Second language acquisition 

(SLA):
- SLA is the process where the learner is trying to apply the same methods, techniques, and
atmosphere of a child acquiring the first/mother tongue language
- Explicit memory: is when you are trying to intentionally and with effort remember
something for example a formula for your statistics class
- Implicit memory: information that people try to unintentionally and effortlessly remember
is stored in implicit memory which is also sometimes referred to as unconscious memory
or automatic memory.
- Socio-cultural interpretation: with your mind and your habits, once you are exposed to
society, they will change the way you think of words and even the way you say them.
- Behaviorism theory: it focuses on the idea that all behaviors are learned through
interactions with the environment. This learning theory states that behaviors are learned
from the environment, and says that innate are inherited factors have very little influence
on behavior. However, one of your relates behaviorism to language learning here we are
talking about imitation and language habits.
- Cognitive theory: it suggests that language is an innate faculty that Chomsky turned as a
language acquisition device (LAD)
 Stages of SLA:
1- Preproduction (0-6 months): the student:
 Has minimal comprehension
 Nods “yes” or “no”
 Does not verbalize
 Draws and points
2- Early Production (6 months - 1 year): the student:
 Has limited comprehension
 Produces one or a few words of responses
 Uses keywords and familiar phrases
 Uses present tense verbs
3- Speech Emergence (1 year – 3 years): the student:
 Has good comprehension
 Can produce simple sentences
 Makes grammar and pronunciation errors
 Frequently misunderstands jokes
4- Intermediate fluency (3 years – 5 years): the student:
 Has excellent comprehension
 Makes a few grammatical errors
5- Advanced fluency (5 to 7 years): the student:
 Has a near-native level of speech.
Conversation Analysis:
- CA is an approach to the study of social interaction and talk-in-interaction, analyzing a
speech of a conversation either naturally recorded or in a hidden way recorded.
Why is it used?
 For challenging the traditional way we understand and analyze
communication
 For discovering how participants understand and respond to one another in
their turns at talk, with a central focus on how sequences of action are
generated.
 For understanding the meanings of real language and how people really
speak
 For checking mistakes if it was for academic purposes (syntax
pronunciation word correctness etc)
 For psychological problems (inability to speak, stuttering...etc)
Features of the CA:
 Analyzing each person's speaking/speech individually (one by one)
 Silence is to be avoided (if there is no speech, there is no analysis)
 Participants, in a conversation, must not speak at once.
Principal findings in CA:
1- Turn taking: Briefly, it means what are the ways, the manners, or the words in which you
will feel that the other person will take a turn in speaking.
2- Adjacency pairs in the analysis are said to be an automatic answer or response to an
expression or question in a conversation.
3- Repair: is the process by which a speaker recognizes a speech error and repeats what has
been said with some sort of correction.
Types of Repair Sequences:
1- Self-initiated, self-repair: Repair is both initiated and carried out by the speaker of the
trouble source
2- Self-initiated, other-repair: The speaker of a trouble source realizes the mistake and may
try and get the recipient to repair the trouble.
3- Other-initiated, self-repair: Repair is carried out by the speaker of the trouble source but
initiated by the recipient
4- Other-initiated, other-repair: The recipient both indicates and carries out the repair.
Contrastive linguistics analysis:
- Contrastive analysis: is the systematic comparison based on studying the effects of two
languages in contact.
- Contrastive analysis has often been done for practical or pedagogical purposes. The aim
has been to facilitate the tasks of teaching and learning a foreign language.
- Fries (1954) contended that "the most efficient materials are those that are based upon a
scientific description of the language to be learned, carefully compared with a parallel
description of the native language of the learner"
- Lado mentioned "Contrasting two languages would help predict the features that would
represent difficulty or ease in learning a second language "
- A contrastive analysis must proceed through four steps as suggested by Whiteman in
1970:
1- Description: Write a description of the two languages
2- Selection: Select a form for example morphology or syntax
3- Comparison: Compare the two forms
4- Prediction: Predicts difficulties
Pragmatics:
- It studies or investigates the invisible or hidden meaning of a word through context.
- Pragmatics is a specialized branch to study the relationship between the natural language
(the exact meaning of words in dictionaries away from the use of the speakers) and the
users of the language.
