Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

2.3 The processability model
Learning and teaching different types of grammar
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Box 2.3 Early acquisition of grammar
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Content and structure words differ in many ways, including the ways they
are used in sentences and how they are pronounced.
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Grammatical morphemes (structure words and grammatical inflections) are
learnt in a particular sequence in L2 acquisition.
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L2 learners acquire the same basic grammar regardless of the first and sec-
ond languages involved.
movement: a way of describing some sentences as being based on moving var-
ious elements about
processability: sequences of acquisition may reflect the ease with which certain
structures can be processed by the mind
sequence of development: the inevitable progression of learners through defi-
nite stages of acquisition
the teachability hypothesis: ‘an L2 structure can be learnt from instruction
only if the learner’s interlanguage is close to the point when this structure is
acquired in the natural setting’ (Pienemann, 1984: 201)
Keywords
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Do you find problems in following certain structures in your L2, or indeed
your L1?
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Why do you think you find some structures more difficult to follow than others?
Focusing questions
The problem with research into sequences of acquisition was that it tended to say
what the learners did rather than why they did it. During the 1980s an attempt was
made to create a broader-based sequence of development, first called the multidi-
mensional model, later the processability model, which believed that the explanation
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a noun phrase followed by a copula and another noun phrase or an adjective
‘it’s bread’;
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a verb followed by a noun phrase ‘pinching its’.

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for sequences must lie in the expanding capacity of the learner’s mind to handle
the grammar of L2 sentences. The core idea was that some sentences are formed by
moving elements from one position to another. English questions, for example,
move the auxiliary or the question word to the beginning of the sentence, a famil-
iar idea to language teachers. So ‘John is nice’ becomes ‘Is John nice?’ by moving
‘is’ to the beginning; ‘John is where?’ becomes ‘Where is John?’ by moving ‘where’
and ‘is’; and ‘John will go where?’ becomes ‘Where will John go?’ by moving both
‘where’ and ‘will’ in front of ‘John’.
The multidimensional model sees movement as the key element in understand-
ing the learning sequence. The learner starts with sentences without movement
and learns how to move the various parts of the sentence around to get the final
form. The learner ascends the structural tree from bottom to top, first learning to
deal with words, next with phrases, then with simple sentences, and finally with
subordinate clauses in complex sentences.
Stage 1
To start with, the learners can produce only one word at a time, say, ‘ticket’ or
‘beer’, or formulas such as ‘What’s the time?’ At this stage the learners know con-
tent words but have no idea of grammatical structure; the words come out in a
stream without being put in phrases and without grammatical morphemes, as if
the learners had a dictionary in their mind but no grammar.
Stage 2
Next learners acquire the typical word order of the language. In both English and
German this is the subject verb object (SVO) order – ‘John likes beer’, ‘Hans liebt
Bier’. This is the only word order that the learners know; they do not have any
alternative word orders based on movement such as questions. So they put nega-
tives in the front of the sentence as in ‘No me live here’ and make questions with
rising intonation such as ‘You like me?’, both of which maintain the basic word
order of English without needing movement.
In the next stages the learners discover how to move elements about, in partic-
ular to the beginnings and ends of the sentence.
Stage 3
Now the learners start to move elements to the beginning of the sentence. So they
put adverbials at the beginning – ‘On Tuesday I went to London’; they use wh-
words at the beginning with no inversion – ‘Who lives in Camden?’; and they
The processability model 29
John is nice
John is where?
John will go where?
Is John nice?
Where is John?
Where will John go?
Figure 2.3 Examples of movement in syntax

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move auxiliaries to get yes/no questions – ‘Will you be there?’ Typical sentences
at this stage are ‘Yesterday I sick’ and ‘Beer I like’, in both of which the initial ele-
ment has been moved from later in the sentence.
Stage 4
At the next stage, learners discover how the preposition can be separated from its
phrase in English – ‘the patient he looked after’ rather than ‘the patient after
which he looked’ – a phenomenon technically known as preposition-stranding,
which is the antithesis of the prescriptive grammar rule. They also start to use the
‘-ing’ ending – ‘I’m reading a good book’.
Stage 5
Next come question-word questions such as ‘Where is he going to be?’; the third
person grammatical morpheme ‘-s’, ‘He likes’; and the dative with ‘to’, ‘He gave
his name to the receptionist’. At this stage the learners are starting to work within
the structure of the sentence, not just using the beginning or the end as locations
to move elements to. Another new feature is the third person ‘-s’ ending of verbs,
‘He smokes’.
Stage 6
The final stage is acquiring the order of subordinate clauses. In English this some-
times differs from the order in the main clause. The question order is ‘Will he go?’
but the reported question is ‘Jane asked if he would go’, not ‘Jane asked if would he
go’, to the despair of generations of EFL students. At this stage the learner is sort-
ing out the more untypical orders in subordinate clauses after the ordinary main
clause order has been learnt. In addition, this stage includes structures such as ‘He
gave me the book’, where the indirect object precedes the direct object, as
opposed to ‘He gave the book to me’ with the reverse order.
The multidimensional model stresses that L2 learners have a series of interim
grammars of English – interlanguages. Their first grammar is just words; the sec-
ond uses words in an SVO order; the third uses word order with some elements
moved to the beginning or end, and so on. As with grammatical morphemes, this
sequence seems inexorable: all learners go through these overall stages in the
same order. The recent development of the multidimensional model has been
called the processability model because it explains these sequences in terms of the
grammatical processes involved in the production of a sentence, which are
roughly as follows: