Unit 1
Introduction
1.1
Background
An interlanguage is a
type of speech or writing developed by people during the process of learning a
new language, when the learner is starting to gain proficiency in the new, or
“target,” language but has not mastered it. It is a distorted form of the target language that contains errors caused by inappropriately using aspects
of the learner's native language while trying to speak the target language,
incorrectly applying the target language's grammar or pronunciation rules or
trying to express concepts in the target language by using more basic words the
learner already knows. This is normal during the process of learning a new
language. Every interlanguage is specific to the person speaking it and evolves
as he or she continues to learn the target language.
Although they are both
formed from elements of multiple languages, an interlanguage should not be
confused with a pidgin or Creole language. Pidgin
language is an improvised form of communication created by two or more people
who do not share a language in common, while a Creole language is a language that originally arose from a mixture
of different languages but has become a natural language in its own right, with
children in the society where it is spoken growing up with it as their native
language. An interlanguage, on the other hand, is always unique to a particular
individual and is by definition never anyone's first language, as it is partially a product of a different
language that the speaker already knows.
Interlanguage typically contain elements
of the speaker's original language. For example, in English an adjective appears
before the noun it
modifies, while in French the adjective usually comes after the noun. Thus, an
English speaker learning French who knows that the French words for “green” and
“fish” are vert and poisson,
respectively, might call a green fish “un vert poisson,” when un poisson vert is actually correct. The interlanguage
of a French person learning English might contain the opposite error, causing
him or her to say things like “a fish green.”
An interlanguage can
also contain errors caused by knowing the target language's general rules but
following them too rigidly. A non-native speaker might conjugate
irregular verbs according to the rules of regular verbs, similarly to the way
small children learning their first language often do. This can produce
mistakes like saying “goed” instead of “went” or “you am” instead of “you are,”
for example.
Language learners may
also over-apply previous lessons about how the target language differs from
their native language. For instance, while adjectives in French usually follow
the noun, there are exceptions. Petit, French for “small,” is an
example of this. Once an English speaker has learned how French adjectives
generally work, he or she might overgeneralize the knowledge and incorrectly
refer to a small fish as “un poisson petit” rather than the
correct un petit poisson. The particular way a learner incorrectly
applies the rules of the target language depend on when and how they were
learned in the first place. An English speaker who had not yet learned that
most French adjectives follow rather than precede nouns would be unlikely to
make a mistake like “un poisson petit,” for instance.
Finally, an
interlanguage can contain attempts to express things the learner has not yet
learned in the target language, using his or her limited existing knowledge of
it.
1.2 Focused Questions
1.
What is the definition of interlanguage?
2. What is error analysis?
Unit 2
discussion
2.1
Definition of interlanguage
The term interlanguage was defined by
Selinker (1972) as the separate linguistic system evidenced when adult
second-language learners attempt to express meaning in a language they are in
the process of learning. This linguistic system encompasses not just phonology,
morphology, and syntax, but also the lexical, pragmatic, and discourse levels
of the interlanguage. The interlanguage system is clearly not simply the native
language morphological and syntactic system
relexified with target language vocabulary; that is, it is not the
morphological and syntactic system that would have been evidenced had the
learner
tried to express
those meanings in his or her native language. Just as clearly, it is not the
target language system that would have been evidenced had native speakers of
the target language tried to express those same meanings. Rather, the
interlanguage differs systematically from both the native language and the target
language.
Interlanguage is usually thought of as
characteristic only of adult second-language learners (but see ‘Revised
Interlanguage Hypothesis’ below), that is, learners who have passed puberty and
thus cannot be expected to be able to employ the language acquisition device
(LAD) – that innate language learning structure that was instrumental in their
acquisition of their native language. Children acquiring second languages are
thought to have the ability to re-engage the LAD and thus to avoid the error
pattern and ultimate fossilization that characterize the interlanguages of adult
second-language learners.
Central to the notion of interlanguage is
the phenomenon of fossilization – that process in which the learner’s
interlanguage stops developing, apparently permanently. Second-language
learners who begin their study of the second language after puberty do not
succeed in developing a linguistic system that approaches that developed by
children acquiring that language natively. This observation led Selinker to
hypothesize that adults use a latent psychological structure (instead of a LAD)
to acquire second languages.
