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COGNITIVE APPROACH TO SECOND-LANGUAGE AQUISITION

Svitlana Shandruk (Kropyvnytskyi)

The academic discipline of second-language acquisition (SLA) is a subdiscipline of applied linguistics . It is broad-based and relatively new. As well as the various branches of linguistics , second-language acquisition is also closely related to psychology, cognitive psychology , and education. SLA research began as an interdisciplinary field, and because of this it is difficult to identify a precise starting date [4]. However, it does appear to have developed a great deal since the mid-1960s.  The term acquisition was originally used to emphasize the subconscious nature of the learning process,  but in recent years learning and acquisition have become largely synonymous.

Second-language acquisition can incorporate heritage language learning ,  but it does not usually incorporate bilingualism . Most SLA researchers (A. Benatty, S. Gass, R. Mitchell, F. Myles, E. Rod, L. Selinker, B. VanPatten and others) see bilingualism as being the end result of learning a language, not the process itself, and see the term as referring to native-like fluency. A complete theory of SLA must include both a property theory (of what the domain of knowledge is and how it is represented) and a transition theory (of how learners get from one knowledge state to another) (K. Gregg, N. Ellis and others). Thus SLA is a subject of cognitive science par excellence (E. Bialystok, B. McLaughlin, M. Harrington, R. Schmidt and others) [3]. Writers in fields such as education and psychology, however, often use bilingualism loosely to refer to all forms of multilingualism .  Second-language acquisition is also not to be contrasted with the acquisition of a foreign language:  learning of second languages and learning of foreign languages involve the same fundamental processes in different situations.

Internal factors affecting second-language acquisition are those which stem from the learner's own mind. Attempts to account for the internal mechanisms of second-language acquisition can be divided into three general strands: cognitive, sociocultural, and linguistic. These explanations are not all compatible, and often differ significantly.

Much modern research in second-language acquisition (R. Rueda, D. August, C. Goldenberg, J. Plass, D. Chun, R. Mayer, D. Leutner and others) has taken a cognitive approach [1]. Cognitive research is concerned with the mental processes involved in language acquisition, and how they can explain the nature of learners' language knowledge. This area of research is based in the more general area of cognitive science, and uses many concepts and models used in more general cognitive theories of learning. As such, cognitive theories view second-language acquisition as a special case of more general learning mechanisms in the brain. This puts them in direct contrast with linguistic theories, which posit that language acquisition uses a unique process different from other types of learning.

Cognitive approaches, including Functional Linguistics (T. Bates, B. MacWhinney and others), Emergentism (J. Elman, B. MacWhinney and others), Cognitive Linguistics (R. Langacker, D. Ungerer, R. Schmid and others), and Constructivist Child Language researchers (P. Brooks, C. Slobin, M. Tomasello and others), view the linguistic sign as a set of mappings between phonological forms and conceptual meanings or communicative intentions [3]. They hold that simple associative learning mechanisms operating in and across the human systems for perception, motor-action and cognition as they are exposed to language data as part of a communicatively-rich human social environment by an organism eager to exploit the functionality of language are what drives the emergence of complex language representations.

The dominant model in cognitive approaches to second-language acquisition, and indeed in all second-language acquisition research, is the computational model [2]. The computational model involves three stages. In the first stage, learners retain certain features of the language input in short-term memory. Then, learners convert some of this intake into second-language knowledge, which is stored in long-term memory. Finally, learners use this second-language knowledge to produce spoken output. Cognitive theories attempt to codify both the nature of the mental representations of intake and language knowledge, and the mental processes which underlie these stages.

In the early days of second-language acquisition research interlanguage was seen as the basic representation of second-language knowledge; however, more recent research has taken a number of different approaches in characterizing the mental representation of language knowledge [1; 97-98]. There are theories that hypothesize that learner language is inherently variable, and there is the functionalist perspective that sees acquisition of language as intimately tied to the function it provides. Some researchers make the distinction between implicit and explicit language knowledge, and some between declarative and procedural language knowledge. There have also been approaches that argue for a dual-mode system in which some language knowledge is stored as rules and other language knowledge as items.

The mental processes that underlie second-language acquisition can be broken down into micro-processes and macro-processes. Micro-processes include attention; working memory; integration and restructuring, the process by which learners change their interlanguage systems; and monitoring, the conscious attending of learners to their own language output. Macro-processes include the distinction between intentional learning and incidental learning; and also the distinction between explicit and implicit learning. Some of the notable cognitive theories of second-language acquisition include the nativization model, the multidimensional model and processability theory, emergentist models, the competition model, and skill-acquisition theories [4].

Other cognitive approaches have looked at learners' speech production, particularly learners' speech planning and communication strategies. Speech planning can have an effect on learners' spoken output, and research in this area has focused on how planning affects three aspects of speech: complexity, accuracy, and fluency. Of these three, planning effects on fluency has had the most research attention. Communication strategies are conscious strategies that learners employ to get around any instances of communication breakdown they may experience. Their effect on second-language acquisition is unclear, with some researchers claiming they help it, and others claiming the opposite [4].

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (U. S. Department of Education, 2004) the number of students in the U.S. who live in homes where the first language is not English has doubled over the last 20 years [2]. For these language-minority students and their peers who are learning a second language, the goal is to develop several core competencies that allow them to develop and maintain social relationships and communicate ideas. To support these students’ acquisition of a second language, researchers have identified two instructional approaches. First, proponents of the structural approach argue that drill and practice is the best way to learn grammar and vocabulary. With this approach, language is usually taught orally with an emphasis on the learner responding to spoken prompts. Second, the cognitive approach emphasizes how the learner interacts with language. An effort is made to make language acquisition a more active process. Instruction is based on activating prior knowledge and allowing the learner to build the cognitive skills required to understand, process, and interact with a language. Effective opportunities to learn a second language with the cognitive approach can be divided into three stages: a)comprehensible input, b) interaction, and c) comprehensible output.

References

  1. Chamot A. The CALLA Handbook / Anna Uhl Chamot, J. Michael O’Mally. – NY: Brookline Books, 1994. – 340 p.

  2. Cognitive Benefits of Learning Languages [Електронний ресурс]. – Режим доступу: http://www.tip.duke.edu/node/866

  3. Ellis N. Cognitive Approaches to SLA / N. Ellis // ARAL, 2012. – Vol.XIX. – pp. 4-28.

  4. Second-language acquisition [Електронний ресурс] / Wikipedia. – Режим доступу: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-language_acquisition#cite_note-FOOTNOTEVanPattenBenati20105-50.