• Instructed second language acquisition
• Interlanguage development in instructed (classroom) learners does not differ from that in
learners acquiring an SL naturalistically
Early research on the effect of instruction, and some claimed implications
• Looking for, finding and stressing similarities between naturalistic and instructed SLA.
• Teaching could have little or no effect on the acquisition process.
• Example: some North American investigators (1970s)
- the order in which accurate suppliance of
certain grammatical morphemes in obligatory
contexts attained criterion was similar across
learners from first language backgrounds and
in naturalistic and instructed learners groups.
• Dulay and Burt (1973) – children should not be taught syntax
• Krashen – most of an SL cannot be taught, it must be acquired
• the learning process can only be manipulated within narrow limits
• the possibility of manipulating the students verbal behaviour in the classroom is limited
• Teachers are partners, not masters, in a joint enterprise
• Inferences, not research – have formed a larg part of the basis for prescriptions for language
teaching
• The goal of the classroom (Krashen) – to develop intermediate second language competence
• Instruction may simplify the learning task, alter the process and sequence of acquisition, speed
up the rate of acquisition and improve the quality and level of SL ultimate attainment.
• The Effect of Instruction on Accuracy Orders and Developmental Sequences
• Several early investigations of instructed accuracy orders were morpheme studies conducted in
the 1970s, some in second and some in foreign language environments.
• Perkins and Larsen-Freeman tested twelve spanish-speaking university students studying in the
USA, using a translation test and a question-and-answer task in which subjects described a silent
film.
• Pre/post comparisons of the subjects’ morpheme accuracy orders before and after two months
of intensive ESL instruction showed that the subjects improved on their supplinace of the
morphemes in obligatory context, however the accuracy orders on the film description task
were very similar.
• Fathman reported a significant correlation between the morpheme difficulty orders of German
secondary-school students receiving EFL instruction and naturalistic adolescent acquirers in the
U.S.
• In a nine-month longitudinal study of the communicative classroom speech of three children
aged ten to thirteen, native speakers of Punjabi and Portuguese in a predominantly audiolingual
ESL programme in Britain, Ellis found that the developmental sequences for all structures he
investigated were virtually identical to those reported for naturalistic learners.
• Lightbown and Spada used a panel design, in which the same variable is investigated recurrently
over an extended period of time, for the purpose of studying change in response. Lightbown’s
findings suggest overall that formal SL instruction is only successful in altering accuracy orders in
a trivial manner
• It should be noted:
• First, that the findings in some studies could be the result of targeted grammatical sub-systems
having fossilized before the instruction was provided.
• Second, that the instruction can be expected to have differential effects according to whether
the targeted structures are “developmental” or “variational”.
• The effect of instruction on acqusition processes
• On this topic were made several exploratory works that focused basically on the similarities
which exist in the acqusition processes of classroom and naturalistic acquirers
• The major study was made by Pica (1983) and her findings are highly suggestive, and
encouraging for teachers.
• Pica distinguished three acquisition contexts in her work:
• Naturalistic
• Instructed
• Mixed (a combination of classroom instruction plus natural exposure in the target –
language environment)
• In the research were 18 adult native speakers of Spanish learning ESL whose learning histories
placed them uniquely in one context, with the subjects in each cell in the criterion group design
representing a fairly wide range of SL profiency, as defined by the stage each had reached in his
or her acquisition of ESL negation. (No V, don’t V, aux-neg, and analysed don’t)
• The first analysis Pica performed was a supplied in obligatory contexts (SOC) analysis of nine
grammatical morphemes in the speech of learners from the three language – learning contexts.
• Pica noted that the groups differ in the case of certain morphemes
• The instruction - only group scored better than the mixed and naturalistic groups regarding the
plural –s and the third – person singular –s
• Pica made another analysis, the target – like use of the same morphemes
• The TLU analysis revealed differences between the three groups, mostly between the instruction
– only group and the other groups
• She noticed also kind of errors made by those groups; learner who had never received formal SL
instruction tended to omit grammatical morphemes, such as –ing and plural –s; classroom
learners adn mixed learners mostly overlapped morphologically marking this kind.
