Applied linguistics: Second Language Acquisition - Essay Example

Running Header: Applied linguistics SLA Name School Date SLA is any language that takes place sometimes later than acquisition of the first language, which can therefore be any other language other than ‘mother tongue’ Mitchell & Myles. According to Mitchell & Myles, these languages encompasses both languages of wider communication encountered within a local region or community. Firth & Wagner (1997) argued that the identity of the SLA learner is the researcher source rather than a topic of investigation as in most cases the learner is perceived to be an adult receiving education in S/FL. They continued to say that the relevance of the learner identity is not an issue in SLA. More importantly, the learner is viewed as a defective communicator. In his reply to Firth and Wagner on misinterpretation of his work in input interaction approaches , the notion that the leaner is a deficient communicator and their data analysis, Gass discusses the main idea about acquisition and how it takes place in learning. He asserted that one must consider language in context. F&W portrayed clearly that cognitive and communicative approaches are mutually incomplete in SLA. According to Firth & Wagner"s (1997) the illustration given where there is an interlanguage communication between a Danish and an English communicator , the learner has difficulties expressing the questions in English where as she would have expressed herself better in Danish. This leads to misunderstanding on the part of the native speaker. In relation to that, they demonstrated the feeling of incompetence during the communication with the native speaker to be a psychological problem not a social problem. They eventually confirm the importance of SLA and the development of language based on both cognitive and social approaches.This according to Firth & Wagner, the learner’s defective -communicator mindset has prevented the authors from considering the possibility that, in code switching, the learner has avoided difficulty and preempted a problem, not solved or experienced one. in relation to that , they have questioned Faerch and Kasper's (1983), claim that 'although problems in interaction are necessarily "shared" problems and can be solved by joint efforts, they originate in either of the interactants'. Schmitt(2002),suggested that when a learner wants to interact, the first thing that he would do is to contextualize the form of the message in his mind and then he utters it in a form of output. Because interaction and communication are structured and made meaningful, they suggest that they are likely to be recognized as problems in interaction. In this sense, it may be more useful to view problems in communication as contingent social phenomena, as intersubjective entities, and not invariably as 'things' possessed by individuals. My position , I agree with Firth and Wagner that the argument on the SLA competence needs to be analysed as it is a transitional process that has a distinctive and visible end. This can be effected by making SLA be acquisition of “native –like’ competence. However, two consequences arise that is one the notion of ‘acquisition’ is far less clear- cut than some scholars appear to assume in their response on SLA.two, that the study of foreign language interaction in a variety of natural , social contexts outside the formal educational environment must be regarded as centrally relevant for the study of acquisition. Sociolinguistics, relies on raw language in the field, rather than the more controlled and unnatural formal environment. I also agree that it is true that the learner sometimes feels incompetence when he speaks with a native speaker. This is referered to as psychological factor. Psycholinguistics deals with the factors that enable a learner to learn a language with himself and in this case it is very important. It tells us the things that that might affect the learner development and things that might not help him in development. Acquisition and learning do not stop outside the classroom. It is in relation to competence debate that I agree that language use forms cognition. I also agree with Firth and Wagner that SLA is in danger of loosing contact with research language and social interaction. This is visible in three ways, the data and contexts examined in SLA studies, two , methods of analysis and the analytic assumption of ‘learner deficiency interact’ and finally the theoretical understanding of what constitutes discourse and communication Firth, A. & Wagner, (1998). In agreeing with F & W that SLA is in danger of loosing contact with research language and social interaction, the data that has been collected on SLA, has been mainly in lab-like situations. This situation triggers a certain set of interactional activities as they do not find comparable evidence in their data from naturally occurring, everyday, or workplace interactions between speakers of different languages.Their conclusion was that experimental, elicited data may provoke the nonnative speaker. For this reason, such data cannot unproblematically be taken as a basis for generalizations (1998). On the method deployed by interacts on SLA, it has been perceived as being underdeveloped, imperfect, and faulty, and indeed, interactants may display an orientation to this. They further say that they do not subscribe to SLA's generally adopted methodology for the analysis of interaction. And that even though they would not wish to exclude all analyses of data elicited in experimental settings, they would maintain that such data types are useful once they have been subjected to a deficit-free description of the interactional features in the data. The whole SLA issue of interactionally modified discourse presupposes a notion of nonmodified, somehow 'pure' or 'real' communication. In SLA, communication appears to be viewed as the transfer of information that can be accomplished appropriately (i.e, paralleling or mirroring the native speaker 'baseline') or in an inappropriate, deficient manner. Only if one adopts this 'deficient' model does the notion of interactional modification of meaning make sense. Unfortunately, this view of communication cannot be upheld when looking at interactions empirically, without preconceived ideas of what is 'normal' or 'appropriate.' Communication is not simply transfer of information in a 'normal,' that is, native-speaker equivalent, manner. What may appear 'abnormal' to observer-analysts may be regarded as appropriate and 'normal' by the interactants Firth, A. & Wagner, (1998). According to Schmitt(2002),the first language can easily affect the second language and that refer to a psychological thing. Human mind is equipped with a linguistics device that enables the learner to manage the language use. This also refers to things that haven’t to do with outside factors, but rather personal motivation and confidence. In my opinion, when a learner learns a language he would rather deals with his mind more. Learning can be more cognitive rather than social.To a certain extent, a learner should, also, know how to deal with things outside to be a successful communicator. I finally, agree with F & W and to a certain point I can’t ignore the some social factors that Gass calls for attention too. The notion of prescriptive and descriptive grammar and the importance of them for language learners . Grammar is the main structure of our ability to express ourselves. We can monitor the meaning and the effectiveness of our conversations by becoming aware of how grammar works. It is of importance to know that grammar can be descriptive