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As a nonspecialist language and literature teacher, I am interested in the question of what grammar one can most profitably teach, when and how. I would like to know what the second-language-acquisition experts have to say about this.
—A foreign language professor
IT IS not unusual for those of us in second-language-acquisition research to be asked questions about pedagogy—in particular, about the teaching of grammar. The quotation I use as an epigraph is typical, but I think it is important to examine its two underlying premises about the relation between language teaching and second-language acquisition. The first is that second-language acquisition as a field of inquiry is (or should be) concerned with language pedagogy. The second is that second-language-acquisition research has specific answers to some of the thornier issues in language teaching (e.g., what to teach and when to teach it).
Second-language acquisitionists are understandably associated with language pedagogy, since many of them offer suggestions about approaches and methods (as I do myself). They should not, however, be construed as methodologists. They are not. Those who are actively engaged in second-language-acquisition research generally see themselves as theoretical linguists, psycholinguists, sociolinguists, or communication specialists who are interested in how languages are acquired and used. The reason they have something to say about language pedagogy is not so much that they are researching specific questions about language teaching but rather that they have come to certain conclusions about how languages in general are acquired and organized in the brain. In a sense, second-language acquisitionists are similar to first-language acquisitionists. First-language acquisitionists are not interested in their research because it will lead to better acquisition by three- and four-year-olds. Instead, they are interested in how the mind works.
The belief that second-language specialists have answers to questions about teaching particular grammar points represents a misunderstanding of the field. While they know some things about how some features of language are acquired (in and out of the classroom), they have come to see that language acquisition is complex enough to preclude simple solutions to problematic questions. In addition, the research on explicit instruction in grammar is far from conclusive (as I explain below), so that a psycholinguistically motivated syllabus would be purely speculative.
Despite these “limitations” of second-language-acquisition research, the findings can be insightful for the uninitiated. Lightbown suggests that the research is useful for teacher education and for the evaluation of particular pedagogical methods. Some of its fundamental findings can lead language teachers to ask more knowledgeable questions about their work, to make informed judgments about the claims advanced by those advocating specific techniques or methods, and to develop a research agenda for language pedagogy.
In this paper I detail six major findings that should be of interest to all language teachers. They are meant not to provide an exhaustive account of the research in the field but rather to indicate what is known about acquiring the grammatical properties of a second language. 1 Subsequently, in part 2 of this paper (to be published in the Spring 1992 issue of the Bulletin ), I examine the issue of explicit grammar instruction.
Finding 1. Learners of a second language tend to pass through certain transitional stages or sequences in acquiring syntax.
It is now fairly well documented in the research that learners of English as a second language generally go through certain stages of development en route to native-like use of a given structure. Stages have been identified for syntactic phenomena such as negation, WH -question formation (i.e., interrogatives), and WH -embedding (i.e., questions in indirect discourse) and for morphological phenomena such as plural formation, reflexives, and present-tense inflection. These stages, evidenced in many learners regardless of their learning environment or first-language background, suggest some universal tendencies in acquiring particular syntactic constructions over time. For example, in the acquisition of negation, the following stages of development are common among ESL learners, in and out of the classroom (taken from Ellis, Understanding ):
The research on stages of development, however, is not limited to learners of ESL. There is evidence that classroom and nonclassroom learners of German exhibit stages of development in acquiring verb placement and word order as well as negation (e.g., the studies by Pienemann; Ellis, “Are …?”; and Eubank). Research also points to transitional stages of development in learners' classroom and nonclassroom acquisition of clitic (object) pronouns in Spanish (e.g., Andersen, “Transfer”; VanPatten, “Acquisition of Clitic Pronouns”) and to stages in classroom learners' acquisition of Spanish copular verbs and the verb gustar (VanPatten, “Acquisition of Ser, ” “Second Language,” and “Classroom”). In Spanish, for example, classroom learners seem to follow a certain sequence of stages:
It goes without saying that the concept of stages is idealized; that is, stages may overlap, with the features of one stage coexisting in a learner's speech with features of another stage. In short, no learner moves clearly and neatly through the stages in acquiring any syntactic feature.
Two other factors also complicate this picture of developmental stages and acquisitional sequences. The first is the difference among individual learners. While no learner documented has ever violated the order in which the stages occur, some learners either skip a stage or go through it so quickly that they appear to have skipped it. Within a given stage, learners might show some differences as well, but always within the confines of the characteristics that mark that stage. The second complication is the role of the first language. As I explain below, the first language, though it does not affect the order of stages, can affect the length of time that particular stages last.
Finding 2. Certain grammatical morphemes (within governing syntactic categories) tend to emerge in a fixed order.
The stages in the emergence of morphemes and functors (e.g., English - ing and the , Spanish - aba - and adjective agreement) are different from transitional stages of development concerned with sentence-level syntax. What has generally been found is that noun-phrase morphemes are acquired over time in a fairly predictable order, verb-phrase morphemes in another, and other morphemes in yet another (Andersen, “Impoverished State”; VanPatten, “Processing”). Thus, English - ing is generally acquired before the third-person - s (which seems to be acquired very late), and in Spanish, number agreement on adjectives is generally acquired well ahead of gender agreement on adjectives (van Naerssen). The order of emergence of some morphemes and functors, like the order of the transitional stages, does not vary with instructional setting or the first language (Ellis, Understanding ; Gass and Selinker).
