ACADEMIC YEAR 2013-2014
YEAR ONE  INTRODUCTION TO SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING
#11: Teaching and Learning L2 Subsystems
1. Language subsystems vs. language skills
LANGUAGE SUBSYSTEMS LANGUAGE SKILLS
żð pronunciation żð listening
żð grammar żð speaking
żð lexis (vocabulary) żð reading
żð orthography (spelling) żð writing
2. Pronunciation vs. the other subsystems
Teaching pronunciation poses more difficulties than teaching other subsystems of L2. Thus:
" grammatical structures can be ordered and taught in a sequence;
" a vocabulary compiled on the basis of the frequency of occurrence and distributional patterns
can be utilized for the presentation of early grammatical structures;
" pronunciation, on the other hand, does not permit such progressive treatment, since all
phonetic and phonological features are potentially present from the very first lesson, unless
vocabulary items are selected artificially.
The teacher must deal systematically with pronunciation instruction, even though he or she may be
forced to delay the correction of some mistakes which occur at the elementary stages. The main
factors that affect L2 pronunciation learning and teaching are (Kenworthy 1987: 4-8):
(i) L1 (= the learner s native language)
(ii) age
(iii) innate phonetic ability
(iv) exposure to L2
(v) identity and language ego
(vi) motivation and concern for good pronunciation
Some of these are briefly treated below.
3. Age
The most influential theory that addressed the role of the age factor in language acquisition is the
CRITICAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS (CPH; Lenneberg 1967). The CPH claims that the ability to acquire a
language naturally and effortlessly coincides with cerebral plasticity in early childhood. The
flexibility of the brain terminates around the age of puberty (age 10-12) as a result of lateralization
of the language function in the left hemisphere. The CPH was further supported by clinical
evidence; for example, damage to the left hemisphere resulted in total recovery of language control
in little children, but not in adults.
According to the CPH, there is a specific and limited time for first language acquisition. Its strong
version concerns L1, not L2, and suggests that language should be acquired by puberty  a period
of specific predisposition to language acquisition  or else it will never be learned from later
exposure, as evidenced by cases of the so-called  wolf children . The psycholinguistic implication
of the strong version of the CPH for SLA is that only those learners who begin the acquisition of L2
before the onset of puberty can attain native-like levels of proficiency, at least in terms of
pronunciation (i.e. accent).
According to Ellis (1994), the weak version, on the other hand, claims that language acquisition
after puberty is possible, though it might turn out to be more difficult or result as incomplete. The
psychological differences between different age-groups of learners will determine the type of
pronunciation practice chosen for them, e.g.:
Ä…ð mimicry and repetitive activities for young learners;
Ä…ð repetition of sounds encountered in natural and usable utterances in the context for
adolescents;
Ä…ð the comparison of the phonological systems of L1 and L2 for adults.
Let it be pointed out, however, that although children may have a biological advantage over adults,
mature learners have greater experience with language learning and self-monitoring, which may
result in obtaining comparable results in pronunciation mastery for the majority of learners,
irrespective of age.
4. Identity and Language Ego
It is claimed that factors such as a person s  sense of identity and feelings of  group affiliation are
strong determiners of the acquisition of accurate pronunciation of L2. It is difficult to predict
whether ESL learners will modify their accent or not; and if they do, to what extent and in what
ways. In this respect, individuals seem to vary greatly.
The attitudinal factor, known as LANGUAGE EGO and IDENTITY, concerns the role of a person s sense
of identity and affiliation in pronunciation learning. Some learners in ESL environments seem to be
 impervious and even after a long stay in an English-speaking country will have absorbed only a
few phrases and the pronunciation of some individual words. Others seem very receptive and begin
to change their accent very fast.
5. Approach, Method, Procedure and Technique
APPROACH METHOD PROCEDURE TECHNIQUE
a set of theoretical an overall plan, an ordered sequence a specific activity
assumptions about a practical realization of techniques, manifested in the
the nature of of an approach; described in terms classroom that is
language and such as first you do consistent with
language learning a specification of this, then you do that the method and
that is the basis for procedures and therefore with the
practices and techniques, teacher approach as well
principles in and learner roles, types
language teaching of materials, etc.
