SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

And

ENGLSIH LANGUAGE TEACHING

Magdalena Bobek

Introduction

Theories of second language acquisition have for many years tried to influence its

development and continue to do so even today. Each perspective, though many have been

based on little or insufficient evidence, has attempted to open the door to a newer and better

understanding of what language learning really entails giving rise to new approaches to

second language teaching. One of the many theorists, David Block (2003:4), has suggested

the need for 'a broader, socially informed and more sociolinguistically oriented SLA that does

not exclude the more mainstream psycholinguistic one, but instead takes on board the

complexity of context, the multi-layered nature of language and an expanded view of what

acquisition entails'.

In my assignment, by examining key theories that have attemped to influence second

language acquisition (hereafter SLA) through the years, I would like to show an

understanding of the reasons why SLA has developed the way it has and in the light of my

own teaching experience and the reading material, I will attempt to examine the validity of

some of these theories in practice and try to show that besides the linguistic and

psycholinguistic approaches in SLA, social context and sociolinguistic factors cannot be

excluded, but play an important role in language learning and development, as advocated by

Block.

The Behaviourist Theory and Contrastive Analysis

The 'wide variety' of SLA theories that have developed through the years, as pointed out by

Thornbury (2006:1), is partly due to 'the enormous diversity of contexts in which second

languages are learned', as well as the 'variety of situations and purposes for the learning of a

second language (ibid:7). He informs us that the complexity of SLA is influenced by

'linguistic factors', such as the learner's first language; the different kinds of input that learners

are exposed to; external factors, such as the social context and the learner's 'internal factors',

such as their personality and capabilities (ibid). This may help explain why many issues

regarding SLA 'are still inconclusive, and often controversial' (ibid), which makes researchers'

work even more difficult as they 'have not yet arrived at a unified or comprehensive view as

to how second languages are learnt' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:2), but instead have tried to

analyse language development each from their own perspective, namely from a linguistic,

psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic point of view (Thornbury, 2006:22).

Early linguists and psycholinguists were primarily concerned with the learner's 'inner mental

mechanisms […] for processing, learning and storing new language knowledge' (Mitchell

and Myles, 2004:24). As Mitchell & Myles (ibid:223) put it, they

largely concentrated on modelling the development of language within the individual

learner, in response to an environment defined fairly narrowly as a source of linguistic

information. In much of this work sociolinguistic issues were addressed only as

afterthoughts, if at all.

One of the dominant early psycholinguistic theories known as behaviourism saw language

learning 'as a formation of habits', where 'through repeated reinforcement a certain stimulus'

would 'elicit the same response time and again' until it became a habit (ibid:30). 'Learning

would take place by imitating and repeating the same structures time after time' and there was

a strong belief that 'practice makes perfect' (ibid:31). Coursebooks and teachers' manuals that

I came across in my early teaching career were full of drilling exercises, which proved to be

very tedious for pupils at times and caused them quite a few problems, because the sole aim

was to get to know the given structure at surface level without internalizing it. The drills

seemed very archaic and robot-like, as many pupils had no mental register of the meanings of

certain words or phrases that they were simply forced to repeat.

The learner's first language (L1) soon came into play, however, as it was said to 'interfere with

this process, either helping or inhibiting it' depending on how different the structures in the

second language (L2) were from those in the first (ibid). As a result teachers began

concentrating on teaching 'structures which were believed to be difficult' that is 'those that

were different in the first and second languages' (ibid:32). The emphasis on the differences

and difficulties between languages led to so-called Contrastive Analysis, where researchers

compared 'pairs of languages in order to pinpoint areas of difference' (ibid), which would in

turn help in the teaching of the second or foreign language. However, teachers at the time

experienced that the predictions made by Contrastive Analysis did not always hold true in the

classroom and were not always reliable (ibid:37). Even today, according to Pica (1994:52),

both teachers and researchers acknowledge that there is no guarantee that the 'differences' or

similarities' between a learner's L1 and L2 will bring about difficulty or ease in SLA. What

has been proven, however, is that

learners' L1 can be a powerful influence on language development, but it can be

suppressed, enhanced, or otherwise modified by the contributions of a broad range of

linguistic, psychosocial, and cultural factors. (ibid).

