Just live near any large research university, and watch as people arrive (often around B2/C1), live their social and professional lives in English, and integrate into the community. If they have no L1 community to fall back on, they really do tend to do very well. There is one big split, though—some people read voraciously in their L2, and some are too busy doing research or whatever. The people who don't read become still tend to become very fluent conversationalists, but they have huge holes in their formal register. The readers do well across the board. It's true, most people will keep at least a hint of their original accents. But then, so do native speakers who arrive from other parts of the country. And there are definitely some people who never quite get the hang of prepositions, or certain grammatical constructs.
The research is all over the map. Here's one paper that makes some interesting claims:
Essentially: 1. Highly-fluent L2 speakers show similar brain activation patterns for their L1 and L2. 2. Less-fluent L2 speakers use all sorts of strange brain regions. This could support at least two different hypothesis: 1. The better you get, the more native-like your brain activity gets, OR 2. If you can't convince your brain to treat your L2 like your L1, you probably won't reach high levels of proficiency. And of course, maybe the professional, well-educated adults who can't reach a high level in their L2 might be more like to turn around and leave. So it's complicated. And to top it all off, you can find other studies that claim all different kinds of things. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5433 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 13 09 January 2015 at 2:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Whether it's foreign researchers immersed in an English-speaking university environment in the United States or a West African immigrant to a small city in China who marries a Chinese woman, the pattern is pretty much the same. Massive active exposure and necessity will produce good results in terms of second language proficiency. Is this proficiency exactly the same as native proficiency? That is debatable. There will probably be some trace in the accent and maybe in other less salient areas, but proficiency is certainly good enough for the needs at hand. What is important is the nature or quality of the communicative demands that are placed on the learner. In that same university environment where there foreign researchers are "forced" to improve their English-language skills, there is probably a large number of immigrants working in menial jobs such as house-keeping, gardening and the cafeteria. I would think that their English-language skills are no where near those of the foreign graduate students, researchers and guest professors that pass by them every day. Similarly, I'm certain that there are West African immigrants in China who never develop native-like skills for lack of the opportunities and requirements faced by the Malian immigrant in the example above. The problem for the vast majority of language learners - and this is the real challenge of second language teaching - is that there is not, and probably will never be, the kind of immersive experience that will produce such great results. If you could move to the country of your target language, marry a local resident, work or study in the language, all for at least five years, your level of proficiency will be great. What about the lest fortunate among us? Even here, English-speakers, and particularly North Americans, are at a net disadvantage compared to Europeans. We can't hop on a bus or drive for two hours and spend the day in a choice of three or four languages. The number one complaint of adult language learners is generally lack of practice with native speakers in a natural environment. This is the fundamental challenge that SLA research faces: how can you teach effectively in an environment that is not particularly conducive to spontaneous learning of the target language? Technology, the Internet, international travel and globalization have certainly made language learning easier but the fundamental realities are still the same. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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