The five psycholinguistic processes of
this latent psychological structure that shape interlanguage were hypothesized
(Selinker, 1972) to be (a) native language transfer, (b) overgeneralization of
target language rules, (c) transfer of training, (d) strategies of
communication, and (e) strategies of learning. Native language transfer, the
process that contrastive analysts had proposed as the sole shaper of learner language,
still has a major role to play in the interlanguage hypothesis; though it is
not the only process involved, there is ample research evidence that it does
play an important role in shaping learners’ interlanguage
system. Selinker
(1972, 1992; following Weinreich, 1968: 7) suggested that the way in which this
happens is that learners make ‘interlingual identifications’ in approaching the
task of learning a second language: they perceive certain units as the same in
their NL, IL, and TL. So, for example, they may perceive NL ‘table’ as exactly
the same as TL ‘mesa,’ and develop an interlanguage in
which mesa can (erroneously in terms of the TL) be used
in expressions like ‘table of contents,’ ‘table the motion,’ and so on.
Selinker followed enrich in pointing out an interesting paradox in
second-language acquisition: in traditional structural linguistics, units are
defined in relation to the linguistic system in which they occur and have no
meaning outside that system. However, in making interlingual identifications, second-language
learners typically ‘stretch’ linguistic units by perceiving them as the same in
meaning across three systems. An interesting research issue is how they do this
and what sorts of units are used in this way; for example, they could be linguistic
units like the taxonomic phoneme or the allophone, or syllables. Selinker
raised questions about the ability of traditional linguistics frameworks, based
as they are on assumptions of monolingualism, to handle interlanguage data in
which transfer across three linguistic systems plays a central role.
A second psycholinguistic process is that
of overgeneralization of target language rules. This is a process that is also
widely observed in child language acquisition: the learner shows evidence of having mastered a general rule, but does not
yet know all the exceptions to that rule. So, for example, the learner may use
the past tense marker-ed for all verbs, regular and irregular alike: walked,
wanted, hugged, laughed, *drinked, *hitted, *goed. The overgeneralization error
shows clear evidence of progress, in that it shows that the learner has
mastered a target language rule, but it also shows what the learner has yet to
learn. To the extent that second-language learners make overgeneralization
errors, one might argue that
they are using
the same process as that employed by first-language learners.
Transfer of training occurs when the
second-language learner applies rules learned from instructors or textbooks.
Sometimes this learning is successful; that is, the resulting interlanguage
rule is indistinguishable from the target language rule. But sometimes errors
result. For example, a lesson plan or textbook that describes the past perfect
tense as the ‘past past’ can lead the learner to erroneously use the past
perfect for the absolute distant past – for all events that occurred long ago,
whether or not the speaker is relating these to any more recent or fore
grounded event, as in the isolated statement, *‘My relatives had come from
Italy in the 1700s.’ These have also been called ‘induced errors.’
Strategies of communication are used by
the learner to resolve communication problems when the interlanguage system
seems unequal to the task. When, in the attempt to communicate meaning, the
learner feels that the linguistic item needed is not available to him, he can
resort to a variety of strategies of communication in getting that meaning
across. So, for example, if the learner wants to refer to an electrical cord in
English and does not know the exact lexical item to use in referring to it, he
can call it ‘a tube,’ ‘a kind of corder that you use for electric thing I don’t
exactly the name,’ or ‘a wire with eh two plugs in each side.’ The linguistic
forms and patterns used in such attempts may become more or less
permanent parts
of the learner’s interlanguage (see Communicative Language Teaching).
Strategies of learning are used by the
learner in aconscious attempt to master the target language. One such strategy
of learning is learners’ conscious comparison of what they produce in IL with
the NL and a perceived target, setting up interlingual identifications (see the
example given above for transfer). Other examples of learning strategies are
the use of
mnemonics to
remember target vocabulary, the memorizing of verb declensions or textbook
dialogues, the use of flash cards, and so on. Clearly, such strategies are
often successful, but they can also result in error. Memorized lists can get
confused with one another, for example, or the mnemonic mediator word may
become confused with the TL word. An example of the latter might be that an
English speaking learner of Spanish might use a mediator word pot in order to
remember that the Spanish word for duck is pato – but might end up using pot in
interlanguage
references to a duck.