Zobl, for example, found that 'L1 plays a different role at specific stages of L2 development',

such as in mastering 'article rules' (ibid:53), which I have found is something that many young

Slovenian learners of English as their L2 have difficutly with. Slovenian does not have as

developed an article system as English, and nouns can stand alone in almost any situation.

When speaking or writing English, pupils tend to use the more 'explicit one' (ibid) where 'a' or

'an' are required or use no article at all. Another observation I have made is that the

pronunciation and structures learners use, change to suit the situation they find themselves in.

Like Dickerson (ibid), I have found that pupils will transfer sounds from their L1 more often

in casual conversation than when involved in more formal tasks such as reading or writing.

This seems to be a sign of the need to satisfy their sociolinguistic need which is to be

understood and accepted by their peers. It is also a fact, at least in my experience that 'certain

L2 linguistic contexts are especially sensitive to influence from learners' L1', such as L2 final

consonant clusters '/kt/ or /ks/' (Sato, 1984 in Pica, 1994:53), which are simply not

pronounced by some learners even if they do write them correctly, often causing problems in

the complete understanding of the utterance. Even the final /v/ sound as in the words believe,

five, drive is pronounced as /w/ by many young Slovenian learners probably due to the fact

that in Slovenian such an ending sound is not common and so cannot be automatically

transfered to L2. The extent of L1 transfer, however, is only one of the many factors involved

in understanding the language learning process.

Systemiticity and Variability in SLA

Key developments in the 1970s regarding first language acquisition in young children shed

new light on SLA and led to fundamental changes in language research. Researchers became

interested in 'the language produced by learners or their 'interlanguage', and focused on 'the

systematic investigation of second language learners' errors', better known as 'Error Analysis'

(Mitchell and Myles, 2004:38-39), which involved 'charting and classifying learner language,

including developmental patterns' (Thornbury, 2006:30). It was soon evident 'that the

majority of errors made by second language learners do not come from their first language',

but are rather 'learner-internal in origin'(Mitchell and Myles, 2004:38). The shift from

Contrastive Analysis to that of Error Analysis 'represents a shift from the behaviourist view

of language-learning-as-habit-formation to the more mentalist view of language-learning-as

hardwired' (Thornbury, 2006:30). Researchers found 'that children all over the world go

through similar stages, use similar constructions in order to express similar meanings, and

make the same kinds of errors' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004::34). The theory of Universal

Grammar, developed by Noel Chomsky, states that in learning their L1 children have an

'innate language faculty to guide them' regardless of the 'messy input' they are exposed to,

which may include 'false starts, slips of the tongue, etc.' (ibid:55), even though it could be

argued that L1 input especially from parents and caretakers is not necessarily 'messy' (ibid) or

'noisy', but is ''simpler' than the full adult version' because it is 'designed for easy learning'

(Larsen-Freeman and Long, 1991:115) as its main goal is 'to understand and be understood'

(Brown, 1977:12). Chomsky claimed 'that children follow some kind of pre-programmed,

internal route in acquiring language' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:37). Another development at

the time was Brown's famous 'morpheme study' on first language learning, which proved that

there exists an 'order of acquisition' of grammatical morphemes(ibid:34). When applied to

second language learners, it proved that a 'set order' of acquisition holds true for SLA as well,

where the learners are 'guided by internal principles […] largely independent of their first

language' (ibid:43). All this helps explain why SLA is considered both 'highly systematic' and

'highly variable' (Myles, 2002 in Thornbury, 2006:12-13), two of the main focuses of

language research. It is systematic in the sense of 'the route of development, (the nature of the

stages all learners go through when acquiring the second language', which, according to

Myles, 'remains largely independent of both the learner's mother tongue (L1) and the context

of learning (e.g. whether instructed in a classroom or acquired naturally by exposure)' (ibid).