At first, the universality of orders of acquisition was questioned, as were some of the claims made about them (e.g., that they reflected little or no first-language transfer or interference). However, as the research on developmental sequences and transitional stages began to appear (see finding 1, above), these orders came to be accepted as pervasive. What remains to be explained is the reason for a given sequence, that is, why one morpheme is consistently acquired before another. Various explanations have been proffered, but as syntax began to occupy researchers' attention, research on orders of acquisition fell out of favor. Those seeking detailed information on these orders for the various foreign languages taught in the United States will not find it. One dissertation on Spanish as a foreign language examines acquisition orders (van Naerssen), but the findings need to be corroborated by the use of different research methodologies in additional studies as well as by the investigation of acquisition orders of learners under different conditions.
Finding 3. Language acquisition tends to progress from unmarked to marked elements, defined typologically.
In language typology, a structure X is less marked relative to Y if X is more frequently distributed and more typical in natural languages. 3 For example, among the three word orders subject-verb-object (SVO), subject-object-verb (SOV), and verb-subject-object (VSO), SVO is the most frequent in the world's languages and is considered less marked. Regarding the formation of yes-no questions, rising intonation that retains SVO order (e.g., She is leaving now? ) is much more common than subject-verb inversion (e.g., Is she leaving now? ) in natural languages and is therefore posited as less marked (actually unmarked, in this example). Language learners acquire the unmarked or less marked forms more easily than they do the more marked forms, and the unmarked forms emerge first in learner output (see Hyltenstam for some discussion of this). Thus a learner of a language with SVO order will first produce yes-no questions with rising intonation and the SVO order intact. Research on markedness in second-language acquisition has included not just syntax but lexicon, semantics, morphology, and phonology as well. Again, regardless of the learner's first language, unmarked elements are easier to acquire than are marked elements, and often a learner with a marked structure in the first language acquiring a marked structure in the second language will first produce an unmarked structure not typical of either language. For example, even though the first language and the second language both contain inversion with yes-no questions, learners may first produce the unmarked SVO question with rising intonation (Wode).
Finding 4. Language transfer is not the simple transfer of “habits” as once believed. First-language influence is manifested in one of two ways: psycholinguistic transfer and communicative transfer.
Research on second-language acquisition puts to rest the simplistic notion of transfer of “first-language habits,” an assumption espoused by behaviorists in the fifties and sixties. Instead of focusing on differences between the first and second languages (e.g., Spanish has an active subjunctive, English does not), researchers investigating the role of the first language in second-language acquisition have turned their attention toward the degree of similarity between the languages. That is, if and when transfer occurs in the process by which language is internalized, it occurs because of similarities, not differences. Research on the transfer of lexical meaning has shown that learners are more likely to use a transfer strategy when they perceive an overlap between the first and second languages than when there are obvious differences (Kellerman, “Now You See It,” “Transfer”). Other research has documented that transfer occurs when a transitional stage resembles a structure in the first language (e.g., Andersen, “Transfer”). If transfer is triggered, the result is either more structures in that stage that look like first-language structures or a protraction of that stage of development. This type of transfer can be called “psycholinguistic transfer,” since it affects how language is internalized or structured during development. Learners of Spanish, for example, begin the acquisition of ser and estar by omitting the copula altogether (e.g., Juan alto ). The second stage is marked by overgeneralization of ser (e.g., Juan es alto. Juan es contento hoy ). It is here that transfer may be triggered Natural processes of acquisition have created a stage where there is one copula rather than two, as in English, which has only one copula (see VanPatten, “Classroom,” for a more complete discussion of the factors that relate to these stages). The degree of similarity triggers a transfer and thus protracts the acquisition of estar.
Regarding psycholinguistic transfer, it is generally agreed that the influence of the first language is limited, in that transfer cannot “violate” the natural properties of acquisition. In other words, transfer does not happen willy-nilly in the learner's developing linguistic system. Transfer can only happen when conditions are right. One example is finding 3, the discovery that acquisition tends to proceed from unmarked to marked structures. If a learner's first language has a marked rule but the second language has an unmarked rule, transfer of the first-language rule is blocked. However, if the first language has an unmarked rule but the second language has a corresponding marked rule, the first-language rule will most likely transfer (see, e.g., Eckman and the discussion in Hyltenstam).
“Communicative transfer” is the use of first-language syntax to generate an utterance on the spot under the pressures of communication. It is, in a sense, a falling back on the first-language system (Corder; Krashen), a type of mental translation. Thus, a learner of Spanish might say, “Yo soy veinte años,” mentally translating “I am twenty years old,” because the use of tener ‘to have’ with años to express age has not yet entered the linguistic system. Unlike psycholinguistic transfer, these nonnative structures tend to drop out, since they are not created by the underlying processes used to internalize language.
