Chapter One 1.1 Introduction The closer the world gets together, the more there is a need for communication with people who speak different languages. Speaking second or third languages fluently is one of the biggest desires for those who wish to succeed. Furthermore, the fact that one can use a second language will be very common among people. Therefore, the importance of investigating second language acquisition (SLA) is clearly supported given this tide, and therefore, scholars have developed various areas of research in SLA and as a result, this study has become a central research area of linguistics since the 1970’s. Even though they adopted various ways to investigate how people acquire second languages or what makes it possible to learn second language efficiently, their core questions were similar. A
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Chapter One
1.1 Introduction
The closer the world gets together, the more there is
a need for communication with people who speak different
languages. Speaking second or third languages fluently is
one of the biggest desires for those who wish to succeed.
Furthermore, the fact that one can use a second language
will be very common among people. Therefore, the
importance of investigating second language acquisition
(SLA) is clearly supported given this tide, and therefore,
scholars have developed various areas of research in SLA
and as a result, this study has become a central research
area of linguistics since the 1970’s. Even though they
adopted various ways to investigate how people acquire
second languages or what makes it possible to learn second
language efficiently, their core questions were similar. A
central theme has been “Is there any sequence in order of
acquisition of certain languages?” or “Why do some language
features emerge earlier than others?” (Hatch)1.
Among the various fields that researchers have
examined include studies on developmental sequences.
Throughout these studies, developmental sequences can be
defined as “the order in which certain features of a
language…are acquired in language learning” (Lightbown and
Spada)2. These are very interesting to look at because it
seems to be almost impossible to define a general image of
developmental sequences in second language acquisition in
spite of its clear concept.
In the following section, several key words will be
explained to clarify the idea of developmental sequences in
second language acquisition: These questions are
1) what do developmental sequences mean? and,
2) where can researchers find developmental patterns?
1.2 Developmental Sequences
Developmental sequences always occur when people
learn any kind of language as first or second. In first
language acquisition, which generally happens at the early
stage in childhood, there can be seen a general
developmental pattern for certain grammatical elements such
as the present progressive, plurals; irregular past;
possessive “’s”; copula; articles; regular past; 3rd person
singular; simple present auxiliary and so on.
Children acquire their native language using several
methods, not only by imitating adults but also experiencing
and discovering the structures of their own L1. It is very
interesting that almost all children pass through certain
stages similarly in L1 acquisition in spite of their
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different environment. For example, for grammatical
features, most of the children will acquire present
progressive -ing earlier than the copula, and plural -s is
earlier than possessive ’s. In negation, first, they start
using negatives alone or as the first word in the
utterance, then gradually, they combine the negatives and
create more complex phrases or sentences.
There are many studies that reveal second language
learners also pass through sequences of development like
first language learners, and the process that L2 learners
acquire their L2 is very similar to that found in L1
acquisition. One of the examples is that the features
acquired in the early stages by one learner will be also
learned in the early stages by others even though there may
be slight time differences. There are, however, noticeable
differences in developmental sequences for L1 and L2
acquisition.
The apparent difference between developmental
patterns in L1 and L2 is the stability of the sequences.
While L1 learners will consistently all have a similar
order, the order of L2 learners’ acquisition is not always
clear enough to propose a general picture of developmental
sequences.
The point which should be considered is that there
are a great number of influences from L1 occurring in L2
acquisition, and Developmental Sequences in L2 will be
changed according to the learners’ L1s. Therefore, for
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instance, L2 learners of English whose native language
shows somehow completely different processes from those
whose L1 is German. From this point of view, it cannot
determine that there is a universal Developmental Sequence
which applies to all language learners whose L1 is
different.
Furthermore, there can be gaps among L2 learners,
who are acquiring the same L1, and with different
environments such as family, educational background,
school, personal experiences, and so on. In second language
acquisition, to some extent, it depends on the learners’
characteristics and how carefully the learners will pay
attention to the second language systems, and this result
will greatly affect the researcher’s ability to analyze
developmental patterns that appear in the process of
learning languages.
About 40 years ago most linguists believe that the
incompleteness of second language acquisition was simply
due to their first language. At that time the major method
used to study language acquisition in this field was
Contrastive Analysis (Lightbown and Spada)3. Its aim was to
clarify the differences and similarities between L1 and L2
and sought potential errors that learners may produce based
on L1 interference. The idea was that where major
differences were found (for example if an L1 was SOV and
the L2 was SVO, then there would need to be a lot of care
and attention paid to this difference. If however, both
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languages shared articles, then the need for heavy
instruction was not needed. This was common practice until
the end of 1960s and was shown in the many drills and
repetition exercises common at the time.
