The Research Of Second Language Acquisition ( Sla )

INTRODUCTION The research of second language acquisition (SLA) and its theories surged in the twentieth century. At a first glance, the definition of SLA may seem clear, however when analysed further it becomes clear that the subject is a bit more complex. Nevertheless, a good definition of it could be as follows: â€Å"a study of †¦ the way in which people learn a language other than their mother tongue, inside or outside a classroom.† (Ellis, 1997:3) From the 1940s to the 1960s, a psycholinguistic theory known as behaviourism (stimulus-response), was developed, becoming recognised as a legitimate theory behind SLA. This was a positivist approach towards language learning which involved the interference and transfer between a speaker’s first†¦show more content†¦By providing a theoretical framework, then going on to discuss the arguments for and against the CA hypothesis, a conclusion on its reliability will be drawn. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK In order to fully understand the reasons for which the CA hypothesis has fallen into decline, with questions of its reliability in being sufficient in the explanation of errors made by L2 learners, it is necessary to examine other theories behind SLA. Firstly, as aforementioned, behaviourism (and therewith CA) was one school of thought, popularised by B.F Skinner and John Watson. CA is explained in Robert Lado’s Linguistics Across Cultures (1957, p. 2) in which he asserts that those elements that are similar to the [learner s] native language will be simple for him, and those areas that are different will be difficult. By this, Lado meant that errors made in the L2 (by learners) are due to habits which differed from the structures in their L1 and these errors would thus reflect the L1’s structure. However, there is another notable hypothesis which aims to explain the errors made by learners of a second language, that being Larry Selinker’s â€Å"interlanguage† hypothesis. According to Rod Ellis (1997:33), this was coined in recognition of the fact that, although L2 construct a linguistic system that does adopt part of the L1 structure, but is also differs from it and also from the target language. This means that the