Research evidence was provided to show
that all five of these psycholinguistic processes could affect the construction
of interlanguages, and a call for more research went out. Many research
projects were undertaken in response to this call to investigate each of these
hypothesized processes, and the result was a flurry of papers, conferences, and
publications, and ultimately something that was referred to as a field of
research on second-language acquisition.
2.2
Error analysis
It was the British applied linguist, Pit
Corder, who re-focussed attention on error from the perspective of language
processing and language acquisition. In his seminal (1967) paper “The
significance of learners’ errors” he stressed the learner’s positive cognitive
contribution to learning. His view was that the learner is engaged in a process
of discovering the language. The learner forms hypotheses based on language
input and tests those hypotheses in speech production. In this view errors are
not only an inevitable but also, very importantly, a necessary feature of learner
language, without which improvement cannot occur. Corder coined the term
“transitional competence” to indicate the essential dynamism and flux of the
language
learner’s evolving system. A learner’s errors, according to Corder (1967),
represent the discrepancy between the transitional competence of that learner
and the target language. Drawing heavily on Chomsky’s (1965) view of first
language acquisition, he suggested that just as for the child acquiring its
mother tongue the language evolves in a more or less fixed pattern, so the
foreign language learner may possess an “inbuilt syllabus” which determines the
order in which the language system is acquired and which is largely independent
of the order of the external syllabus according to which the classroom learner
is ostensibly learning. Corder further suggested that studying error might
supply clues to this inbuilt order of acquisition, persistent errors indicating
those elements acquired late. Corder, however, invoked Chomsky’s (1965)
distinction between “competence” and performance” to draw a distinction between
true errors of competence and errors of performance, which he denoted as mere
“mistakes”, the product of “chance circumstances” analogous to slips of the
tongue in the native language (Corder 1967: 166). These performance “mistakes”,
he maintained, say nothing about the underlying speaker competence and should
therefore be excluded from analysis. In a later paper Corder (1971: 107-108)
suggested that error analysis should include not only “overt” errors but
“covert” errors. Covert errors, unlike overt errors, are formally
acceptable
but do not express the meaning intended by the learner. For example, “I want to
know the English” is a formally correct sentence, but it would be a covert
error if the learner wanted to express the meaning carried by “I want to know
English”.
The
procedure for error analysis was elaborated by Corder (1974) as comprising five
stages:
•
selection of a corpus of language
•
identification of errors in the corpus
•
classification of the errors identified
•
explanation of the psycholinguistic causes of the errors
•
evaluation (error gravity ranking) of the errors
In
fact, error analysis has turned out to be more problematic than one might
expect for various reasons. There are problems of identification.
Notwithstanding native-speaker intuitions, error is difficult to define and can
by no means always be unambiguously identified in production (Hughes /
Lascaratou 1982). The distinction between “errors” and “mistakes” is highly
problematic since in performance correct andincorrect forms of a single target
often occur side by side. Learner transitional competence has been found to be
highly variable, influenced by various external factors such as situation,
interlocutor, speech versus
writing,
and certain internal factors, especially anxiety. Furthermore, there appears to
be a middle ground between completely acceptable language and erroneous
language, which may variously be judged as infelicitous, stylistically
inappropriate, non-nativelike, obscure (Azevedo 1980; Pawley / Syder 1983).
There are problems of classification.
Classification of errors depends on error being localisable to the domains of
phonology/graphology, morphology, syntax, lexis, discourse. This is by no means
always unproblematic, for example when inaccurate pronunciation or orthography
produces another word. Counting of errors becomes problematic when multiple
errors occur in close proximity or one error occurs within an already erroneous
element. For example “The man is drunken” for “The man has drowned” could be
counted as one mistake (“is drunken” for “has drowned”), two mistakes (“is” for
“has” and “drunken” for “drowned”), or three mistakes if we add (“drunken” for
“drunk”). Burt and Kiparsky (1974) first drew attention to what they called
“global errors”, which are difficult to localise to a
specific
item and seem to extend over the whole sentence. An example might be a sentence
like “Well, there’s a great hurry around”.