It is considered variable with reference to 'either the rate of the learning process […] or the

outcome of the learning process (how proficient learners become), or both', which Myles

informs us 'are highly variable from learner to learner' (ibid). However, researchers, whose

'prime goal' is 'to document and explain the developmental route' taken in SLA and 'the

universal mental processes available to all normal human beings', 'are less concerned with the

speed or rate of development' and 'tend to minimize or disregard social and contextual

differences among learners' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:24).

The Cognitive Approach versus Communicative Competence

A good example of this type of approach is the cognitive perspective, which does 'not view

the learner as a social being', but is moreover 'interested in the learner's mind, as a processor

of information' (ibid:129). Cognivists are interested in how human memory works and how it

stores second language information (ibid:99). They believe that 'achieving mastery in a

second language is essentially the same process as achieving mastery in a skill' (Thornbury,

2006:61), and that 'cognitive skills drive language development forward' (ibid:83). There may

be some similarities between learning a skill and learning a language. Skills involve both

theory and practice, and second language learners also have to have some sort of knowledge

of language and its properties before they can produce it. There is also a certain amount of

automaticity involved in language learning, especially where the acquisition of new

grammartical structures and vocabulary is concerned. However, I do not find that 'the

movement from controlled to automatic processing via practice (repeated activation)', as

suggested by McLaughlin (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:101) or Anderson's 'declarative

knowledge' becoming 'proceduralised', by activating 'the same routine' successfully 'a large

number of times' (ibid:104), is enough for a learner's interlanguage to develop. Like Pica

(1994:60) I find that today language skills are not dealt with in isolation, but are practised 'in

conjunction with distinctively different activities involving student group work and classroom

discussion'. I cannot fully agree with the view that just by ''chunking' the more mechanical

elements of a task and moving them into long term memory' and then drawing on them

whenever needed, (Thornbury, 2006:62) is enough for interlanguage development. 'Some

language learning' does involve 'the memorisation of vocabulary, including multi-word units

(chunks) as a means of achieving fluency' (ibid:79), but language is more complex than that,

as each learning situation is a challenge in itself because it requires different levels of ability

of which the learner must always be conscious. 'Routinized operations (automatic strategies)',

as advocated by Donato and McCormick (1994:455), 'can become conscious goal-directed

actions if the conditions under which they are carried out change', and learners then have to

use different strategies to achieve their goal. It is, therefore, not only a matter of retrieving

knowledge from long term memory, but knowing how to rearrange it and put it to use to suit a

given situation. Communicative competence' or the ability to be able to 'participate

appropriately' in 'speech events with their own distinctive structures and routines in current

urban society', such as 'telephone conversations, service encounters (in shops, banks, etc.),

classroom lessons or job interviews […] has been seen […] as the broad eventual target of

SLL' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:240). 'Knowing how to make a complaint', as Thornbury

(2006:86) writes, involves not just knowing how to formulate the appropriate utterance, but

also knowing under what conditions a complaint will be recognised as such'. 'Real-world

situations', where there may not be a 'one-to-one match between form and function' (ibid:85-

86), but where the meaning can be deciphered from the context with very little use of

grammar (ibid:89), need to be understood. Learners should be given as many opportunies as

possible to participate in class activities involving conversations and dialogues, so that they

can gradually learn to respond appropriately to the situations they will encounter in real life. It

is, therefore, very important for learners to consider the effect of context on language and to

be able to distinguish between the pragmatic and syntactic modes of expression.

Factors Influencing Input and Intake in SLA

Even though the route of language development may be the same, learners may 'differ greatly

in the degree of success that they achieve' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:25), possibly, as

summarized by Thornbury (2006:14-15), due to the 'extent of L1 transfer', their attitudes,

motivation and learning style; the kind of opportunities that are available for language use; as

well as the amount and type of input they are exposed to. Stephen Krashen's input hypotheses,

encouraged researchers 'to examine more closely the characteristics of the language input

being made available to second language learners' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:166). Krashen

considered acquistion as a 'subconscious process' […] 'identical […] to the process children

utilize in acquiring their first language', and learning as a 'conscious process', which occurs

when the learner focuses on 'form' and learns about 'the linguistic rules of the target language'

