DISCOURSE ASPECTS OF INTERLANGUAGE Ellis 2003 Chapter 5

DISCOURSE ASPECTS OF INTERLANGUAGE Ellis 2003, Chapter 5 pp. 43 – 50 Bastian Surya Adinegara (2201406582) Fatimah(2201410061) Lilik Suryani (2201410112)

The study of learner discourse in SLA has been informed by two rather different goals. how L 2 learners acquire the ‘rules’ of discourse that inform native– speaker language use. how interaction shapes interlanguage development

ACQUIRING DISCOURSE RULES There are rules or regularities in the ways in which native speaker hold conversations. In the Unites States, for example, a compliment usually calls for a response and failure to provide one can be considered a sociolinguistic error. Furthermore, in American English, compliment responses are usually quite elaborate, involving some attempt on the part of the speaker to play down the compliment by making some unfavorable compliment.

For example: A: I like your sweater. B: It’s so old. My sister bought it for me in Italy some time ago. However, L 2 learners behave differently. Sometimes, they fail to respond to a compliment at all. At other times, they produce bare responses, for instance, ‘thank you’.

THE ROLE OF INPUT AND INTERACTION IN L 2 ACQUISITION The bulk of the research on learner discourse has been concerned with whether and how input and interaction affect L 2 acquisition. Interactionist theories of L 2 acquisition acknowledge the importance of both input and internal language processing. Learning takes place as a result of complex interaction between the linguistic environment and the learner’s internal mechanisms.

Input modifications have been investigated through the study of foreigner talk, the language that native speakers use when addressing non – native speakers. Two types of foreigner talk can be identified – ungrammatical and grammatical.

Ungrammatical foreigner talk is characterized by the deletion of certain grammatical features such as copula be, modal verb and articles, the use of the base form of the verb in place of the past tense form and the use of the special constructions such as ‘no+verb’.

Foreigner talk, the language that native speakers use when addresing non-native speaker

Various types of modification of baseline talk (i. e. the kind of talk native speakers address to other native speakers) can be identified : 1. First, grammatical foreigner talk is delivered at a slower pace. 2. Second, the input is simplified. 3. Third, grammatical foreigner talk is sometimes regularized 4. Fourth, foreigner talk sometimes consists of elaborated language use

Type of talk Example Baseline talk You won’t forget to buy the ice cream on your way home, will you? Ungrammatical foreigner talk No forget buying ice-cream, eh? Grammatical foreigner talk The ice-cream- You will not forget to buy it on your way home – Get it when you are coming home. All right?

Research shows that learners sometimes do this. Learners can signal that they have not understood. The result in interactional modifications as the participants in the discourse engage in the negotiation of meaning

q There is plenty evidance to suggest that modified interaction of this kind is common in learnear discourse. Hiroki : A man is uh. dringking c-coffee or tea with uh the saucer of the uh uh coffee set is uh in his uh knee. Izumi : in him knee Hiroko : uh on his knee Izumi : yeah Hiroko : on his knee Izumi : so sorry, on his knee

MICHAEL LONG When learners have the chance to clarify something that has been said they are giving themselves more time to process the input, which may help them. Interaction can overload learners with input.

EVELYN HATCH Hatch emphasize that the collaborative endeavours of the learners and their interlocutors in constructing discourse and suggests that syntactic structure can grow out of the process of building discourse.

L. S VYGOTSKY 1. The two keys contracts in what is known as activity theory are motive and internalization. 2. The notion of the zone of proximal development is important. 3. According to activity theory , socially constructed L 2 language is a necessary condition for interlanguage development.

THE ROLE OF OUTPUT IN L 2 ACQUISITION Discourse supplies learners with the opportunity to produce language as well as hear it. 1. Krashen 2. Merril Swain

CONCLUSION There a number ways in which discourse might contribute to second language acquisition, there are through the modified input that comes in foreign talk, through the input learners obtain from the negotiation of meaning, through comprehensible output scaffolding, and through