1. Second Language Acquisition & ALx
Two sisters at School

2. Characters
• Nazma
• Naseem
• Mrs. Raja
• Zakkia

3. Attitudes
• Feelings – affective
conditions
• Loneliness – trying to
understand
• Nazma does not interact
(Lge) Mrs. Raja

4. Education
• What is Education?
– Share knowledge
• Children learning
• Parents support
»Provoking
Tradition
Legislation
Policy

5. Characteristics
• Language use – socialization – cultural
experiences
• Learning at home
– School level
– Role of their grand mother
– Tv’s role
Qur’anic-Qur’an
Urdu (official lge in Pakistan) Literacy practices

6. Language acquisition
We are designed to walk… That
we are taught to walk is
impossible. And pretty much the
same is true of language. Nobody
is taught language. In fact you
can’t prevent the child from
learning it.
Noam Chomsky, The Human

7. • Language is extremely complex
• Children before 5 already know the complex system that
make up the grammar of a language:
– Syntactic
– Phonological
– Morphological
– Semantic and pragmatic rules of grammar
• Children acquire a system of rules that enables them to
construct and understand sentences, most of them have
never produced or heard before.
• Children are creative in the use of language
• Nobody teach grammatical rules to the children

8. Critical period hypothesis
• Brown (2007) defines CPH as . . .
“a biological timetable during which,
both first & second language is more
successfully accomplished”.
• Ellis (1997) defines CPH as . . .
a period during which “target-language
competence in an L2 can only be
achieved if learning commences before
a certain age is reached. (e.g. the
onset of puberty)”

9. Am I past it?
• If established theory states that L2
language acquisition is not achievable
beyond puberty, what’s the point in trying?
• If L2 is not achievable beyond puberty,
how was I able to learn my second
language at the age of 34?
• Does Ellis’ (1997) definition hold the key,
that competence in L2 is what theorists
are really arguing?

10. Conclusions
• Age is a factor to consider in second
language acquisition.
• Age should not be a deterrent to learning
a second language.
• Grammar, and its mastery, is possible in
all languages and at all ages, but is more
easily mastered during childhood.
• Accent is the most prominent determiner
of age of L2 acquisition

11. Social pychological
perspective on second
language acquisition

12. An innatist model:
Krashen’s input hypothesis
1. The Acquisition – Learning Hypothesis
- Adult second language learners have two
means for internalizing the target language
 The first is “acquisition”, a subconscious and
intuitive process of constructing the system
of a language, not unlike the process used
by a child to “pick up’’ a language.
 The second means is a conscious “learning”
process in which learners attend to form,
figure out rules, and are generally aware of
their own process.

13. - “Fluency in second language
performance is due to what we have
acquired, not what we have
learned.”
- Our conscious learning processes
and our subconscious acquisition
processes are mutually exclusive:
learning cannot “become”
acquisition.

14. The Affective Filter Hypothesis
- The best acquisition will occur in
environments where anxiety is low
and defensiveness absent, or in
contexts where “affective filter” is low.

15. A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVIST MODEL:
LONG’S INTERACTION HYPOTHESIS
Two preceding theories
The cognitive
Krashen’s Input model of
Hypothesis Second
Language
Acquisition
Focus to a considerable extent of the learners

16. A social constructivist model: Long’s
interaction hypothesis

17. A social constructivist model:
Long’s interaction hypothesis

18. Theories and Models of SLA
INNATIST COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTIVIST
(Krashen) (McLauglin/Bialystok) (Long)
•Subconcious acquisition •Interaction
•Controlled/ automatic
superior to “learning” & hypothesis
processing (McL)
“mornitoring” •Intake through
•Focal/pheripheral
•Comprehensible input social interaction
attention (McL)
(i+1) •Output hypothesis
•Restructuring (McL)
•Low affective filter (Swain)
•Implicit vs. explicit (B)
•Natural order of •HIGs (Seliger)
acquisition •Unanalyzed vs. analyzed
•Authenticity
knowledge(B)
•“zero option” for •Task-based
grammar instruction •Form-focused instruction
instruction