(ibid:45). Learning, according to Krashen, only helps monitor language output, which is

otherwise entirely acquired (McLaughlin, 1987:24). In practice, however, it is very difficult or

even impossible to assess when a learner's production is the result of a conscious or

subconscious process. Perhaps at the very beginning of SLA one can say that learning has

more of a monitoring or editing role, but as the learner becomes more fluent in the language,

both acquisition and what has been learned merge into one. Successful L2 learning does not

only involve knowing language grammar rules as such, but among other things also language

structures, vocabulary, style and appropriateness. When a second language is being acquired

in a country, where learners have very little or no opportunity to practise their L2 outside the

classroom, they cannot acquire it subconsciously through their environment as they would

their L1. Pica reminds us that even if a learner 'lives in a country where the language under

study is spoken widely in the community, does not guarantee opportunities for integration

with its users. And even when there are opportunities for integration, language learning is not

always guaranteed' (1994:70), which is why interaction in the virtual environment of the

classroom is of such great importance in language acquisition even though it might be

considered a poor substitute for the natural environment.

It is difficult to ascertain just how much direct exposure to the target language outside the

classroom affects SLA, because it depends on the 'elusive connections between both the L2

culture and those cultural values that students bring to their learning experience'(ibid:72). Pica

points out that 'learners who are exposed to more than one variety of L2 may choose 'higher

prestige and teacher models as their target while others 'may select target models based on

peers, friends, or members of their own ethnic group' (ibid:71). Still others may not feel the

need for any kind of integration, or instruction for that matter, such as the example of Santo in

the European Science Foundation Project (ESF), who, as Schumann states, 'seemed not to

care a lot about integration, and was happy enough to speak a pidginised form of English, so

long as he succeeded in getting his meanings across' (Thornbury, 2006:94).

According to Schumann (ibid:163) 'success in SLA could be predicted by the extent to which

learners are willing to adapt to the target language culture, i.e. to acculturate'. One of the

obstacles for failing to acculturate is social distance, which can be seen in the examples

described by Norton (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:243) of the Polish immigrant girl, Eva, who,

despite the fact that she was attending English classes, found it difficult to integrate into the

target language community, because she had little or no opportunity to interact in the target

language. Nonetheless she soon 'gained enough confidence to find conversational openings'

and gradually 'gained acceptance as a 'legitimate speaker' (ibid). In Saliha's situation,

however, even though she is a student at Plato College, in her real-life experience she feels

very intimidated by her inability and struggle to express herself in L2 mainly due to the social

distance between herself and her employer, who 'has the power to influence when she can

speak, how much she can speak and what she can speak about' (Ternar, 1990:327-328 in

Norton, 2000:1). These learners' success or lack of it depends largely on their ability to gain

'access to the social and verbal activities of the target language community of practice,

drawing on social and intellectual resources to help overcome difficulties of subordination

and isolation, and finally on the willingness from their respective communities to 'adapt and

accept them as legitimate participants' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:243-244). If the classroom

is viewed in Toohey's words, as 'a community of practice'(ibid:241), and a good learning

situation is evident, one in which there is little social difference between the target language

group and the L2 group, where a positive attitude to assimilation prevails (Ellis, 2000 in

Thornbury, 2006:163), then language acquisition can have fruitful results. However, attitudes

towards language vary from learner to learner and some may be satisfied just by achieving the

basic learner variety of language 'to meet their immediate communicative needs' (Mitchell and

Myles, 2004:156), and may not have the desire to go beyond it while others may have low

self-esteem, which may hinder their understanding of the input regardless of how receptive to

it they are. Even though Norton states that '[I]t is through language that a person negotiates a

sense of self within and across different sites at different points in time, and it is through

language that a person gains access to – or is denied access to – powerful social networks that

give learners the opportunity to speak' (2000:5), a 'learner’s motivation to speak is mediated

by investments that may conflict with the desire to speak' (Pierce, 1995:19).