- Pragmatic language refers to the social language skills that we use in our daily
interactions with others, this includes: what we say, how we say it (intonations, out
loud...), And our nonverbal communication.
- The advantage of studying language via pragmatics is that one can talk about people's
intended meanings, that assumption, their purposes or goals, and the kind of action (for
example, request) that they are performing when they speak.
- The big disadvantage is that all these very human concepts are extremely difficult to
analyze in a consistent and objective way.
- Conversational maxims (Paul Grice 1975):
1- The maxim of Quality: In this maxim, a speaker should contribute true information to a
hearer, ensure the correctness of the information, and avoid unaccountable information.
When this maxim is violated, speakers tend to lie or use sarcasm, so they purposely say
the opposite of what is meant.
2- The maxim of Quantity: It is associated with the amount of information. A speaker
provides as much information as required and does not provide more information than is
required (no more, no less). However, violating towards maxim of quantity happens when
a speaker does not give enough information to a hearer about the whole picture or the
topic being discussed.
3- The maxim of Relevance: In the maxim of relevance, the information or comment of the
speaker should be relevant and pertinent to the topic of conversation. However, when this
maxim is violated, a speaker changes the topic of the conversation or when the
information simply turns out to be irrelevant.
4- The maxim of Manner: In this maxim, a speaker should avoid obscurity and ambiguity
and should be clear, brief, and orderly in giving information. Violating this maxim means
a speaker does not talk clearly, appearing to obscure and tending to ambiguity and also
avoiding a brief and orderly answer.
- The Politeness theory is a theory and an important branch of pragmatics developed by
Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson in the 1970s that appeared within the framework
of the pragmatic approach in linguistics. According to this theory, the interlocutors use
particular strategies in order to achieve successful communication. These strategies enable
to create a maximally comfortable environment for communication.
- So you express politeness either by natural language (Please - Pardon me…) or by other
expressions which are not natural.
Diachronic vs. Synchronic linguistics.
 Diachronic linguistics refers to the study of how a language (or one aspect of a language)
evolves over a period of time of its history. Tracing the development of English from the
Old English period to the twentieth century is a diachronic study
 Synchronic linguistics is the study of a language (or one aspect of a language) at a
particular/specific point in its history. It is often descriptive, analyzing how the parts of a
language or grammar work together.
 The main difference between synchronic and diachronic linguistics is their focus or
viewpoint of the study.
 Language changes for several reasons. First, it changes because the needs of its speakers
change. New technologies, new products, and new experiences require new words to refer
to them clearly and efficiently.
 High involvement style: when participation in a conversation is very active, that speaking
rate is fast, with no pause between turns, and with some overlap or even completion of the
other’s turn. Such as Japanese people.
 High considerateness style: when speakers use a slower rate, expect longer pauses between
turns, do not overlap, and avoid interruption or completion of the other’s turn. Such as
Californian people.
Language Transfer:
- The transfer is the influence resulting from the similarities and differences between the
target language and any other language that has been previously acquired.
 Positive transfer occurs where a language item in LI is also present in L2, so the
acquisition of this item makes little or no difficulty for the learners.
 Negative transfer (or interference) occurs when there is no concordance between LI and
L2 and thus, acquisition of the new L2 structure would be more difficult and errors
reflecting the L1 structure would be produced.
 The linguistic interpretation of this problem (Negative transfer) has taken two ways:
1- Lado (1957) believed that the mistakes occurring in L2 are due to the interference of the
L1
2- In 1967, it was believed by another linguist that the mistakes occurring in L2 are due to a
wrong syllabus (That is, the current way of teaching/learning is said to be wrong)
Language planning:
 In sociolinguistics, language planning is a deliberate effort to influence function [a
decision upon the position of a given language] (official/ national), structure [the
structure change of some words or maybe the syntax] (revising the spelling system), and
acquisition of a language [the way this language is learned (for example English is taught
as a second language learning in Algeria nowadays)] within a speech community. It is
usually the function of the government or other influential bodies/decision-makers to
decide which variety (language or dialect) is named official and which one is not.
 Language planning makes not only decisions but also even possible linguistic changes for
communication improvement
Aims of LP:
 The most important aim is to communicate and build an ideal society based on mutual
intelligibility (mutual understanding).