There are problems in assigning
psycholinguistic causes. Assigning psycholinguistic causes to error is by its
very nature speculative, particularly for global errors. In practice, it is
often difficult to decide whether an error is caused by language transfer or
not. Often various factors seem to interact to produce error, including first
language influence, intrinsic difficulty of the sub-system of the foreign
language, but also factors such as communicative strategies have to be considered,
where learners have a deficit, perhaps a lexical deficit which they seek to
compensate for. To do this, they may coin a word, use an L1 word, anglicise an
L1 word, use a more general L1 word, use a near synonym, paraphrase, resort to
non-linguistic strategies or appeal to their interlocutor.
There are problems of error evaluation.
Studies of errors in English have found great differences in error gravity
rankings among individual judges who may employ quite different sets of
criteria. In particular, native-speaker judges who are not language teachers
tend to employ communicative criteria, judging an error as less serious if it
does not impede communication and more serious if it does. By contrast,
language teachers, and particularly language teachers who are not native
speakers of English but are native speakers of the learner’s native language,
tend to employ formal criteria, judging errors particularly harshly that
violate rules taught explicitly in the early years of formal instruction, for example,
the sequence of tenses in conditional sentences. They are also extremely severe
on obvious interference errors from L1 (Hughes / Lascaratou 1982; Davies 1983).
There is another more fundamental
objection to error analysis as a tool for describing transitional competence.
At best, error analysis can only provide negative evidence concerning certain
aspects of the language that have not been acquired by a learner at a
particular time. If learners do not produce any passive verb forms, for example,
error analysis cannot say whether they have mastered the passive or not.
Learners who are low risk-takers and who work with a restricted code, who avoid
structures they are unsure of and do not venture into areas where they feel
uncertain, may have relatively few errors. These errors, however, will only
very inadequately document the language deficits of these particular learners.
It would, therefore, seem preferable, not only to study learners’ errors, but
to attempt to describe their language as a whole so as to fully comprehend
their “transitional competence”.
Unit 3
Conclusion
An interlanguage is a
type of speech or writing developed by people during the process of learning a
new language, when the learner is starting to gain proficiency in the new, or
“target,” language but has not mastered it. It is a distorted form of the target language that contains errors caused by inappropriately using aspects
of the learner's native language while trying to speak the target language,
incorrectly applying the target language's grammar or pronunciation rules or
trying to express concepts in the target language by using more basic words the
learner already knows. This is normal during the process of learning a new
language. Every interlanguage is specific to the person speaking it and evolves
as he or she continues to learn the target language.
Interlanguage is usually thought of as
characteristic only of adult second-language learners (but see ‘Revised
Interlanguage Hypothesis’ below), that is, learners who have passed puberty and
thus cannot be expected to be able to
employ the language acquisition device (LAD) – that innate language learning structure
that was instrumental in their acquisition of their native language. Children
acquiring second languages are thought to have the ability to re-engage the LAD
and thus to avoid the error pattern and ultimate fossilization that
characterize the interlanguages of adult second-language learners.
Central to the notion of interlanguage is
the phenomenon of fossilization – that process in which the learner’s
interlanguage stops developing, apparently permanently. Second-language
learners who begin their study of the second language after puberty do not
succeed in developing a linguistic system that approaches that developed by
children acquiring that language natively. This observation led Selinker to
hypothesize that adults use a latent psychological structure (instead of a LAD)
to acquire second languages. The five psycholinguistic processes of this latent
psychological structure that shape interlanguage were hypothesized (Selinker,
1972) to be (a) native language transfer, (b) overgeneralization of target language
rules, (c) transfer of training, (d) strategies of communication, and (e)
strategies of learning. We can study these five psychological structure in
error analysis.
Language learning is actually process of
tria and error, in which a learner form a hypothesis in which they can abort it
or adjust it. Therefore error analysis study how to examine learner’s errors in
a longitudinal way in order to state the individual learner’s hypothesis and
locate the progress he is making.
References
Tarone. 2006. Interlanguage. London: Elsevier
Lenon. 2008. Contrastive analysis, Error analysis,
Interlanguage. ……..: Gramley