It may be a question of the learner's social identity […] whether defined by ethnicity, by

language, or any other means' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:246). If these learners find

themselves in 'life-threatening situations', where their interlanguage is being questioned, they

may show 'resistence' or 'a complete withdrawal from second language interaction' and look

for 're-assertion' in their first language identity and switch to using their L1 only (ibid:248), or

they may adopt 'the strategy of silence to avoid humiliation'(Thornbury, 2006:171). Learners

have to feel comfortable in the environment where SLA is taking place and be positively

motivated by their teachers as well as by their peers if they are to develop their interlanguage.

A Look at Comprehensible Input and Comprehensible Output

Another factor to consider is input itself. According to Krashen the only thing learners need

for language acquisition to take place is 'comprehensible input', which he defines in his input

hypothesis as 'second language input just beyond the learner's current second language

competence' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:48), the level of which is very difficult if not

impossible to determine, as each individual's current second language competence is unique.

In Krashen's view 'If input is understood, and there is enough of it, the necessary grammar is

automatically provided' (ibid), so teachers do not have to explicitly teach it. It would seem,

therefore, that grammar instruction is a waste of time. However, in many cases in the

classroom teaching grammar has proven to be essential in getting learners acquainted with

how language functions, especially if the rules governing L1 differ greatly from those

governing L2, as the differences may cause even greater difficulties in mastering more

complex L2 structures later on. I would have to agree with Pica (1994:67) that 'the

effectiveness of grammar instruction appears to depend largely on selection and sequencing of

grammar rules and careful assessment of learner readiness'. It also depends on how effective

and relevent the grammar is to the learner's needs and purpose for learning the language,

especially if these purposes are academic, such as school-leaving exams, in which case the

learner cannot afford not to master them. Put simply, mastering grammar gives the learner the

advantage over his/her knowledge of L2, and makes working with L2 easier and less stressful

with whatever task is at hand. Of course, the ideal method of instruction would be 'a balance

[…] between explicit instruction and more inductive, communicative procedures' (ibid),

which allow the learners not only the opportunity to practice the rules, but also to use

language more freely in different situations. It is also important that learners 'let […] input in'

(Mitchell and Myles, 2004:48). Bardovi-Harlig and Reynolds (1995:127) argue that 'input

enhancement which includes focused noticing as well as positive evidence provides learners

with an awareness which helps input [to] become intake'. They advocate 'using authentic text

to present positive evidence', followed by 'focused noticing exercises', as well as 'a range of

production tasks to provide contexualized practice' (ibid:124).

Michael Long argues that 'in order to understand more fully the nature and usefulness of input

for SLL, greater attention should be paid to the interactions in which learners are

engaged'(Mitchell and Myles, 2004:160), because when learners are 'engaged with their

interlocutors in negotiations around meaning, the nature of the input might be qualitatively

changed' and 'become increasingly well-targeted to the particular developmental needs of the

individual learner' (ibid). Long found that when it came to solving ongoing communication

difficulties in interactions between native speakers and non-native speakers, native speakers

would resort to conversational tactics such as 'repetition, confirmation checks, comprehension

checks or clarification requests […] not with any conscious motive to teach grammar', but to

'fine-tune the second language input so as to make it more relevant to the current state of

learner development' (ibid:167). Therefore 'negotiation work that triggers interactional

adjustments […] facilitates acquisition because it connects input, internal learner capabilities,

particularily selective attention, and output in productive ways' (Long, 1996:451-452). Long's

interaction hypothesis supports 'the need to provide classroom opportunities for interaction'

and the idea that 'interaction is a necessary condition for second language learning'

(Thornbury, 2006:113). Research has shown that teaching a language 'should be an interactive

process between teachers and students and among students themselves', allowing for

'negotiation' and 'simply encouraging students to ask questions about input they do not

initially understand' which 'may have positive results on their comprehension' (Pica,1994:56).

To ensure successful language learning, learners do indeed 'need opportunities to modify their

interlanguage production and thereby to produce […] comprehensible output' (ibid:56).