 Language planning supports language shift (replacing a language with another) and
language assimilation (addition of a language to be side by side with the first language).
Types of LP:
1- Status Planning (Position planning): to promote a given variety of language to be the
standard language (a movement from a dialect to a language) or official language. It deals
with the function of language.
2- Corpus Planning: It deals with the structure of language; it involves introducing the
change to the structure of a given language, modernizing the lexis, revising the grammar,
and reviewing the spelling system.
3- Language acquisition (education) planning: it is about decisions of which languages are
going to be taught at schools (when and how) as academic languages, second languages,
foreign ones...
Language Planning (Follow-up) hada tabe3 l language planning:
Standardization process:
 Is the movement from a dialect to a standard variety of language. This process takes four
stages:
1. Selection: it is a political decision. Politicians and bodies of the government select a given
language to be a standard one, usually the language that sounds more prestigious
2. Codification: this is the second stage where sociolinguists will codify the selected language,
i.e. they fix grammar, elaborate dictionaries, and modernize the spelling system and lexis...
3. Elaboration of function: make the decision of what are the domains where to use that
language, whether at schools, mosques, the media...
4. Acceptance: a matter of agreement that every speech community will finally accept to use
the selected language.
Motives for language planning:
 Linguistic assimilation: it is for the sake of unifying the nation under one language, and
you look at the language as a way of unifying a nation.
 Linguistic Pluralism: that is the contrast; linguistic pluralism in fact permits the diversity
of languages. i.e. you will have a multilingual speech community.
 Internationalization: It consists of adopting a given language to communicate at an
international level,
 Vernacularization: it means declaring the indigenous (original) language(s) of a group of
people to be the official one(s).
Multilingualism:
 It refers to the ability to master two (Bilingualism) or more languages either by an
individual or by a community of speakers.
Functional competence:
 It is the ability of a multilingual speaker to know exactly when to use the L1 and when to
use L2 and when to mix or code-switch both. It depends on the context as well as the
society where you live.
Asymmetrical bilingualism:
 It is when the less powerful linguistic groups are expected to adopt the language of a
powerful group in order to access education or government services and jobs.
How do speech communities become multilingual?
 There are three common ways for the speech community to become multilingual:
- Population movement: in the case of immigration. Immigration leaves a huge impact on
language as immigrants usually have to learn a new vocabulary from scratch, and they also
teach other people words and phrases from their mother tongue, but it takes time.
- Boundary drawing: in the case of colonization. Colonizers impose their languages and
cultures on people to learn to speak a different language.
- Exogamy: it is the practice of taking marriage partners from other groups. In other words,
it is where marriage occurs only between speakers of different languages.
Note: If the community is a multilingual speech community, it does not mean that its speakers
are multilingual too. Similarly, if the speakers are multilingual, it does not mean that their
country is a multilingual speech community.
Diglossia:
 The father of this scientific concept is Charles Ferguson (1959)
 It is, according to Ferguson, a situation in which two distinctly different language varieties
coexist in a speech community.
Discourse analysis:
 “Discourse” is the language beyond the sentence or a language above the sentence level.
 “Analysis” is an examination of something, its elements, and their relations to each other.
 “Discourse analysis” is, in one of its most complicated definitions, said to be the ability to
create complex discourse interpretations of fragmentary linguistic messages.
Differences between Pragmatics & Discourse analysis:
 Pragmatics is an extension of semantics, it studies the meaning of utterances, words,
phrases, and sentences used for communication and tries to find the rules that govern their
interpretation. DA also studies the meaning (of utterances, words, phrases, and sentences),
but focuses more on larger skill units (articles, literary texts, and complete conversations).
 Pragmatics is general (compared to DA), as it studies several social skills including non-
verbal skills (For example, the same word can be used with different facial expressions
that change its actual meaning).
 Pragmatics focuses on the effects of context on meaning, and Discourse Analysis studies
written and spoken language in relation to its social context.
 While pragmatics looks at meaning at the sentential level, Discourse Analysis observes
wider stretches of expression beyond the sentence and paragraphs.
 Pragmatics studies the processes of language use, whereas discourse analysis is devoted to
the product of language use which is discourse.