During the late 1960’s and early 1970s, a new method,
error analysis, was developed to make more detailed
analyses of second language acquisition. The belief was
that errors that are produced by L2 learners are not always
due to the first language, but also other elements. This
method is based on observations from cross-sectional
studies, which studied subjects at different ages, and
longitudinal studies which examined the language
development of a small number of the same learners over
time. Error analysis focuses on errors produced as a result
of the process that learners try to discover the rules and
structures of their target language, rather than assuming
potential errors.
Out of this kind of analysis we came to see that L2
speakers repeatedly made the same kinds of mistakes and in
similar ways. Moreover, the kinds of mistakes they made
seemed to be occurring regularly. For example, L2 learners
at one level of ability consistently said I goed to the
bank or I buyed a book whereby they are using a past tense
formulation rule consistently but wrongly. This suggested
that these errors were in fact a separate system from the
L1 and the L2 because the words goed and buyed are not L1
or L2 items. This system came to be known as Interlanguage.
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The concept of Interlanguage was provided by Larry
Selinker4, who defined Interlanguage as “the learner’s
developing second language knowledge” (Lightbown and
Spada5). When we consider second language acquisition,
Interlanguage is a most remarkable function because it has
both some characteristics of the learner’s first language
and some characteristics from the process of language
learning. However, it is true that there are difficulties
conducting targeted studies to identify developmental
sequences in second language acquisition.
Generally, when researchers try to research
developmental sequences in both L1 and L2, they focus on
analyzing errors from free production either in
conversations or essays for example. We shall now look at
the differences between errors and mistakes to provide some
clear background for the studies of developmental patterns.
1.3 Mistakes and Errors
It is necessary to discuss the differences between
mistakes and errors because it is quite hard to distinguish
them when they occur in free production. The basic
processes of how mistakes and errors happen are described
in the following figures.
Figure 1: The process of making mistakes
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Each category is a function, which is necessary to take for
language learning. Input means the information that a
learner obtains by listening and reading. Learning process
works to analyze the input, and output is a result from the
learner’s trials using acquired knowledge. Output is
usually in the forms of writing and speaking. Monitor
system is the function, which focuses on producing correct
output, and this system greatly depends on individual
learners.
In Figure 1, a learner produces utterances (shown as
an arrow) through the learning and output stages, and then,
this utterance goes through the monitor process. When the
learner notices that he made a mistake, he will self-
correct and the utterance will go back to the output stage.
For example, if a learner says, “She go to the school,” and
he will find that he made a mistake. He corrects it by
himself, and produces the correct sentence, “She goes to
the school.”
Figure 2: The process of making of errors
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Learning Output
Monitor
Input
Learning Output
Monitor
Input
Errors have very a similar process to mistakes. The
process of making errors can be explained with following
example.
A: Can I lend your dictionary?
B: You mean “can I borrow it?”
A: Oh, we say borrow not lend do we? Can I borrow
your dictionary?
This conversation describes that A did not realize she made
a mistake until B pointed it out. Therefore, external
correction was necessary in this process.
As the above suggests, the biggest difference between
mistakes and errors is the correction: self correction
occurs in the process of making mistakes through production
monitoring while external correction is done for errors. In
other words learners may know they have made a mistake and
can correct them but they do not know they have made an
error.
Second language Errors can be divided into four major
categories due to their characteristics:
i) Developmental errors
ii) L1 interference,
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iii) Overgeneralizations
iv) Simplifications
Examples of error
Developmental errors
(1) I told my mother that it is more
interesting than study.
This error is considered a developmental error because
these types of error often happen typically to the learners
whose L1 does not have a “tense agreement” system. This
Japanese learner produced “is,” instead of saying “was,”
because people do not need to consider that system in their
native language, which is Japanese.
L1 interference
(2) My brother also enters the badminton club.
L1 interference error is literally caused by the learners’
first language. This example may be easily understandable
for learners whose L1 is Japanese, because people use the
same word hairu when try to say both going into and
join/take part in in Japanese. This word usage in L1
influenced production in L2.
Overgeneralization
(3) …she will be surprising and exciting….
This sentence shows an example of overgeneralization, which
L2 learners use certain grammatical features even though
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the occasion is not required. In this case the words
surprising and exciting should use the past participles
surprised and excited, however, this learner used the
present progressive.
Simplification
(4) Do you have [some] money?
Simplification is an error where elements of a sentence are
left out. This example shows that a learner skipped an
element, some, or any when she produced this sentence.
Developmental errors reflect “the learner’s gradual
discovery of the second language system,” (Lightbown and
Spada)6 and they are very similar to the errors that
children learning their L1 often make. On the other hand,
L1 interference is directly influenced by the learners’
attempts to transfer some of their L1 characteristics into
L2 learning processes. Overgeneralization errors occur when
learners try to “use a rule in a context where it does not
belong,” and simplification means to extract essential
elements of a sentence (Lightbown and Spada)7.
