1. SLA Research: Where are we?
GRETA Conference
September 2000
Geoff Jordan, ESADE Idomas

2. What phenomena does SLA
theory try to explain?
• Egs of phenomena: tides, cancer, 2nd world
war, car rage
• In SLA: People whose native language is X
acquire a second language Y
• What is acquired? Skinner: a set of habits,
Chomsky: a type of knowledge, Bachman: a
set of competences

3. Phenomena to be explained
1. The role of internal mechanisms
a) Language specific: how similar are 1st. & 2nd
language acquisition processes? (Is UG available?)
b)Cognitive: is SLA similar to learning of any other
complex skill?
2. The role of the first language: the phenomenon
of transfer.
3. The role of psychological variables: how do
individual characteristics of the learner affect the
learning process?
4. The role of social and environmental factors
Mitchell and Myles, 1998, P.40

4. Towell & Hawkins’(1994)
Transfer - of grammatical properties from the L1 mental grammar into the mental
grammar that learners construct for the L2.
Staged Development - L2 learners go through a series of “transitional stages” towards the
target language, i.e. from the initial-state grammars that L2 learners construct (often heavily
influenced by transfer) they subsequently go through stages of development towards the
target language.
Systematicity - in the growth of L2 knowledge across learners, i.e. learners from different
L1 backgrounds acquiring an L2 under different conditions of exposure - naturalistic versus
classroom - often go through the same stages of development.
Variability - in learners’ intuitions about and production of the L2 at various stages of L2
development. These seem to allow for more than one variant for a given construction
where the target language has only one form.
Incompleteness - most L2 learners do not achieve native-like competence. This
phenomenon is referred to as fossilisation by Selinker (1972) and as incompleteness by
Schacter (1990).

5. Problems facing SLA Theory
• Proliferation
• Objectives
• Domain
• Contradictions
• Methodology

6. Research Methodology:
Rationalism or Relativism?
• Rationalists and Empiricists
• The problem of induction
• Positivists
• Popper
• P1 → TT1 → EE → P2 → TT2
P = problem
TT = tentative theory
EE = empirical experiments to test the theory

7. Problems with the Falsifiability
Criterion
• Observation data & instrumentation are
theory-laden
• Underdetermination
• Historically, not applied - thank goodness!

8. More criticism of falsifiability
• Kuhn
• Feyerabend
• Lakatos
• Lauden
• Bloor: The Strong Programme in the
Sociology of Science
• Post-modernism and Constructivism

9. Postmodernism
“Postmodernism begins with a loss of faith in the dreams of modernism. In place of
the lost dream of modernism, postmodernism gives us a new vocabulary, a new
language game, for helping us notice dimensions of experience that were obscured
by the modernist vision. It's a dynamic language game, with meanings evolving
and changing. And when you are within this language people may well say things
that you will want to challenge. Being post-modern is not endorsing a dogma. It is
just a new language game, but it is a powerful language game that calls attention
to dimensions of our reality that were obscured in our forgetting, our denial, such
as the political dynamics behind publications which then become recognised as
truth. (Shawver 2000, http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/curric/soc/postmode/post1.htm)

10. Constuctivism
“Constructivists are deeply committed to the view that what we take to be objective
knowledge and truth is the result of perspective. Knowledge and truth are created, not
discovered by mind. They emphasise the pluralistic and plastic character of reality –
pluralistic in the sense that reality is expressible in a variety of symbol and language
systems; plastic in the sense that reality is stretched and shaped to fit purposeful acts of
intentional human agents. They endorse the view that “contrary to common sense, there is
no unique “real world” that pre-exists and is independent of human mental activity and
human symbolic language.” (Bruner, 1986) In place of a realist view of theories and
knowledge, constructivists emphasise the instrumental and practical function of theory
construction and knowing” (Denzin and Lincoln 1998)

11. Against Relativism
• We can’t formalize the scientific method
• There’s no philosophical refutation of
radical scepticism
• Don’t confuse sociology of science with
philosophy of science
• Incomensurability not a big problem
• Ditto theory-laden observation and theory
complexity

12. The Rationalist/Objectivist Case
• Logic
• There’s a real world out there
• Popper’s “World 3”
• Consensibility & Consensuality - Ziman
• Universal, Communal, Sceptical,
Disinterested - Merton
• Is SLA (linguistics, sociolinguistics,
psychology, neurolinguistics, cognitive
science, social psychology) scientific?

13. 1. An SLA Research Methodology
I propose that researchers working in the field of SLA should agree on the following
assumptions and recommendations:
• An external world exists. We can study different phenomena in this world, make
meaningful statements about them, and improve our knowledge of them. This
amounts to a minimally realist epistemology.
• Research is inseperable from theory. All observation involves theorising. As
Popper (1959) argued, there is no way we can talk about something sensed and not
interpreted.
• Research is fundamentally concerned with problem-solving.
• We cannot formalize “the scientific method”. Science is not just experimentation in
a laboratory, and it is not just mathematics and physics. As McLaughlin (1987)
says, there is no one road to theory (we do not have to start with the careful
accumulation of data, for example), we need a multimethod approach.
• Research reports, discussion and theory should be consensible in Ziman’s term:
each message should not be so obscure that the recipient is unable either to give it
full assent or to offer well-founded objections.
• The exchange of these logically consistent messages should refer to recognisable
and reproducible events within the experience of individual scientists.
• All human beings are interchangeable as observers.
• Theories are accepted on a basis that is independent of the social and personal
characteristics of their originators.
• Theories are not personal property; individuals or groups of research workers are
obliged to communicate their results to the SLA community.
• Each researcher has the duty to ensure that the basis of his or her research is correct.

