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Lesson 7
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Outline
Chapter 7 Ellis:Psycholinguistic aspects of Interlanguage
L1 Transfer
The role of consciousness in L2 acquisition
Processing operations
Communication strategies
Two types of communication models
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• Psycholinguistics or psychology of
language is the study of the psychological
and neurobiological factors that enable
humans to acquire, use, understand and
produce language (Wikipedia).
• Psycholinguistics is the study of mental
structures and processes involved in the
acquisition and use of language.
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L1 Transfer
• Language transfer (also known as L1
interference, linguistic interference, and
cross meaning) refers to speakers or
writers applying knowledge from their
native language to a second language.
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• When the relevant unit or structure of both
languages is the same, linguistic
interference can result in correct language
production called positive transfer.
Negative transfer occurs when speakers
and writers transfer points and structures
that are not the same in both languages.
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• Contrastive analysis is the systematic
study of a pair of languages with a view to
identifying their structural differences and
similarities (Wikipedia).
• The greater the differences between the
two languages, the more negative transfer
can be expected.
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• L1 transfer can result in avoidance.
• For example, Chinese and Japanese
learners of English avoid the use of
relative clauses because their languages
do not contain equivalent structures.
These learners make fewer errors in
relative clauses than Arabic learners of
English but only because they rarely use
them.
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• Erric Kellerman said that learners have
perceptions regarding the linguistic features of
their own language. Kellerman found that
advanced Dutch learners of English had clear
perception about which meanings of ‘breken’
(‘break’) were basic in their L1 and which were
unique. He also found that they were prepared
to translate a sentence like:
• Hij brak zijn been. (He broke his leg)
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The role of consciousness in L2
acquisition
• L2 learners, especially adults, seem to
have to work hard and to study the
language consciously in order to succeed.
• Krashen claims that the two knowledge
systems, learned and acquired L2
knowledge, are independent, and both of
them cannot be converted.
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• Schmidt argues that regardless of intentional or
incidental learning, it involves conscious
attention to features in the input. He also claims
that learning cannot take place without noticing.
Learners learn implicitly when they know rules
that guide their performance without any
awareness of what the rules consist of.
• Learners learn explicitly when they may have the
knowledge about the L2 but be unable to use
this knowledge in performance without
conscious attention.
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Explicit knowledge can help learners in developing
implicit knowledge in a number of ways:
• Explicit knowledge can only convert into implicit
knowledge when learners are at the right stage
of development.
• Explicit knowledge can facilitate the process by
which learners deal with features in the input.
• Explicit knowledge can help learners to move
from intake to acquisition by helping them to
notice the gap between what they have
observed in the input and the present state of
their interlanguage as manifested in their output.
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Processing operations
Another way of identifying the processes responsible for
interlanguage development is to deduce the operations
that learners perform from a close inspection of their
output.
Operating principles are strategies which children use to
extract and segment linguistic information from the
language they hear. Operating principles provide a
simple and attractive way of justifying the properties of
interlanguage.
However, it is not clear how many principles are needed
and the one that has been advanced are not mutually
exclusive.
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This multidimensional model tried to give an
explanation for both why learners acquire the
grammar of a language in a definite order and
also why some learners only develop very
simple interlanguage grammar.
The multidimensional model is a great theory of L2
acquisition because it proposes mechanisms to explain
why learners follow a definite acquisitional method.
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Communication strategies
L2 learners frequently experience problems in saying what
they want to say because of their inadequate knowledge.
If they do not know a word in the target language, they
can borrow a word from their L1 or use another targetlanguage.
Learners can also try to paraphrase the meaning of the
word, or even create a new word.
The choice of communication strategies will reflect the
learner’s stage of development.
Selinker pointed that communication strategies
constitute one of the processes responsible for learner
errors.
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Two types of communication models
• The first type involves the idea of ‘serial
processing.’
• The second type involves the idea of
‘parallel distributed processing.’
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