English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
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20 ROSAMOND MITCHELL AND FLORENCE MYLEScommunity of target language ‘native speakers’; most rema<strong>in</strong> noticeably deviant <strong>in</strong> theirpronunciation, and many cont<strong>in</strong>ue to make grammar mistakes and to search for words, evenwhen well motivated to learn, after years of study, residencc and/or work <strong>in</strong> contact withthe target language.Second language learn<strong>in</strong>g, then, is typified by <strong>in</strong>complete success; the claimed systematicevolution of our underly<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>terlanguage rules towards the target language system seemsdoomcd, most often, never to <strong>in</strong>tegrate completely with <strong>its</strong> goal. Indeed, while some learnersgo on learn<strong>in</strong>g, others seem to cease to make any visible progress, no matter how manylanguage classes they attend, or how activcly they cont<strong>in</strong>ue to use their second language forcommunicative purposes.The termfossilization is commonly used to describe this phenomenon,when a learner’s L2 system seems to ‘freeze’, or become stuck, at somc more or lessdeviant stage.These phenomena of <strong>in</strong>complete success and fossilization are also significant ‘facts’ aboutthe process of L2 learn<strong>in</strong>g, which any serious theory must eventually expla<strong>in</strong>. As we willsee, explanations of two basic types have <strong>in</strong> fact been offered.The first group of explanationsare psychol<strong>in</strong>guistic: the language-specific learn<strong>in</strong>g mechanisms available to the young childsimply cease to work for older learners, at least partly, and no amount of study and effortcan recreate them.Thc second group of explanations are sociol<strong>in</strong>guistic: oldcr L2 learners donot have the social opportunities, or the motivation, to identify completely with the nativespeaker community, but may <strong>in</strong>stead valuc their dist<strong>in</strong>ctive identity as learners or asforeigners.Cross-l<strong>in</strong>guistic <strong>in</strong>jluences <strong>in</strong> L2 learn<strong>in</strong>gEveryday observation tells us that learncrs’ performance <strong>in</strong> a second language is <strong>in</strong>fluencedby the language, or languages, that they already know.This is rout<strong>in</strong>ely obvious from learners’‘foreign accent’, i.c. pronunciation which bcars traces of the phonology of their firstlanguage. It is also obvious when learners make certa<strong>in</strong> characteristic mistakes, e.g. when anativc speaker of <strong>English</strong> says someth<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> French likc je suis dome, an utterance parallel tothc <strong>English</strong> ‘1 am twelve’. (The correct French expression would of course bej’ai doure ansI have twelve years.)This k<strong>in</strong>d of phenomenon <strong>in</strong> learner productions is often called by the term languagetransfer. But how important is the phcnomenon, and what exactly is be<strong>in</strong>g transferred? Secondlanguage researchers have been through several ‘sw<strong>in</strong>gs of the pendulum’ on this question,as Gass puts it (1996). Behaviourist thcorists viewed language transfer as an important sourceof error and <strong>in</strong>terference <strong>in</strong> L2 learn<strong>in</strong>g, because L1 ‘hab<strong>its</strong>’ were so tenacious and deeplyrootcd.The <strong>in</strong>terlanguage theorists who followcd downplayed the <strong>in</strong>fluence of the L1 <strong>in</strong> L2learn<strong>in</strong>g, however, because of their preoccupation with identify<strong>in</strong>g creative processes at work<strong>in</strong> L2 development; they po<strong>in</strong>ted out that many L2 errors could not lie traced to L1 <strong>in</strong>fluence,and were primarily concerned with discovcr<strong>in</strong>g pattcrns and dcvclopmental sequences onthis creative front.Thcorists today, as we shall see, would gcncrally accept once more that cross-l<strong>in</strong>guistic<strong>in</strong>fluences play an important role <strong>in</strong> L2 learn<strong>in</strong>g. Howevcr, we will still f<strong>in</strong>d widcly differ<strong>in</strong>gviews on the extent and nature of these <strong>in</strong>fluences. Some researchers have <strong>in</strong> fact claimedthat learners with different Lls progress at somewhat different rates, and even followdiffcrent acquisitional routes, at least <strong>in</strong> somc areas of the target grammar (c.g. Keller-Cohcn1979, Zobl 1982, quoted <strong>in</strong> Gass 1996, pp. 322-3).