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An example of the hierarchical arrangement:
APPROACH behaviourist theory
of language learning
METHOD audiolingualism
PROCEDURE pattern practice
TECHNIQUE substitution drill
6. Approaches to Teaching Grammar
DEDUCTION vs. INDUCTION
Presentation of a rule Exemplification
Exemplification Rule Formulation
Practice Practice
o Advantages of the Deductive Approach:
" it is less time-consuming
" all the learners receive the same instruction
" there is no danger that on their own the learners will arrive at the wrong rule or a false
generalisation
o Arguments in favour of the Inductive Approach:
" it is more in keeping with natural language acquisition (where rules are absorbed
subconsciously with little or no conscious focus)
" it conforms more easily to the concept of interlanguage development in which learners
progress through possible stages of rule acquisition
" it allows students to get a communicative  feel for some aspect of L2 before getting
possibly overwhelmed by grammatical explanations
" it builds more intrinsic motivation by allowing students to discover rules, rather than being
told them
" learners are provided with and exposed to examples in order to infer conclusions on their
own with the purpose of formulating a rule (heuristic learning  learning by discovery)
" it gives students more satisfaction and autonomy (i.e. more independence from the teacher)
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7. The PPP Model
(i) Presentation
In the first stage of the PPP Model learners are
introduced to the form, meaning and use of a new
item in L2.
Having selected the new material, the teacher
must also present it in such a way that the
meaning of the new language is as clear and
memorable as possible.
There are several ways of doing this, for example
through texts, activities or situations. During this
stage the teacher's role is one of an informant.
(ii) Practice (iii) Production
The goal of the second stage The last stage of the PPP Model is also called immediate creativity, as it
of the PPP Model is to give gives learners the opportunity to make sentences of their own. "No real
learners ample opportunity to learning should be assumed to have taken place until the students are able
practise the new language by to use the language for themselves, and unless opportunities are available
means of a variety of for them to do this outside the classroom" (Byrne 1986).
activities. For this purpose,
the teacher should provide Even mistakes made by the learners should not dissuade teachers from
substantial practice, which implementing the production stage. On the contrary, it would be a mistake
must at the same time be to deprive learners of the opportunity to express themselves freely. It is
meaningful and memorable. thanks to such opportunities that learners realise that they have learned
In order for practice to be something and are given a boost to further learning.
meaningful and memorable
for the learners, the teacher The teacher's control over learners' utterances is substantially reduced at
should employ, for example, this stage, though that function is by no means passive. The teacher
pictorial aids or introduce an assumes the role of a manager and a guide, or an advisor. He/she discreetly
element of fun such as monitors the learners so as to check if they are making progress. Since the
competition, invention or main objective at this stage is to promote fluency, it is vital to provide
trying to find something out. necessary conditions for the communicative class.
8. The Importance of Lexis
According to Thornbury (2002: 1),  language emerges first as words, both historically and in terms
of the way each of us learned our first and any subsequent languages. The coining of new words
never stops. Nor does the acquisition of words .
In the recent few decades, vocabulary (lexis) has attracted more interest in foreign language
pedagogy. It has often been neglected in the past, particularly during the period when the grammar-
translation and the audiolingual methods predominated. GRAMMAR TRANSLATION concentrated on
lists of decontextualized words, while AUDIOLINGUALISM believed that structure was more important
than meaning.
There is a lot more to L2 vocabulary acquisition than simply knowing the meanings of words. This
is why merely translating from L1 is not enough. Lexis is certainly the hardest subsystem to master
in FL learning due to its considerable size, its internal complexity, and an enormous challenge it
poses for the learner's memory.
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9. What does it mean to know a word?
To know a word means to know that word's:
" conceptual (dictionary) meaning (denotation)
" affective meaning (connotations; associations)
" partnership (collocations)
" syntactic behaviour (colligations)
" underlying form and derivations (morphology)
" semantic features (lexical relations)
" appropriateness in different situations (styles and registers)
" pronunciation
" spelling
10. Collocation
Lexical CHUNKS are e.g. multi-word (phrasal) verbs, idioms, strong and weak collocations, lexical
phrases. Word clusters are common in corpora of conversational English. Most of these begin with I
and most of the expressions are utterance launchers  expressions used to introduce the content of
what one wants to say, for example, I don t know what to; I don t know whether you; I think it might
be; I don t think you can; You see what I mean; I was going to say. Anyone lacking an adequate
inventory of these expressions will experience communicative difficulty when participating in
natural conversation.
