5+-+Study+of+SLA

The definition of formal linguistics in controversial. In this chapter the author explains the formal linguistics as an explicit description of a speaker’s knowledge of his /her languages. It means that all the properties are specified fully and precisely as a system of operations on linguistics categories ( Hall, 1995). The formal linguists seek the answer to the following questions:
 * Chapter 8 **
 * FORMAL LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES ON SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUSITION BY** ** ALAN JUFFS **

Many researchers have written on the relationship between formal linguistics and second language acquisition. As it is explained in the chapter, the formal linguistics has contributed to SLA in the following ways:
 * What does it mean to say we “know a language”?
 * How does that knowledge arise in the mind of the speaker, that is, how is it acquired?
 * It provides a detailed information on the principles that underlie human languages as well as help to makes possible claims about the nature of L2.
 * It gives an opportunity for researchers to discover, describe and explain the facts about second language grammar
 * Formal linguistics research has created methodology for evaluating L2 grammar. Some questions that are studied in the frame of formal linguistics led to development of materials used in studies of SLA.

There are types of mediation in SLA: social mediation by experts and peers and self-mediation. // Experts and Novices. // The author mentions that Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) look at mediated learning in the “zone of proximal development “ (ZPD). In ZPD SL development is negotiated by experts and novices. SL development move through the stages in which the mediation should be explicit. There are experiments on how teachers engage learners in their ZPD through “instructional conversations”. Donato and Adair-Hauck (1992) conducted an experemnt and compared //monologic// and //dialogic// instructional talk. The experemnts demonstrated that the former failed to push learners` development forward. As for dialogic instructional talk, it can effectively involve students as active participants in their learning. This have positive influence on learners` development. // Peer Mediation // Dialogue among learners can be as effective as dialogic instructional talk between teacher and learner. The author mentions that working collaboratively learners scaffolding each other into an L2 through the use of strategies that were used by teachers. For example, one of the strategies is the willingness of one peer to wait for the other to produce utterances without help. They “feel” when to offer assistance and they seem to be sensitive to each other ZPD. Besides, learners seem to be effective at mutually mediating their writing activity. There is also a number of strategies that learners use. While learners offered implicit or explicit assistance, their assistance is as contingent, that is, it is withheld at critical junctures. (de Guerro and Villamil, 2000). As for use of L1 in peer mediation it is a controversial issue. For some students it inhibits, but for others the use of L1 promotes learning.
 * Chapter 9 **
 * SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY AND LANGUAGE ACQUSITION BY JAMES P.LANTOLF **
 * Mediation and SLA **
 * Social Mediation **


 * Self-Mediation **

The author states, that self-directed or private speech is often used by L2 learners. In the process of privatizing speech we gain control over our ability to remember, think, plan, evaluate, and learn. (Vygotsky, 1987). So, the private speech generally consists of the expressions such as “What ?”, “I can`t”, ‘Done”, etc.

The author also mentions, that people gesture when they talk to themselves and McCaffery and Ahmed`s (2000) conducted research on use of gesture in L2 private speech. According to McNeill (1992), gesture is a form of private speech that complements meaning of verbal speech. Speech and gesture are “dialectically engaged’- gesture providing imagery and speech the verbal structure to thought (McCaffery, 2000)

By Michael Harrington
 * Chapter 11 **
 * Cognitive Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition **

A cognitive theory of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) tries to clarify the existing psychological mechanisms which allow the learner to develop the competence for comprehension and production. Harrington discusses when and how the learner uses different kind of sources of information, syntax, and context and so on in real-time processing outcomes in comprehension in the sentence processing. There are two approaches which discuss real-time sentence processing. The //syntax-based// approach shows the comprehension process as the application of independent syntactic principles. It is assumed that the semantics, frequency, and contextual information don’t play any role in initial parsing decisions. In contrary, according to constraint-based models say that the comprehension is a result of the interaction of multiple source of knowledge i.e. linguistic, pragmatic, contextual, and real-world.


 * SLA as a Cognitive Science **

Cognitive theory in SLA has been identified with the information-processing paradigm and was dominant metaphor for cognition a few decades ago. An information process is by using which a system gives systematic answers (which mainly are goal oriented) to certain environmental conditions. This approach leads that the mind is a general purpose symbol processing system which is ground to capacity constraints. Information processing approach differs from sentence processing one in three ways. //First// it says that the mind is a general purpose symbol processor something which is the main issue of controversy in sentence processing research. The syntax-based and constraint-based approaches present, respectively, classical and connectionist views of cognition and language. The classical view has a symbolic level of representation in contrast with the connectionist view which characterizes language knowledge. //Second// in the information processing approach it is unclear about the nature of the linguistic knowledge whereas in sentence processing approach there are models of knowledge development. //The third// difference is in terms of temporal dimensions. For sentence processing research it is vital to find out how comprehension processes are carried out in real time. In comparison with this information-processing research has to do with identifying the conditions that affect learners’ outcomes. Though there are some differences between these two approaches, they are complementary.