Preview for Chapter Four

Chapter Four
The Linguistic Environment


Taking the perspective of cognitive-interactionist SLA research, this chapter explores the influence of the linguistic environment on the learning of a L2.
In the 1980’s, cognitive-interactionist SLA researchers who investigated the linguistic environment focused on some key elements contributing to optimal L2 learning and their research outcomes:



The outcome of their research pointed out that these elements idealistically provide the learner for an optimal L2 learning experience when combined all together. There are no definite answers (or “magic bullet”) to the learning of a L2, though these elements provide teachers and learners with comprehensible and well supported evidences of their own benefits.
The last sections of this chapter provide the readers with further information about the limits of the linguistic environment as well as other subtle observations that have their importance in understanding the key elements in the chapter.


Some Keywords for Chapter Four

Cognitive-interactionist perspective on L2 learning: “multiple internal (cognitive) and external (environmental) factors reciprocally interact and together affect the observed processes and outcomes of [...] additional language learning.” - p1

Attitude : manner, disposition, feeling, position, etc., with regard to a person or thing; tendency or orientation, esp. of the mind (John Schumman)

Input: Linguistic data produced by other competent users of the L2 - p5 (Comprehensible Input Hypothesis, Krashen)

Interaction: “the best kind of comprehensible input learners can hope to obtain is input that has been interactionally modified, in other words, adjusted after receiving some signal that the interlocutor needs some help in order to fully understand the message.” - p6 (Interaction Hypothesis,Michael Long )

Output: [when] learners engage by necessity not only in comprehending and negotiating messages but also in making meaning and producing messages [in interaction] - p 7 (Swain)

Attention: “in order to learn any aspects of the L2 [...] learners need to notice the relevant material in the linguistic data afforded by the environment.” - p 8 (Noticing Hypothesis- Dick Schmidt)

Output modification: “how learners respond to negotiation for meaning moves” - P12 (Teresa Pica & Kim McDonough)

Language-Related Episode/Initiated Focus on Form/Learner-Initiated Focus on Form: “negotiation of form episodes that are learner-initiated, and which they noted are particularly fostered during collaborative writing activities.” - p15 (Sharon Lapkin, Rod Ellis, Jessica Williams)

Negative feedback: “when the interlocutor has the actual intention to provide such negative information [information about the ungrammaticality of their [learners] utterances] - p15

Clarification request: “offered when intelligibility is low and meaning itself needs to be negotiated” - p 16

Explicit correction: “overtly focus on the form at fault and occur when a teacher clearly indicates to a student that some choice is non-target-like” - p16

Recast: “occur when an interlocutor repeats the learner’s utterance maintaining its meaning but offering a more conventional or mature rendition of the form” - p16

Elicitation: “occur when the teacher initiates another repetition but pauses in the middle of the utterance at fault to let the student complete it correctly” - p17

That's all folks!