SECOND LANGUAGE

ACQUISITON
Lourdes Ortega
By:
Eduardo Alberto
Alejandra Durán
 QUESTIONS SLA RESEARCHERS
WANT TO CLEAR UP
What does it take to
get advanced Difference Factors of
language and s and variability
literacy similarities for L2L
competencies

How is an L2
learned after the L1
has been learned?
 SLA SHARES ITS INTERESTS
WITH...
Bilingual First Language
Acquisition (BFLA) First
Language
Acquisition
(FLA)
Language How infants and
development among children learn their
infants and children first language
when surrounded by when they grow up
two or more languages surrounded by one
from birth language only.
 Do you think
there’s a
DEBATE 1 difference
between SLA and
BFLA?
 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SLA,
BFLA AND FLA
SLA
Relatively mature users of at
least one language, often more.
Relatively sophisticated and
increasingly fine-tuned social
and conceptual structures.
BFLA and FLA researchers
typically assume naturalistic
conditions of language learning
BFLA AND FLA
infants and toddlers are
investigated at the critical point
in life when they are
discovering human language.
Must develop socially and
conceptually in tandem with
developing linguistically
 SLA researchers, investigate
language learning in any
possible context. (naturalistic
acquisition within a non-
instructional community and
formal instruction of various
kinds)
 AWAKENINGS OF SLA:
INTERLANGUAGE
Corder (1967) and Selinker
(1972): to treat errors as
objects of study for
understanding L2
acquisition.

Learners: active and rational

agents who engaged in the
discovery of underlying L2
rules.

Investigations more
focused on cognitive and
psycholinguistic aspects of
acquisition
 FROM FIRST THEORIES TO THE COGNITIVE AND
LINGUISTIC EMPHASES OF THE 1990S

1980 1985 1989

McLaughlin 2001
Stephen White
an Hawkins
Krashen 1991
additional
´s Larsen-
language Formal
Monitor is a
Freeman
Universal and Long linguistic
model complex,
Grammar SLA prism
input and cognitive cognitive-
affect at process interactio
the similar to nist prism
any other PIAGET
unconscio
us level human
learning
 Do Mind and
Environment
must be
DEBATE 2 separated when
analyzing the
SLA process or
not?
THEORETICAL EXPANSIONS: SOCIOCULTURALISM
AND EMERGENTISM

James Lantolf Larsen-Freeman

The construction of and Long 1991
new knowledge arises Surrounding external
in the social plane and
environment are used for
gradually becomes internally driven learning
internalized (noticing)
psychologically by the
individual.
 Which key

DEBATE 3 factors do you

think are relevant
on SLA research?
 KEY THEMES IN SLA
RESEARCH
Age
Crosslinguisti
c influences.

Formal
instruction
 How do age,
crosslinguistic
DEBATE 4 influences and
environment/cognition
affect SLA?
 THREE APPROACHES TO EXPLAINING VARIABILITY
OF L2 LEARNING ACROSS INDIVIDUALS

Individual differences
research Socio-dynamic
 Language aptitude
 Motivation

Qualitative, sociocultural,
and critical perspective
 Socioeconomic qualities
 Individual agency
 THE ROLE OF
INSTRUCTION IN SLA

Instruction that is designed to

present language or to directly
summon learners to pay attention
to language leads to more
tangible results.
 LOOKING INTO THE
New interest in areas such as FUTURE
L2 gestures, conceptual
structures, literacy,
discursive practices, and
identities
in-depth investigation of the
multiple directions in which all
the languages known by an
individual interact
 CONCLUSIONS
SLA seeks to explain
human language
developments across a wide
variety of
naturalistic,instructed, and
mixed contexts.
SLA seeks to explain
human language
developments across a wide
variety of
naturalistic,instructed, and
mixed contexts. variations in surrounding
linguistic, educational,
social, and agentive
affordances are the
challenges SLA researchers
must contend with