or prescriptive which takes a place in language learning. According to huddleston, R (147), ‘descriptive grammar’ aims at presenting the grammar that underlines the actual usage of speakers of the language, while prescriptive grammar aims at telling its readers what grammatical rules they should follow. In relation to further explanation of descriptive and prescriptive grammar, there is a common way to divide them and this is to label them descriptive and prescriptive. A Prescriptive grammarian believes that certain forms that are used are correct and that others are incorrect even with being used by native speakers. They believe that the modern linguistics are responsible for a decline in the standard of the language. On the other hand, Descriptive grammarians tend to look at the way people speak and then try to create rules that account for the language usage, accepting alternative forms that are used regionally and also being open to forms used in speech that traditional grammars would describe as errors. According to Schmitt (2002,p.20) “descriptive grammar may also be a more detailed look at language, including not only syntax and morphology, but also phonetics, phonology, semantics and lexis” he uses a good example of ‘ I don’t understand nothing you said…Double negative is used in this sentence to show how really people use descriptive grammar in casual conversations. The importance of descriptive and prescriptive for language learners. According to Allison, D., ‘Community views and values about language are critically important for language education. Establishes views and values on language use in communities can often be traced to the impact of past schooling on present life. These views and values in turn affect the circumstances and goals of contemporary language teaching. A simple opposition between prescriptive and descriptive approaches to language use and language development among classroom language learners may not however be good. A number of linguistics have come to question any simple and absolute distinction between descriptive and prescriptive approaches to language study and language use in general. From a descriptive point of view, standard varieties are at best ill defined, in view of the extent of linguistic variation among different speakers and writers Allison, D. (26). According to English for students, both the Descriptive and prescriptive grammar are important to the language learners as descriptive grammar looks at the way language is used and then tries to analyse it and formulate rules about the structure. It does not deal with good or bad language i.e the form of and structures that might not be used by speakers of standard English which might be regarded as valid. Descriptive grammar is very important for learners in order to be a good communicator. However, it is required that a learner should have a knowledge of the language proper use in settings like casual conversations. It is acceptable to use contractions and starting sentences with conjunctions. However, students should be aware of not using this kind of grammar in academic papers. The prescriptive grammar which lays out rules about the structure of a language, unlike descriptive grammar deals with what the grammarian believes to be right and wrong, good or bad language use. Both types of grammar have their supporters and their detractors, which in all probability suggests that both have their strengths and weaknesses. Explain the scope of pragmatics and sociolinguistics and how they are related to second language teaching and learning. According to Trosborg, A. pragmatics is the integral part of linguistics. Pragma means an activity or deed, hence pragmatic means relation between signs or linguistics expressions and those who use them. In relation to that , instead of viewing the language system in isolation ,various linguistic disciplines such as sociolinguistics have attempted to relate language to extralinguistic factors and to explore the nature of communication Trosborg, A(5). He further explains that by exemplifying the tendency in linguistics to focus on the language system and deal with the formal properties of language exclusively, transformational generative grammar aims at formulating the finite set of rules which enable the language learner to generate and understand an infinite number of grammatical sentences. Pragmatics is very of important to both teachers and learners. It clarifies how language users are able to overcome the non clear massage in learning. It can also be helpful to teachers to help them use the best way in teaching by choosing the best type of vocabulary that might work well with any students in class. This sometimes is necessary to a teacher as he/she teaches a class that has many people from different background. It is also important to students to be an effective communicator in greetings, requesting, ordering, and taking turn in conversation in class. Sociolinguistics is referred to as the study of language in use (M&M,p.224).this means it studies language in its social context and analyzes the actual language used by different speakers in order to explain language variation and language change. Understanding how language and society work together is very important. When we study sociolinguistics aspects like gender, geographical and social mobility, age and social network are very important to be taken into consideration. More importantly, this field investigates different language attitude on different levels of interpersonal communication. Variations are possible in studying sociolinguistics like phonological, grammatical, lexical, discourse variations, and linguistic variations. One might not use a certain language in business or professional settings. Sociolinguistics can help learners to increase the awareness in important issues like language variation and language policy. It can, also, be a very good tool to solve learners problems in communication since a learner needs to be a good and effective communicator in that society. It is also very crucial for SLA teachers to teach their students language variability and to be aware of differences among students. Sociopragmatics is concerned with the analysis of significant patterns of interaction in social situations and in particular social systems. There is a good example is where speech acts may be realized differently in different social contexts and situations as well as in different social groups within a speech. Sociolinguistics theory has emphasized the use of linguistics forms and argued for a shift in emphasis from the current preoccupation with speaker identity to a focus on dyadic patterns of verbal interaction as the expression of social relationships Trosborg,A (37). In further relation to second language teaching and learning, there is a strong philosophical approach to speech acts and in line with the growing concern for communicative competence. Reference list Allison, D. Language testing and evaluation. : an introductory course .n.d 2010 Descriptive and Prescriptive Grammar. Retreived October 11, 2010 from http://www.english- forstudents. com/Descriptive-and- Prescriptive.html Faerch and Kasper's (1983) pdf Firth, A. & Wagner, (1997) .pdf Faerch and Kasper's (1983).pdf Huddleston,R. (2010). Introduction to the grammar of English descriptive grammar vs. prescriptive grammer. (pg 147) Trosborg,A.(1994). Interlanguage pragmatics: requests, complaints, and apologies Published .Mouton de Gruyter (pg 5) Mitchell, R & Myles, F., (2001) . Second language theories. Routledge (pg. 26),(144) SCHMITT, N. (2002) AN INTRODUCTION TO APPLIED LINGUISTICS. (pg20) Read More