Finding 5. Not all learner output is rule-governed; some consists of routines and prefabricated patterns.
In second-language studies, researchers have isolated the use of what are called “routines” and “prefabricated patters.” Routines are those expressions that may be formulaic or unanalyzed and that are used and stored by the learner as one large lexical item (Fillmore; Krashen). When produced, they are generated not by rules but by the same processes that access lexical items. As such, these formulas are initially unbreakable units. Limited speakers of English who work as waitpersons often quickly acquire routines such as Would you like something to drink? without having true modals or any notion of politeness markers. Sometimes routines are used incorrectly, as in the case of the English-speaking child who heard asseyezvous from his French teacher and subsequently used it to refer to any act of sitting down. (He very soon realized he was wrong.)
Prefabricated patterns are quasi-rule-governed. The learner stores a particular configuration of speech that has a slot or blank into which appropriate words or even sentences and phrases may be inserted. Children learning English as a second language quickly get That's a —— and may use it in naming any object, singular or plural. At this point they have neither knowledge of the contracted copula in English (-' s ) nor control over indefinite articles.
Since the communicative language that classroom learners are exposed to is often limited in quantity and scope, they use routines and patterns less than nonclassroom learners do. Examples of routines quickly picked up by classroom learners are management devices like Sit down and Repeat, please . Prefabricated patterns documented in learners of Spanish include megusta —— ‘I like ——’ and cómosedice —— ‘How do you say ——’ (the Spanish phrases are intentionally spelled as single words here to reflect their indivisibility in the learner's system [VanPatten, “Second Language”]). Generally, frequently occurring statements made by the instructor in the second language are the first to be internalized as routines or prefabricated patterns.
It is unclear in the research what happens to these units. Do they break down into their separate parts, reflecting a “decomposition” process on the learner's part? Do they drop out completely and give way to rule-governed speech at a later date? Do they remain as routines and patterns well into advanced stages, possibly forever? Most likely, all three events occur (see, e.g., VanPatten, “X+Y”; Ellis, Understanding ). Some patterns and routines probably break down while others drop out. Still others may last a lifetime, as do some fixed routines and patterns in native-language use.
Finding 6. For successful acquisition, learners need access to input that is communicatively or meaningfully oriented.
Learners who hear and see language that they must decode for meaning (in contrast to the language required in traditional mechanical drills, such as slot substitution and repetition, which is not processed for meaning) go further and faster in acquiring grammar than do those who only get a staple diet of exercises (see, e.g., Lightbown). Research strongly suggests that the more context-rich the language, the more it gets acquired. This finding is not surprising when one considers that drills and mechanical activities can be processed without much thought. In a nontechnical way one can envision the brain trying to “save power” during mechanical activities; a switch is flipped, and deeper levels of processing are bypassed to allow faster manipulation of the bits and pieces during the mechanical process. On the other hand, attempting to understand what a speaker is saying (assuming there is time) requires one to access and retrieve meaning, to make connections along the way, to strengthen long-term stores. Furthermore, meaningful input that is comprehended gives the language processor more than one thing at a time on which to focus; in other words, it is linguistically rich.
To be sure, not all comprehension results in the acquisition of grammar. For some learners, the internal processors that guide language acquisition may ignore features of language that contribute little to meaning (e.g., VanPatten, “Communicative Value”). And because acquisition is developmental, a learner can only get so much from the input at a given time anyway (e.g., White). It is equally clear, from the research on developmental stages, that a learner's output does not make a one-to-one correspondence with input. In another paper, I discuss the relation of input and acquisition as a set of processes (VanPatten and Cadierno). A discussion of those processes, however, would take me far afield of the current discussion. The point of my noting finding 6 here is simply to indicate that learners who have access to meaningful language from the beginning have a broader base on which to build their internal linguistic systems.
Many aspects of second-language-acquisition research have not been described here. For instance, there is increasing research on sociolinguistics, pragmatics, variability, and other aspects of the field that focus on language use. For the purpose of a discussion about the teaching and acquisition of grammar, I have concentrated on those findings that are most relevant. In part 2 of this paper, I review some of the literature on the explicit instruction of grammar and its effect on second-language acquisition. In this literature, the overriding question is, Does instruction make a difference?
The author is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Illinois, Urbana. This paper was prepared by the author in conjunction with a course he taught at the 1989 Summer Linguistic Institute cosponsored by the Modern Language Association and the Linguistic Society of America at the University of Arizona.
1 Because of limitations of space, I can cite only certain representative research studies in this paper. I do not intentionally overlook other research, nor do I mean to suggest that the bibliography is exhaustive.
2 Unanalyzed units are phrases learned as chunks. The internal syntactic representation is missing for the learner. For example, the learner has not analyzed don't in stage 2 as an auxiliary verb and a negative particle.
3 Claims have been made about markedness and acquisition using current Chomskyan theory. There is some debate, however, on what is marked and unmarked within this framework (Hyams), and White has argued that markedness needs to be more clearly defined and tested before claims are made about second-language acquisition.
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© 1992 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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