However, given the different attitudes that learners have towards language some may need to

be stimulated to produce any sort of output. Others may be demotivated from the very

beginning and producing output such as speech, may be a long and tedious task. Waiting for

speech to 'emerge on its own', as Krashen (1985:2) seems to think, may take forever. That is

why teacher motivation is so important here. A positive teacher-pupil, pupil-pupil relationship

can have a positive impact on the output of students lacking in motivation. Again we must not

forget those learners with low self-esteem or a feeling of not belonging, who may experience

difficulty in making input become intake and so will need more time to produce any sort of

output. Like Swain, I believe that producing output is necessary for language development,

because it 'may push learners to become aware of gaps and problems in their current second

language system […] provides them with opportunities to reflect on, discuss and analyse these

problems explicitly' as well as 'oppotunities to experiment with new structures and forms'

(Mitchell and Myles, 2004:174-175). This focus on input, interaction and output referred to

by Block as the 'Input-Interaction-Output model' (2003:9) brought about new approaches

involving communicative language teaching, which 'ever since its beginnings in the mid-

1970s […] has argued for the need to provide classroom opportunities for interaction'

(Thornbury, 2006:113), where learners can 'take part in interactive activities in which real

meanings are being communicated, where the language is not always predictable, and where

negotiation of meaning might result' (ibid:197-198). In other words, giving learners

opportunities to 'learn language through using language''(ibid).

Interactive Activities - The Task-based Approaches

There have been attempts at interactive approaches in the past such as that of Peter Skehan,

who tried to view the cognitive approach to SLA from a practical perspective and suggested a

task-based approach, which involves 'reversing the traditional order of instruction' in that

'declarative knowledge does not precede proceduralization', as suggested by Anderson above,

'but emerges out of the process of proceduralization and helps shape it' (Thornbury, 2006:65-

66). It has to do with 'basing the instructional process around a series of tasks' (ibid:65). What

makes this task-based approach different from other cognitive approaches is that its primary

goal is 'the communication of meaning' and that it 'has a real-world relationship' (Skehan,

1996:38). Skehan explains that:

[…] a task which requires personal information to be exchanged, or a problem to be

solved, or a collective judgement to be made bears a relationship to things that happen

outside the classroom in a way that separates these activities from doing, for example,

a transformation exercise (ibid).

This seems to fit into the communicative approach very nicely, but because the emphasis

among the task participants is on interaction and communicating meaning, it is feared that

interlanguage may suffer because 'processing language to extract meaning does not guarantee

automatic sensitivity to form' (ibid:41), and the goals for achieving 'native-like proficiency in

language, that of accuracy, complexity (restructuring) and fluency, may be inhibited. Even

though Skehan attempted to focus on 'contexualized language use' and 'social interaction',

which are central in communicative language teaching (Thornbury, 2006:77-78), because of

the major concern with form, 'the social dimension' […] is largely ignored' here as 'what is

happening inside the learner is seen as being more important than the social context in which

learning is taking place' (ibid). However, teachers can 'exploit tasks for their language

potential, not simply as exercises in fluency' (ibid:79) by manipulating 'the way in which

attention is directed', or being 'explicit immediately before the task is done as to whether they

want accuracy stressed, or whether they want specific structures to be used' (ibid:55).

Learning problems such as 'a lack of interest', learners not taking risks with their

interlanguage or using their L1 just to get the task done, can be avoided if tasks are

'sequenced' and if teachers 'adjust task performance factors, such as the time available, or the

urgency of the task, or they can pre-teach language that might be useful' (Thornbury,

2006:69).

In the negotiation of meaning investigated by Nakahama et al (2001:378) in interactions

between native speakers and non-native speakers involving information gap activities and

conversation, it would seem obvious that because 'repair negotiation appears to lead to better

comprehension' (ibid:380), and since there is more repair negotiation in the information gap

activities than in open-ended conversation, (ibid:386), that information gap activities are

superior to conversation. However, Thornbury notes that:

In the information gap the speakers are ''not pushed to produce language'' […] but only a

solution to the task; they do not need to attend to the global coherence of the talk, but

only to the immediate details' (2006:117)

Even though information gap activities do 'create opportunities for two-way interaction', like

Thornbury, I believe 'they are hardly representative of communication in the 'real world' and

therefore not, perhaps, a reliable means of measuring the amount or effect of negotiation of

meaning in live talk' (ibid:115). The purpose of negotiation in the information gap activities

is to 'achieve local cohesion', where the opportunities for language use are mininal and the

focus is on single words in order to complete an activity (Nakahama et al, 2001:401).

