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1、Second Language Acquisition 刘颖 13073080Second language acquisition is a general term which refers to the acquisition of a second language, in contrast with first language acquisition. SLA is also used as a general term to refer to the acquisition of a foreign or subsequent language. Thus, SLA is pri
2、marily the study of how learners acquire or learn an additional language after they have acquired their first language. According to Krashen, acquisition refers to the gradual and subconscious development of ability in the first language by using it naturally in daily communicative situations. Learn
3、ing, however, is defined by Krashen as a conscious process of accumulating knowledge of a second language usually obtained in school settings.But there are some differences between acquisition and learning. According to Krashen, acquisition refers to the gradual and subconscious development of abili
4、ty in the first language by using it naturally in daily communicative situations. Learning, however, is defined as a conscious process of accumulating knowledge of a second language usually obtained in school settings. A second language, Krashen argues, is more commonly learned but to some degree ma
5、y also be acquired, depending on the environmental setting and the input received by the second language learner. A rule can be learned before it is internalized, but having learned a rule does not necessarily prevent having to acquire it later. For example, an English language learner may have lear
6、ned a rule like the third person singular -s, but is unable to articulate the correct form in casual and spontaneous conversation because the rule has not yet been acquired. This shows that conscious knowledge of rules does not ensure an immediate guidance for actual performance.Contrastive Analysis
7、 was developed in order to identify and predict the areas of learning difficulty. Given this approach, it was hypothesized that second language errors were predominantly the result of negative transfer, or mother tongue interference and second language learning was believed to be a matter of overcom
8、ing the differences between first language and second language systems. According to this view, the major task of second language teaching should predominantly be: first, contrast the native and the target language systems and make predictions about the language items that would cause difficulty and
9、 the errors that learners were likely to make; then use these predictions in deciding on the type of language items that needed special treatment in teaching and in material development and the type of intensive techniques that would be employed to overcome learning difficulties created by the inter
10、ference. In practice, the Contrastive Analysis is not effective because a large proportion of grammatical errors could not be explained by mother tongue interference. Errors predicted by contrastive analysis have often not occurred, whereas many actual errors come from overgeneralization instead of
11、negative transfer. Errors, according to the contrastive analysis approach, are negative and had to be overcome or given up. In fact, errors produced in a learners second language utterance may very well be developmental errors and therefore, should not be looked upon simply as a failure to learn the
12、 correct form, but as an indication of the actual acquisition process in action. Developmental errors often result from the effort on the part of the learner to construct and test general rules of communication in the target language.Interlanguage consists of a series of interlocking and approximate
13、 linguistic systems in-between and yet distinct from the learners native and target languages. It represents the learners transitional competence moving along a learning continuum stretching from ones first language competence to the target language competence. As a type of linguistic system in its
14、own right, interlanguage is a product of second language training, mother tongue interference, overgeneralization of the target language rules, and communicative strategies of the learner. In principle, no human brain can store all the words and expressions of a language. What happens is that when p
15、rocessing the language they hear, children construct the grammar and make sense of the expressions according to the grammar. When producing utterances, they follow the internalized grammatical rules. Without the knowledge of the productive rules, it would be impossible for language users to produce
16、and understand an unlimited number of sentences which they have never heard before. Language acquisition is a genetically determined capacity that all humans possess. Although the development of a communicative system is not unique to human beings, the natural acquisition of language as a system of highly abstract rules and regulations for creative communication distinguishes humans from all other animal species. In this sense, humans can be said to be predisposed, that is,