Errors consist of two bases according to when they
appear: competence and performance. “Competence” refers to
linguistic knowledge or understanding, which exists in our
ability, and “performance” means the actual usage of
language in speaking, or writing.
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Each leaner has their own “competence,” therefore,
one can acquire certain grammatical morphemes faster than
others. Naturally, there are learners who can follow their
classes where mainly they learn in the L2, and other
learners who tend to be behind the contents of the classes.
In such cases, what can happen when these L2 learners are
asked to produce something (performance) during the class,
and also after the class such as some kind of homework?
They may supply some similar production during the class,
however the later they produce an item, the more different
results researchers may get. This is because ..
For instance, if the learners learn the third person -
s in the classroom, during the class they will produce very
accurate and similar productions. However, when they do it
for homework or examinations after a week or so, some
learners will say, she go to school, or Does Tom eats
lunch?, while others may retain their stable production
like she goes to school, and Does Tom eat lunch? These
kinds of gaps between learners are often observed.
One who has enough and rich competence to acquire L2
will show stable developmental patterns while the other
whose competence is poor may supply random pattern results,
which is difficult to conclude that both subjects have
experienced similar developmental patterns.
1.4 Free production
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Investigating free production is one of the most
reliable methods to look at developmental stages in second
language acquisition. The difficulty of this type of study
is, however, that there is a great amount of missing data
that researchers want to have, in both analyzing speaking
and written production.
Verbal oral production can provide reliable and
spontaneous data, which are purely self-produced.
Therefore, the distinction between mistakes and errors can
be made clear. Compared to this, there is another type of
production which is written production.
Written production, for example from essays, seems to
be easier to obtain, hence, more convenient. However, this
type also has several inevitable disadvantages if we look
carefully.
1.5 Conclusion
In Chapter Two a simple study will be conducted
highlighting some of the main developmental patterns in
second language acquisition. The study will help to reveal
the main theme of this thesis which is to investigate the
validity and reliability of conducting studies which aim to
generalize developmental patterns with data obtained from a
simple case study.
In Chapter Three the results of the study will be
analyzed and discussed to discover some of the main
problems in conducting this type of research. Chapter Three
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will also identify some of the guidelines that future
researchers should pay attention to when they try to
conduct more valid studies aiming to examine developmental
orders.1 Hatch, E.M., p. 18.
2 Lightbown and Spada, p. 174
3 Lightbown and Spada, p.72-73
4 Selinker, L. 1972
5 Lightbown and Spada, p.74
6 Lightbown and Spada, p.173
7 Lightbown and Spada, p.75
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Chapter Two
The Study
2.1 Introduction
In Chapter One the basics for understanding
developmental sequences and its research were discussed. In
Chapter Two we will conduct a case study based on the
points which were explained in Chapter One. Then in Chapter
Three we will analyze these results focusing on some major
problems that influence the investigation of developmental
orders in second language learning.
This study was conducted in order to identify several
problems that occur when conducting studies of
developmental patterns. Although there are many different
kinds of methods which investigate developmental sequences,
it was obvious that the results from those studies did not
provide us with the entire picture of patterns for L2
acquisition. To discover the common problems of conducting
this type of research, obligatory occasion analysis was
used.
Obligatory occasion analysis is one of the most
common methods L2 acquisition researchers use in this kind
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of research. This will be explained later. The study
provides detailed results from two subjects, and there is
also a discussion of this simple study.
The aims of this study are to discover whether
a) developmental sequences can be found in the data
of two subjects, and
b) these data can be collected reliably
2.2 The study
In this section the study will be described.
2.2.1 Subjects
Two subjects volunteered to supply data for the study
of their developmental sequences. These are Subjects A and
B. The subjects were a college student and a High School
student in Okayama, and this was a convenience sample.
Subject A was 21-year-old senior at university
majoring in English. She has been learning English since
the age of 12 when the English education usually starts,
and this is her 10th year of learning English. Before she
began to learn English at school, however, she had been
strongly interested in English and influenced by music and
movies in English. Therefore, English was not a completely
new resource for her to learn.
Subject B was an 18 year-old-male, going to a High
School. Similar to A, Subject B also started learning
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English at the age of 12. When he was 14, he began to go to
a private English cram school which was focusing on English
grammar.
Subject A and B have studied English mainly through
classes at schools, and this research is based on their
notebooks or papers taken during those classes.