14. • All published research should be subjected to a high level of criticism by the SLA
community. As stated above “Ill-defined terms, ambiguities, unwarranted
conclusions, must be uncovered by the community as they strive for the clearest,
simplest expression of the theory.”
• Propositions made by those conducting SLA research should be capable of being
subjected to an empirical test. This implies that hypotheses should be capable of
being supported or refuted, and that research should be done in such a way that it
can be observed, evaluated and replicated by others.
• Ad hoc hypotheses should not be introduced into theories.
• Hypotheses are the beginning of attempts to solve problems. They may start as
questions, but eventually they will attempt some tentative explanation, usually in
terms of two or more related variables.
• Variables should be operationally defined.
• Hypotheses should lead to theories that organise and explain a certain group of
phenomena and the hypotheses about them.
• Theories are explanation of phenomena and are the final goal of research.
Descriptions and low-level theories should be unified in a general theory. What
McLaughnan (1987) calls “proto-theories”, and Long (1985b) has called "storehouse"
theories are only a collection of (often unrelated) generalisations about phenomena
(e.g. “Adult SL learners learn faster than children but attain lower levels of ultimate
proficiency” or “Learners pass through a certain developmental sequence of
structures”) and if these generalisations are not unified under a general theory, they
lead nowhere – they do not provide a coherent explanation of the phenomena we want
to explain. Thus it is necessary to try to fit together the bits.

15. Contrastive Analysis
• Structural linguistics + Behaviourism
• Learning of L1 will affect learning of L2
• Differences between L1 and L2 = problems
• Research results v. poor: unpredicted errors
occurred, predicted errors didn’t occur.
Dulay & Burt (1975) 5% of errors
explained by CA.
• NB: Only addresses 1 of phenomena, but offers a
coherent, testable theory with crystal clear
pedagogical implications

16. Chomsky’s UG
• Chomsky’s review of Skinner (57) a crucial
turning point.
• Language is inventive, learning is cognitive
• All languages share universal principles -
linguist’s task is to describe them
• Language learning simplified since we have
an innate mechanism (Poverty of stimulus)
• Principles & Parameters
• UG refers to FLA

17. Chomsky and SLA
• Principles and Parameters = a description
• The LAD = an explanation
• Is UG available to SL learners?
– No access
– Partial access
– Full access

18. Comments on Generative Grammar
• Addresses the “What” & “How” questions
• A very strong theory
• Grammaticality judgements “problematic”
• Falsification difficult
• Learning not over by 5
• General learning theory could explain it
• Limited scope

19. Meanwhile, in SLA the shift is to
a cognitive paradigm
• Error Analysis (Pit Corder 67): errors
indicate learners’ attempts to figure out the
L2
• Morpheme Studies (Dulay & Burt 72-75):
natural order of acquisition regardless of L1
• Selinker (72): Interlanguage
• Systematic staged development in SLA is a
common phenomenon

20. Krashen’s Monitor Model
“Humans acquire language in only one way
- by receiving comprehensible messages”
1. Acquisition-Learning
2. The Natural Order
3. The Monitor
4. Input
5. The Affective Filter
• A broad, powerful, intuitively appealing
theory with clear - radical - pedagogical
implications

21. Problems with Krashen’s
Hypotheses
• No role for transfer
• No account of effect of age
• Monitor only used for production?????
• Terms are ill-defined, and circular so the set
is incoherent
• Lack of empirical content, so untestable
• No linguistic theory

22. More Cognitive work
• The Multidimensional Model (Pienemann)
• The Competition Model (Bates & MacWinney)
• Wolfe Quintero
• Bialystock & Sharwwod Smith: Implicit &
Explicit knowledge
• McLaughlin: Automaticity & Restructuring
• Schmidt: Noticing

23. Long’s Interaction Hypothesis
• The negotiation of meaning through
repetitions, confirmation, comprehension, &
clarification checks, re-casting, etc. helps to
make input comprehensible
• For input -> intake there must be focus on
form (which negotiation of meaning helps)
• Swain: Canadian immersion learners
showed that input not enough. Learners
need comprehensible output.

24. Sociolinguistics
• Age: older is faster but younger is better
• Aptitude: probably very important
• Motivation: intragrative & instrumental
• Personality: no clear evidence
• Cognitive style: NLP & Learner strategies
• Shumann’s Acculturalisation/Pidginisation
approach: Alberto’s social & psychological
distance explains his lack of success
• Sociocultural perspective: Vygotsky

25. Post-Modernism & Constructivism
• SLA must be liberated from its science
envy
Postmodernism rejects the idea of an objective reality. Reality is a social
construction, the product of interactions between actors in a social setting. Such
factors as social structure, class, and power relations play an essential role in the
creation of reality. There are a multiplicity of realities, and none of these realities
has any more legitimate claim than any other to being viewed as the reality.
• Lantoff, Van Lier, Pennycock, Block, Firth,
Wagner, et al: relativist approach to SLA
research: ethnography of communication
and hermeneutic studies
• So a developing war between quantative &
qualitative research methods