Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

12
General models of 
L2 learning
This chapter applies some general ideas from SLA research to language teaching,
complemented by Chapter 13 which goes in the reverse direction. It deals with
some of the general models and approaches that researchers have devised to
explain how people learn second languages, rather than with individual pieces of
research or different areas of language.
12.1 Universal Grammar
Universal Grammar (UG): ‘the system of principles, conditions, and rules that
are elements or properties of all human languages … the essence of human
language’ (Chomsky, 1976: 29)
principles of language: abstract principles that permit or prohibit certain struc-
tures from occurring in all human languages
parameters of language: systematic ways in which human languages vary,
usually expressed as a choice between two options
pro-drop parameter: a parameter which, set one way, permits a pro-drop lan-
guage not to have pronoun subjects in the sentence, and set the other, forces
a non-pro-drop language to have explicit subjects
Minimalist Program: this is Chomsky’s current working model that attempts to
simplify the syntax to the minimum necessary for the human computational
system to connect sounds and meanings
Keywords
●
What kind of language input do you think learners need in order to acquire
grammar naturally?
●
How much importance do you place on (a) correction by parents in L1 acqui-
sition? (b) correction by teachers in L2 learning?
Focusing questions

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The Universal Grammar (UG) model, in the version first proposed by Chomsky in
the 1980s, bases its general claims about learning on the principles and parame-
ters grammar described in Chapter 2. What we have in our minds is a mental
grammar of a language consisting of universal principles of language, such as the
locality principle which shows why a sentence like ‘Is Sam is the cat that black?’
is impossible in all languages, and of parameters on which languages vary, such as
the pro-drop parameter that explains why ‘Shuo’ (speaks) is a possible sentence in
Chinese, but ‘Speaks’ is not possible in English. Principles account for all the
things that languages have in common; parameters account for their differences.
The Universal Grammar model claims that these principles and parameters are
built in to the human mind. Children do not need to learn the locality principle
because their minds automatically impose it on any language they meet, whether
it is English, Chinese or Arabic. However, they do need to learn that English sen-
tences have subjects (non-pro-drop), while Chinese and Arabic sentences do not
(pro-drop). It is the parameter settings that have to be learnt – to have a subject or
not to have a subject. All the learner needs in order to set the values for parame-
ters are a few samples of the language. Hearing ‘There are some books on the
table’, a learner discovers that English has the non-pro-drop setting because
‘dummy’ subjects such as ‘there’ and ‘it’ do not occur in pro-drop languages.
To acquire the first language, the child applies the principles to the input that is
encountered and adopts the right value for each parameter according to the input.
Learning in the UG model is a matter of getting language input by hook or by
crook; the faculty of language needs input to work on; it is the evidence on which
the learners base their knowledge of language. This evidence can be either positive
or negative. Positive evidence consists of actual sentences that learners hear, such as
‘The Brighton train leaves London at five’. The grammatical information in the
sentence allows them to construct a grammar that fits the word order ‘facts’ of
English that subjects come before verbs (‘ … train leaves … ’), verbs before objects
(‘ … leaves London)’, and prepositions before nouns (‘ … at five’), by setting the
parameters in a particular way. The positive evidence in a few sentences is suffi-
cient to show them the rules of English.
Negative evidence has two types. Because children never hear English sentences
without subjects, such as ‘Leaves’, they deduce that English sentences must have
subjects – the same evidence of absence as that advanced for curved bananas in
the song ‘I have never seen a straight banana’. The other type of negative evidence
is correction: ‘No, you mustn’t say, “You was here”; you must say, “You were
here”.’ Someone tells the learners that what they are doing is wrong.
Many linguists are convinced that all a child needs to learn the first language is
positive evidence in the shape of actual sentences of the language; negative evi-
dence could only help in marginal instances as it is not uniformly available.
Second language learning may be different. The bulk of the evidence indeed comes
from sentences the learner hears – positive evidence from linguistic input. But L2
learners also have a first language available to them. Negative evidence can be used
to work out what does not occur in the second language, but might be expected to
if the L2 grammar were like the L1 grammar. Spanish students listening to English
will eventually notice that English lacks the subjectless sentences they are used to.
The grounds for the expectation is not just guessing, but the knowledge of the first
language the learners have in their minds, in other words a form of transfer.
Negative evidence by correction is also different in L2 learning. In the first lan-
guage, it is not so much that it is ineffective as that it occurs rarely; parents rarely
Universal grammar 215

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correct their children’s speech, and when they do it is usually for meaning rather
than for grammar. In the second language classroom, correction of students’ gram-
matical errors can, and often does, occur with high frequency. The L2 learner thus
has an additional source of evidence not available to the L1 learner. Furthermore,
the L2 learner often has grammatical explanations available as another source of
evidence. This reflects a type of evidence that is absent from first language acquisi-
tion, at least up to the school years. Finally, the input to the L2 learner could be
made more learnable by highlighting various aspects of it – input enhancement as
Mike Sharwood-Smith (1993) calls it. James Morgan (1986) has talked about ‘brack-
eted input’, that is to say, sentences that make clear the phrase structure of the lan-
guage by pausing or intonation. L2 teaching could try many ways of highlighting
input, again an opportunity unique to L2 learning.