Units of DA:
1- Speaker/Writer (sender)
2- Text (in between, either spoken or written)
3- Hearer/Reader (receiver)
- How to say this circle or relationship (Speaker, hearer, and the text) is successful?
 We say that DA or the circle of analysis is successful when the hearer understands
perfectly the message of the speaker, just as the latter wants without misunderstandings.
Remarks:
 There is another subfield of DA that is called Critical Discourse Analysis. CDA does not
only analyze but also finds out powerful items in a discourse. It can also be defined as
"Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily
studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced,
and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context."
 When you do the interpretation of the discourse, you have to pay attention to two
aspects:
1- Cohesion: the ties and connections (cohesive devices) that exist within texts. Some of
these are at the word level (repeated words and phrases)
2- Coherence: is brought to the conversation by the listener. Listeners are always trying to fit
new information into old information to keep the conversation coherent.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC):

 Communication is the process by which we stimulate meaning in the mind of others using
both verbal and non-verbal messages.
 A medium is any vessel (or mediation) that can contain a message.
 Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is defined as any human communication
that occurs using two or more electronic devices.
 It makes communication across great distances and different time zones convenient,
eliminating the time and geographic constraints of in-person communication.
Advantages of CMC:
1- CMC disregards time and place dependence.
2- CMC ensures superiority in reach.
3- CMC facilitates the archive of information, as previous conversations can be kept for
future reference, so they will be available whenever we need them.
4- CMC breaks down the barriers to communication.
5- CMC offers a rich set of tools that can be used to support a variety of learning experiences.
Disadvantages of CMC:
1- CMC limits the richness of communication.
2- The issue of confidentiality and trust.
3- There are also limitations in technology. Computers might be spoilt, Internet servers might
be down, smartphones might be out of battery…
Inter-language:
 According to Larry Selinker, it is a separate linguistic system (separate phonology, lexis,
syntax, and separate discourse) and it is not identical to the L2 native speaker system.
Characteristics of IL:
1. Basically, it is a type of speech or writing people produced when they were learning a new
language.
2. Every inter-language is unique: It is always a unique linguistic system to any particular
individual because it is neither L1 nor L2.
3. It is not anyone’s foreign language.
4. It contains elements of the speaker’s original language
5. The sentences of IL can be error analysis.
Inter-language Formation (factors):
- L1 interference or Language transfer involves learners using their knowledge of L1 to
understand or produce meaning in L2. If L1 and L2 are very different, errors are likely to
occur in L2.
- L2 input: or Learning strategies consist of learners adopting different learning approaches.
Some incorrect learning strategies may result in stagnation in the development of some
aspects of L2, such as syntactic, lexical, or socio-cultural. One such example is the act of
simplification, as in ''I am clean my room now'' instead of ''I am cleaning my room now.''
- L2 context: you study the context of learning culturally and socially.
- Communication strategies: the ways in which the learners try to communicate in the L2

Fossilization:
 Larry Selinker, professor of linguistics at the University of Michigan, coined the term
“fossilization” in his 1972 paper Inter-language (IL).
 The fossilization stage is the highest point you reach in mastering the language you learn,
as it is regarded as the final stage of inter-language development.
Word formation (Etymology):
 It is the study of the origin, history and creation of a word is known as its etymology, a
term that, like many technical words, comes to us through Latin, but has its origins in
Greek (etymon "original form” + logia "study of").
 Generally, there are negative attitudes, in the beginning, when you insert a new word. That
is, the creation of the word is not always welcomed because it may be believed that the
first creation of that particular word comes, most of the time, from a casual context
(informal context).
Why are there new words?
- Because of the inventions of new trademarks or products.
- Language is dynamic, as it changes over time.
- A vast amount of new inventions were made in the 20th and 21st centuries.
- One of the distinctive properties of human language is creativity, as people like to come up
with new creative words.
Types of Word Formation Processes:
 Different types of word formation processes are employed to create new words. However,
all word formation processes basically bring either inflectional or derivational changes.
1- Coinage (neologism):
 It is the process by which you create a completely new word basically from
commercial products.
 Coining is very rare. It does not always happen. However, it happens in rapidly
changing cultures and societies.
 In modern times, particularly in the field of media, business, or medical research,
people try to outdo each other with more or better words to name their products
 For example, Google – Yahoo - Aspirin – Kodak – Vaseline.