Knowing how 'learners' utterances influence each other in terms of form and function' is not

the only important characteristic of language use. It has to do with appropriating and

internalizing 'knowledge or skill which is collaboratively developed in the course of the

interaction' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:206-207). Although it has been argued that 'in more

open-ended conversation interlocutors can quickly drop language and topics that cause

communication difficulties or avoid them altogether' (Nakahama et al, 2001: 378),

conversation does provide learners with more opportunities to produce more complex

utterances, and learners feel more challenged because they have to understand their

interlocutors and pay close attention to and relate their utterances to the context at hand in

trying to achieve global cohesion and coherence (ibid:400-401). Information gap activities are

very useful with younger learners as they reinforce certain vocabulary items and structures

and give them an opportunity to use L2 even if only in a narrower and more controlled

atmosphere. Open-ended conversation activities, on the other hand, allow learners to

challenge and debate issues as well as give their own opinion about a given topic. Interesting

topics open up debate especially when they involve the learners' schema and I must say that in

the majority of cases learners want to be heard. Learners learn from each other and there is a

lot of negotiating taking place. By urging learners to use their L2, they gradually internalize it,

which gets them thinking in L2 as well.

Because we are dealing with non-native speakers in the classroom, some of which may not

find it necessary to improve their interlanguage at all, we should also consider that successful

interaction should not only provide an environment that 'triggers mental processes', but also

one that gives learners the opportunity for 'face-to-face interaction' where they can experience

'shared processes such as joint problem solving and discussions' (ibid:195). If we consider the

fact that interaction is 'social rather than individual in nature' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:193),

learners, who may not at first be 'capable of independent functioning', will gradually 'achieve

the desired outcome' by doing tasks 'under the guidance of other more skilled individuals' or

'in collaboration with more capable peers', (ibid:195-196) who can provide 'scaffolding

appropriate to the learner's current Zone of Proximal Development' (Mitchell and Myles,

2004:213). It is amazing to see peer interaction at work, namely 'how learners support each

other during oral second language production, how they work together during 'focus on form'

activities, and how they collaborate around second language writing activities' (Mitchell and

Myles, 2004:214) even in mixed ability groups. In the example given by Donato (1994:44),

even though the members of his group do not have the complete knowledge to do the task at

hand without some sort of help, they manage to do so 'through their successive individual

contributions' within the group, the results of which show that 'peer scaffolding results in

linguistic development within the learner' (ibid). As Wells puts it, 'whenever people

collaborate in an activity, each can assist the others, and each can learn from the contributions

of the others' (1999:333). 'Classrooms should provide opportunities to create constructive,

cohesive learning communities […] where students and teachers negotiate their identities and

subject-matter knowledge together in culturally respectful and equitable ways through social

interaction' to make the distance between the 'dominant' learners, and those 'silent, marginal'

ones who seem 'disconnected […] from peers, curriculum, activities' (Duff, 2002:289-290)

shorter. By 'creating a positive, collaborative group dynamic' with 'teacher support in

linguistic needs', learners may want to participate in 'the community of practice' which will

prevent 'a core vs periphery division' between the learners from developing (Thornbury,

2006:199).

Conclusion

It is very important for practioners like myself to understand the linguistic, psycholinguistic,

socio-cultural and sociolinguistic views of SLA, as they all influence language development

each from their own perspective. Central to SLA is the learner, who may be learning the

'target language formally in school or college or 'picking it up' in the playground or the

workplace' (Mitchell and Myles, 2004:23), and whose reasons for learning a second or foreign

language may be very diverse. That is why there is definitely the need to take each theoretical

approach into consideration in order to get the full understanding of what SLA entails

followed by intensive collaboration between educators and researchers, which would certainly

help improve language teaching and development.

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