Introducing Second Language Acquisition 教学课件.ppt

while external focus emphasizes the information content of utterances, and considers language primarily as a system of communication. Functionalism Functionalism: A linguistic framework with an external focus that dates back to the early twentieth century and has its roots in the Prague School (布拉格学派) of Eastern Europe. It emphasizes the information content of utterances and considers language primarily as a system of communication. Functionalist approaches have largely dominated European study of SLA and are widely followed elsewhere in the world. The Nature of language Characteristics of languages systematic: They consist of recurrent elements which occur in regular patterns of relationships. Symbolic: Sequences of sounds or letters do not inherently possess meaning. Social: Each language reflects the social requirements of the society that uses it every L1 or L2 learner must acquire at these different levels: phonology (sound system) syntax (grammar) lexicon (vocabulary) morphology (word structure) discourse (ways to connect sentences) Early approaches to SLA Contrastive Analysis (CA) an approach to the study of SLA which involves predicting and explaining learner problems based on a comparison of L1 and L2 to determine similarities and differences. It was heavily influenced by theories which were dominant in linguistics and psychology within the USA through the 1940s and 1950s, Structuralism and Behaviorism. Stimulus – Response – Reinforcement (S-R-R) . Learners respond to the stimulus (linguistic input), and reinforcement strengthens (i.e. habituates) the response; they imitate and repeat the language that they hear, and when they are reinforced for that response, learning occurs. The implication is that “practice makes perfect.” transfer in learning: in the case of SLA, this means the transfer of elements acquired (or habituated) in L1 to the target L2. The transfer is called positive (or facilitating) when the same structure is appropriate in both la