2.2.2 Instrument and Procedure
This study was based on the resources from Subject A
and B throughout the term of their learning. These
resources were the written free production such as
compositions, essays, and papers. These were chosen in
order to see the developmental sequences as was explained
in Chapter One. It is very important to focus on the free
production because the function of Interlanguage will
clearly appear in free production more than the restricted
or controlled production such as repetition and pattern
practice drills.
The errors found in these resources were divided into
four categories according to the specific characteristics
of errors: third person -s and copula, tense, and countable
and uncountable. Each subject provided their notebooks and
papers, and the researcher looked through those resources,
checking the numbers of errors in each category and looking
for the obligatory contexts.
2.2.3 Obligatory Occasion Analysis
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Obligatory occasion analysis was used as the primary
tool for investigating the data produced by the subjects.
It is one of the major methods used widely in the studies
of L2 acquisition. In short, obligatory occurrences are
occasions when a certain form must be produced and is the
only correct form that can be used. For example, in this
sentence “It is a book” only ‘book’ not ‘books’ can be used
as the sentence demands the singular form. If the sentence
‘It is a books’ were supplied and the obligatory form is
‘This is a book’, the supplied form is wrong. In other
words the obligatory occurrence was not supplied.
By looking at the percentage of correct suppliances
for obligatory occasions we can see how well a learner has
a acquired a particular form. If the learner always
supplies the obligatory form we can clearly say the learner
has acquired it. This is less certain when the percentage
is much lower, such as at say 50% or even 90%.
According to Ellis (1994)8 referring to Brown (1973),
there are three basic steps to collect these data. First,
“samples of naturally occurring learner language,” which
are freely produced, are supplied. Second, obligatory
occasions for each specific category of L2 are examined:
negation, questions, grammatical morphemes such as tense
and copula, and so on. Finally, “the percentage of accurate
use of the feature” is compared with obligatory occasion
numbers, considering “whether the feature in question has
been supplied in all the contexts in which it is required.”
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We shall now look some more at examples of these
obligatory and supplied occurrences.
(Example 1) Obligatory occasion in tense
Obligatory: The box has never been opened since 1900 .
Supplied: The box is never opened since 1900 .
(Example 2) Obligatory occasion in countable and
uncountable
Obligatory:
My brother broke glass of our room. –Uncountable
I don’t like wearing glasses…. –Countable
Supplied:
Finally, and I got three glass [glass cups]. –
Countable
We can see that in Example 1 the obligatory tense is the
Present perfect, but the present simple passive is used.
Therefore in this example the subject will score 0/1. In
other words for one occasion when the correct form was
required the subject did not supply it. Similar
calculations can be provided for example 2. Example 2 shows
the obligatory occasion for countable and uncountable
nouns. The supplied noun glass should be plural since the
learner mentioned about glass cups, however she used glass
[cups] as a material glass, which always remains singular,
and supplied by mistake.
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Based on the idea of obligatory occasions, the total
number of suppliances per feature were identified as
follows. For the sentences that included (or should have
included) third person -s and copula were counted in the
first category. Secondly past, future, and present and past
perfect tense obligatory and correct suppliances were
counted. Nouns, except pronouns, proper nouns, and numbers,
were collected as countable and uncountable, as mentioned
before. To prevent overestimating these results, each
feature, especially tense and third person -s and copula,
was counted once per clause. The method of analyzing these
results is shown in Examples 1 and 2.
Example 1
The treaty was founded on the presupposition that there is
nuclear relation between the US and the former Soviet Union.
Example 2
If it were not for the newspaper which tells us world ’ s
daily news, we would feel our daily lives inconvenient.
The first example shows that there are two clauses in the
sentence. The treaty was founded consists one past tense
feature, and one noun (countable), therefore, there are two
elements to count in part A. This suppliance is
grammatically correct, and therefore, the subject will
score 1/1 in both categories: tense and countable and
uncountable. Same as this calculation, the second one
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provides three clauses with tense, third person -s, and
countable and uncountable correctly. According to this
result, the subject will get 1/1 for each feature in
Example 2. All data supplied by two subjects were
calculated followed by this method.
2.2.4 Results
According to the research, each feature of the
developmental sequences of subject A and B was summarized.
Tables 1 and 2 show the distributions of errors from each
category.
Table 1. Total number of suppliances that we analyzed by
feature for Subject A.
Type Total
3rd person& Copula. 122
Tense 104
Countable and
Uncountable
151
Total 377
Table 2. Frequencies and Percentages of Correct Suppliance
for Subject A
Junior High
3rd
Grade
High School
2nd
Grade
High School
3rd
Grade
University
2nd
Grade
University
4th
Grade
S.R. % S.R. % S.R. % S.R. % S.R. %
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3rd person
and Copula11/33 66.7 17/27 63.0 13/17 76.5 18/22 81.8 19/23