• She mentioned overapplication errors and overgeneralization errors, among them overuse of
morphemes in non – obligatory contexts, omitting target – like noun endings using free
quantifiers instead
• On the basis of these results Pica mentioned that the learner types are similar and that the
outcome is a matter of instruction affects of SL production/performance. Mixed learners mostly
pidginize.
• The instructed learners may not correct themselves while naturalistic acquirers may be less
likely to begin supplying what are often communicatively redundant and probably still non –
salient forms, especially after prolonged periods of communicatively successful TL use of
theirgrammaticaly reduced codes.
The effect of instruction on rate of acquisition
The effect of instruction on rate of acquisition is beneficial, although it is theoretically less
interesting
11 studies of the achievment of learners after comparable periods of classroom instruction
(Long, 1983)
Beneficial for: 1). adults and children
2). intermediate and advanced learners
3). integrative and discrete-point tests
4). acquisition-rich and acquisition-poor environments
• 577 limited English-speaking children (Weslander & Stephany, 1984.)
• The effect of instruction on rate of acquisition is the strongest in the first year, rather than in the
second and third year
• Experiment at University of Michigan; relative clause formation (Gass, 1982.)
• 2 findings: overall scores and sentence-combining task had improved
The effect of instruction on the level of ultimate SL attainment
• - Pavesi (1984) compared relative clause formation in instructed and naturalistic acquirers.
• - Italian high/school students (aged 14 to 19) vs. Italian workers (aged 19 to 50).
• - Pavesi notes that the overall educational level of the naturalistic acquirers was generally quite
low and their socioeconomic background also lower than that of the school students.
• - The subjects were asked about the identity of characters in a set of pictures with relativization
off all NP positions in the Accessibility Hierarchy being elicited.
• - This research showed that more instructed learners reached the 80% criterion on all of the five
lowest NP categories. More instructed learners were able to relativize off NPs at the more
marked end of the implicational hierarchy. Only few naturalistic acquirers were able to do so
and they used noun retention more frequently than instructed learners.
• - Pavesi suggests that the instructed group's superior performance derived not from formal SL
instruction per se, but from exposure to 'planned discourse'- input of language used as the
medium of instruction. It contains a higher degree of grammaticalization, including higher
frequency of linguistically more marked constructions.
• - This is an interesting idea but it seems unlikely for the simple reason that so many of the
marked/language-specific features will not be perceptually salient to the learner.
• - A simpler explanation is that marked relativized constructions were acquired as a result of the
SL instruction, not necessarily because of explicit discussion of rules or examples but through
being made salient as a result of a focus on form.
• - Evidence for this -Schmidt study- he kept detailed notes of his interlanguage development
over six-month period about linguistic items which he was taught in a formal Portuguese as a SL
class, which he failed to notice in the Portuguese he was exposed outside the classroom and
which he produced or avoided in his speech.
• -He concluded that he usually noticed forms in the out-of-class input after they were taught.
• -Zobl (1985)-studies on the teaching of English possessive adjectives to French-speaking
university in Canada.
• Zobl’s first study of the difficulty orders of 162 French speaking learners of English, using
implicational scaling, was devoted to studying markedness in masculine/feminine and
human/non-human pairs of possessive adjectives
• The study showed that his is the unmarked member of the his/her pair and that categorical
control of the rule governing gender marking of possessed animate or human entities implies
categorical control of the rule governing possessed inanimate or nonhuman entities but not vice
versa
• Among other features he noted was a tendency for the groups receiving unmarked input to
show a higher incidence of rule simplification following the treatment
• He notes that exposure to the marked (human) domain led to overgeneralization of the marked
her whereas exposure to the unmarked (nonhuman) domain produced overgeneralization of the
unmarked his. This would mean a significant reduction in the amount of input a learner requires
to reach the same level as a learner who experiences mostly unmarked data.