CORPUS STUDIES have introduced a new kind of item, namely the cluster (also called LEXICAL
BUNDLE). Lewis et al. (2000: 141) define clusters as  small groups of words which appear
consecutively in text without regard for punctuation marks, or even changes of speaker . For
example:
how do you know I think I might I don t know what in the present study
it should be noted that on the basis of in the case of the
I thought that was the way in which the extent to which
McCarthy (1990: 8), on his part, draws teachers' attention to IRREVERSIBLE BINOMIALS and
TRINOMIALS as units that function as single words. The former category can be exemplified by back
to front; wine and dine; ladies and gentlemen; in and out; sick and tired, while the latter by cool,
calm and collected; ready, willing and able; morning, noon and night; hook, line and sinker; lock,
stock and barrel.
11. The Mental Lexicon
Every foreign language learner must cope with a large number of words which have to be stored in
the mind, and so it should be a matter of concern for language teachers to understand how this
information is organised and stored.
Thornbury (2002: 16) observes that  the mind seems to store words neither randomly nor in the
form of a list, but in a highly organised and interconnected fashion  in what is often called the
MENTAL LEXICON". This means that words enter into complex relations with other words forming a
system. This, in turn, accounts for the ease with which native speakers recognize and produce
lexical items.
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The development of L1 mental lexicon is different from that of L2 mental lexicon. Native speakers
acquire their vocabulary in a chronological and rather predictable way. Besides, unlike foreign
language learners, native speakers have many years when their lexicon develops and becomes more
and more comprehensive.
In the mental lexicon of adult L2 learners  the level of meaning seems to be organized in semantic
fields in which co-ordination and collocation appear to be the strongest links (Piasecka 2001: 27).
Apart from meaning, the mental lexicon is also organized according to word-structure and the
phonological shape of words.
When learning L2 words, learners do not have to go through the stage of labelling, as in the
development of L1 mental lexicon. Nevertheless, they have to learn a new conceptual system and
construct a new vocabulary network. L1 and L2 do not distribute lexical items in exactly the same
way. What in L1 may be represented by one word, may take two or three different words in L2, or
the other way round.
That is why L2 learners should be instructed not to rely too much on direct translation from L1. L2
words need to be presented in their typical contexts and teachers should assign tasks that will help
learners organise their mental lexicons by building networks of associations.
12. The Size of the Mental Lexicon
A major difference between first and second language vocabulary learning is in the potential size of
the lexicon in either case. According to Thornbury (2002: 20),  an educated native speaker will
probably have a vocabulary of around 23,000 words. [& ] This is the result of adding about a
thousand words a year to the 5,000 he or she had acquired by the age of five .
Adult L2 learners may acquire up to 5,000 word families even after several years of classroom
exposure. Although a large vocabulary size is believed to be something valuable, not all words are
equally useful because of their different frequency of occurrence. A core vocabulary that will serve
in most situations is 2,000 high frequency words.
13. Presenting vocabulary in the classroom
There is a variety of ways in which vocabulary can be introduced and explained. By and large,
presentation can be done via:
" verbal techniques, i.e. those in which L2 words are used to explain other L2 words
(definitions, synonyms, antonyms, illustrative situations);
" visual techniques, i.e. those in which L2 words are related to the outside world (visuals,
gestures, miming).
As Thornbury (2002: 75) points out, both the meaning and the form of a new word  should be
presented in close conjunction in order to ensure a tight meaning-and-form fit. The greater the gap
between the presentation of a word's form and its meaning, the less likely the learner will make a
mental connection between the two .
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BACKGROUND
Bygate, M. 1987. Speaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Byrne, D. 1986. Teaching Oral Skills. London: Pearson Education.
Harmer, J. 2007. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 4th Edition. London: Pearson
Education.
Hebert, J. 2002.  PracTESOL: It s not what you say, but how you say it! In Richards, J. C. &
Renandya, W. A. (Eds.), Methodology in Language Teaching. An Anthology of Current
Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 188-200.
Jones, R. H. 2002.  Beyond  Listen and Repeat : Pronunciation teaching materials and theories of
second language acquisition". In Richards, J. C. & Renandya, W. A. (Eds.), Methodology in
Language Teaching. An Anthology of Current Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 178-187.
Thornbury, S. 2002. How to Teach Vocabulary. London: Pearson Education.
Thornbury, S. 2005. How to Teach Speaking. London: Pearson Education.
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