9. Instruction and L2 Acquisition

Tiyas Fauziah

2201411005

Rombel 4 / 103 – 104

9.   Instruction and L2 Acquisition

            One of the goals of SLA is to improve language teaching. Some researchers have studied what impact teaching has on L2 learning.

Form-focused instruction

       Language pedagogy has emphasized form-focused instruction. The Grammar Translation Method and the Audiolingual Method involve attempts to teach learners grammar, differing only in how this is to be accomplished. Communicative Language Teaching is premised on the assumption that learners do not need to be taught grammar before they can communicate.

Does form-focused instruction work?

       Teresa Pica compared three groups of L2 learners-an untutored group, a tutored group, and a mixed group. She found that the accuracy order of a number of grammatical features was broadly the same. These results led Pica to suggest that the effects of instruction may depend on the target structure that is being taught.

       There are strong theoretical grounds for believing that instruction will not have any long-lasting effect on the way in which learners construct their interlanguage systems. This claim can be tested by investigating whether instruction has any effect on the sequence of acquisition of particular grammatical structures. Another way of testing the claim is by designing instructional experiments to see if teaching a particular structure results in its acquisition. This study, led Pienemann to propose the teachability hypothesis which predicts that instruction can only promote language acquisition if the interlanguage is close to the point when the structure to be taught is acquired in the natural setting.

What kind of form-focused instruction works best?

       Some theories of SLA see interlanguage as driven by input rather than output. An experimental study carried out by Bill VanPatten and Teresa Cadierno was designed to investigate this. One group of learners was exposed to traditional production-based instruction, and another to input-based instruction where they had listen to and respond the sentences containing the target structure. The group that received the input-based instruction did far better on the comprehension test and just as well on the production test.

       The second issue, concerns consciousness-raising that refers to attempts to make learners aware of the existence of specific linguistic features in the target language. One way in which this can be done is by supplying the learner with positive evidence. An alternative approach is to provide negative evidence.

       To test whether positive input is sufficient, Martha Trahey and Lydia White designed a study in which eleven-year-old French learners of L2 English were given instruction where they were ‘flooded’ with input containing adverb sentences over a two-week period. The learners showed a dramatic increase in the use of object-adverb-verb-object (SOVA) sentences.

       Another study by White, found that giving learners explicit information about adverb sentences together with negative feedback did enable them to reduce instances of the SVAO eror. Other studies have also shown that learners are able to make use of negative evidence, in the form of teacher correction, to eliminate errors in their production.

Learner-instruction matching

       Learners vary in the particular types of ability they are strong in. Learners with differing kinds of ability may be able to achieve similar levels of success providing that the type of instruction enables them to maximize their strengths.

Strategy training

       Most of the research on strategy training has focused on vocabulary learning. Training students to use strategies that involve different ways of making associations involving target words has generally proved successful. These associations have been shown to promote both retention af and access to the target word. Other studies have been less convincing in demonstrating the effectiveness of strategy training.

Summary

       In this section we have examined whether it is possible to teach an L2. We have seen that direct instruction can help in anumber of ways. Direct instruction is not always successful nor are its effects always durable. Input-based instruction may prove as effective as production-based. Input-flooding may help students learn features in the input but does not destabilize interlanguage grammars. An alternative to direct instruction is strategy training. Uncertainty exists regarding the content, methodology, and outcomes of such training.

Questions :

1.    What is the meaning of form-focused instruction in L2 acquisition?

2.    What is the difference between production-based instruction and input-based instruction?