• It could be that the frequency of unmarked data that naturalistic acquirers encounter not only
slows them down but also leads to simplifications in the grammars before full target
competence is attained.
Conclusion
• The review of research on the effect of instruction on SL development suggests the following
conclusions:
• -formal SL instruction does not seem able to alter acquistion sequences, except temporarily and
in trivial ways which may even hinder subsequent development.
• -there has clearly been insufficient research to warrant firm conclusions in any area we have
considred except rate of acquisition, and no research at all in other important ones, such as the
kinds of competence achievable with and without instruction.
• -future experimental research on this issue must be conducted with greater rigour. Reference
has already been made to the need to choose subjects carefully, to follow standard procedures,
to employ control groups, to select for teaching experiments those aspects of the SL which are
`learnable` at the time instruction is provided.
Explanations
• Further study of the effects of instruction on processes, sequuences and, especially, ultimate
attainment, major question remains unresolved: How does instruction affect SLA?
• One of the possible solutions in resolving the question is Krashen’s theory of non-interface
position.
• The no-interface position states that there is an absolute separation of implicit and explicit
language knowledge inside speakers' minds.
• He argues that any ‘learning’ induced by classroom work only shows up on certain tasks, and is
unusable on communicative ones.
• There are several problems with this position,including the fact that the differential predictions
it makes for classroom instruction favouring adults over children, beginners over non-beginners,
and discrete-point over integrative tests are all generally unsupported
• To help resolve this problem, experiments, are needed which compare the performance of three
groups: students receiving equal amounts of
• 1) natural exposure
• 2)comprehensible input-reach classroom instruction
• 3)classroom instruction with a focus on form
• *The second explanation is known as the interface position.
• *As the name suggests, the idea here is the opposite of the non-interface position, where a
“cross-over” of some kind does occur.
• *Forms are initially learned with some kind of awareness of the learning and then transformed
from learning to acquisition, from explicit to implicit knowledge or from controlled processing
and short-term memory to automatic processing and long-term memory.
The advantage of the interface position is that it can potentially explain the rate advantage through its
claim that form-focused instruction facilitates development.
*The disadvantage of most variants of the position, however, is that they offer no principal way of
explaining the lack of any effect of the same successful instruction on acquisition sequences, the reverse
problem of the non-interface position.
*Most interface theories would predict disruption of the developmental sequences seen in untutored
learning.
*A way of improving the interface position in order to account for the lack of effect for instruction on
acquisition sequences would be to introduce the notion of processing constraints, either as formulated
in the Multidimensional Model or in some other version, governing when and how instruction is
effective.
Researching instructional design features
• One category of features ,for example, might have to do with options in the way linguistic input
to learners is manipulated.
Choices here exist in such matters as:
1. the sequence in which learners will encounter linguistic units of various kinds (functions, structures,
notions)
2.the frequency/intensity
3.the saliency of those encounters brought about by linguistic/interactional modifications
Another category might be options in the types of productions tasks classroom learners are set. It is
reasonable to expect that formal instruction may trigger such processes as transfer of training and
generalization,depending on thhe choices teachers and materials writers make in this area (are students
allowed or encouraged to avoid error, or are they set task which lead them to take linguisticrisk, by
using generalization).
Questions of the sort posed above having to do with the effect on students` learning of varying the
ways linguistic input is manipulated or production tasks are set, are questions that language teachers
should be asking themselves.
It is in researching instructional design features where teaching and researching most apparently
coincide.
There is a growing amount of attention these days being given to teacher-initated action research whose
intent is to help teachers gain a new understanding and to enhance their teaching.
Action teaching usually involvesa cycle of self-observation or reflection, identification of an aspect of
classroom behaviour .(Teacher Education Newsletter 4, Fall 1988). By applying these steps, teachers are
encouraged to take action to improve their teaching and, hence, enhance their students` learning (Nixon
1981; Strickland 1988)