2- Borrowing (Loan words):
 It is taking other words from other languages.
 Borrowing is the process whereby new words are formed by adopting words from
other languages together with the concepts or ideas they stand for.
 It involves copying a word that originally belonged to one language, now being used
in another language.
 Words are borrowed due to historic occurrences, such as conquests and invasions, or
to geographical proximity.
 Other examples: Alcohol from (Arabic) - Boss from (Dutch) - Croissant from
(French) - Piano from (Italian) - Robot from (Czech) - Barbecue from (Spanish) -
Yogurt from (Turkish) etc.
3- Loan transition:
 Alternatively calque, it is the case that you take a word from a language, and you
translate it directly (word-for-word) into your own language.
 A calque (otherwise known as a loan translation): is a word or phrase taken from
one language and translated literally, word-for-word, into another language.
4- Compounding:
 It is joining two separate words to produce a single form.
 Compounding can be written in three different ways:
1. Open style, i.e., with a space between the parts of the compound; e.g., toy store, diving
board, flower pot.
2. Hypheyphenated style, i.e., with a hyphen (-) separating the elements of the
compound; e.g., flower-pot, air-brake, she-pony.
3. Solid style, e.g., without a space or hyphen between the component elements of the
compound; e.g., flowerpot, washrooms, pickpocket.
5- Blending:
 Blending is the process whereby new words are formed by combining parts of two words,
usually the beginning of one word and the end of another.
 For example:
- smoke + fog = smog
- breakfast + lunch = brunch
- helicopter + an port = heliport
- motor + hotel = motel
- electro + execute = electrocute
6- Clipping (Shortening):
 Clipping is the process whereby new words are formed by shortening other words, i.e., by
eliminating the initial part, the last part, or both parts, of those words.
 For example:
- Phone from (tele)phone
- Plane from (air)plane
- ad from ad(vertisement)
- exam from exam(ination)
- flu from (in)flu(enza)
- fridge from re(frige)rator
 Remember that the short form or clipping represents the word in its entirety. In addition,
the clipping may not be used in the same context as the longer word because the word
exam is mostly used to refer to academic examinations or tests, not to medical
examinations or check-ups.
 Clipped forms generally show a certain tone of informality, which is often reflected in
their spellings. For example:
- 'showbiz' for 'showbusiness'
- 'cause' ('cuz' or 'cos') for 'because'
- 'praps' for 'perhaps'.
7- Backformation:
 It is a process by which a word from one type (noun) is reduced into a form of another
type (verb). Remember that the deduced verb should be shorter than the noun it has been
deduced from.
 For example:
- Donation  Donate
- Revision  Revise
- Creation  Create
- Edit  Editor
- Play  Player
- Televise  Television
8- Conversion (Functional shift or category change):
 Conversion is the word formation process in which a word of one grammatical form
becomes a word of another grammatical form without any changes to spelling or
pronunciation.
 It is a change in the function of the word, it involves nouns becoming verbs without
reduction, verbs into nouns, phrasal verbs into nouns, one complex verb combination into
adjectives or nouns
 For example:
- Water  Water
- Must  Must
- To print out  a print out
- To take away  a takeaway
- See through  a see-through material
- Stand up  a stand-up comedian
- Want to be  a wanna-be member
9- Acronyms:
 They are words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words. For example:
- From the initial letters of the words of the sentence I owe you, the word IOU is formed.
- From the initial letters of the words of the phrase North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the
word NATO is formed.
- From the initial letters of the words of the sentence I miss you, the word IMY is formed.
 According to Quirk et al. (1985), there are two main types of acronyms, namely:
1. Acronyms which are pronounced as a word:
- NASA → National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- UNESCO → United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
- COBOL  Common Business Oriented Language
2. Acronyms which are pronounced separately as a sequence of letters (also called
alphabetisms):
- VIP → very important person
- FBI  Federal Bureau of Investigations
10- Derivation:
 It is the most common process in the English language which is accomplished by means
of a large number of small bits of the English language which are not usually given a
separate listing in dictionaries. They are described as affixes.
 For example:
- Unhappy – Dislike – Rewrite – Disappear
- Without – Playing – Quickly – Fearless