Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

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1.5 Some background ideas of SLA research
Some background ideas of SLA research
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multi-competence
: the knowledge of more than one language in the same
mind
the independent language assumption
: the language of the L2 learner can be
considered a language in its own right rather than a defective version of the
target language (sometimes called ‘interlanguage’)
L2 user and L2 learner:
an L2 user uses the second language for real-life pur-
poses; an L2 learner is acquiring a second language rather than using it
second and foreign language
: broadly speaking, a 
second
language is for
immediate use within the same country; a 
foreign
language is for long-term
future use in other countries
Keywords
●
Do you feel you keep your two languages separate or do they merge at some
point in your mind?
●
Do you think students should aim to become as native-like as possible?
Focusing questions
When SLA research became an independent discipline, it established certain prin-
ciples that underlie much of the research to be discussed later. This section pres-
ents some of these core ideas.
SLA research is independent of language teaching
Earlier approaches to L2 learning often asked the question: which teaching meth-
ods give the best results? Is an oral method better than a translation method? Is a
communicative method better than a situational one? Putting the question in this
form accepts the status quo of what already happens in teaching rather than look-
ing at underlying principles of learning: ‘Is what happens in teaching right?’
rather than ‘What should happen in teaching?’ A more logical sequence is to ask:
how do people 
learn
languages? Then teaching methods can be evaluated in the
light of what has been discovered, and teaching can be based on adequate ideas of
learning. The first step is to study learning itself; the second step is to see how
teaching relates to learning, the sequence mostly followed in this book.
The teacher should be told from the start that there is no easy link between SLA
research and language teaching methods, despite the claims made in some course-
books or by some researchers. The language teaching approaches of the past 50 years,
by and large, have originated from teaching methodologists, not from SLA research.
The communicative approach, for example, was only remotely linked to the theories
of language acquisition of the 1960s and 1970s; it came chiefly out of the insight that
language teaching should be tailored to students’ real-world communication needs.
SLA research does not provide a magic solution that can be applied instantly to the

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contemporary classroom so much as a set of ideas that teachers can try out for them-
selves.
The new field did not blindly take over the concepts previously used for talking
about L2 learning. Language teachers, for example, often contrast 
second
language
teaching (which teaches the language for immediate use within the same country,
say, the teaching of French to immigrants in France) with 
foreign
language teaching
(which teaches the language for long-term future uses and may take place any-
where, but most often in countries where it is not an everyday medium, say, the
teaching of French in England). While this distinction is often convenient, it can-
not be taken for granted that learners in these two situations necessarily learn in two
different ways without proper research evidence. Indeed, later we shall look at many
other dimensions to the learning situation (see Chapter 10). (Also there seems to be
some variation between British and American usage of ‘foreign’ and ‘second’.)
The term 
second language (L2) learning/acquisition
is used in this book to include all
learning of languages other than the native language, in whatever situation or for
whatever purpose: second simply means ‘other than first’. This is the sense of 
second
language
defined by UNESCO: ‘A language acquired by a person in addition to his
mother tongue’. Nor does this book make a distinction between language ‘acquisi-
tion’ and language ‘learning’, as Stephen Krashen does (e.g. Krashen, 1981a).
A more idiosyncratic use here is the distinction between 
L2 user
and
L2 learner
.
An
L2 user
is anybody making an actual use of the second language for real-life
purposes outside the classroom; an 
L2 learner
is anybody acquiring a second lan-
guage. In some cases a person is both user and learner – when an L2 learner of
English in London steps out of the classroom, they immediately become an L2
user of English. The distinction is important for many countries where learners do
not become users for many years, if ever. The prime motivation for the term 
L2
user
, however, is the feeling that it is demeaning to call someone who has func-
tioned in an L2 environment for years a learner rather than a user, as if their task
were never finished. We would not dream of calling a 20-year-old adult native
speaker an L1 learner, so we should not call a person who has been using a second
language for 20 years an L2 learner!
The different spheres of SLA research and language teaching mean that the con-
cepts of language they use are often different. The danger is when both fields use
the same terms with different meanings. To SLA researchers, for instance, the term
‘grammar’ mostly means something in people’s heads which they use for con-
structing sentences; to teachers it means a set of rules on paper which can be
explained to students. The type of grammar used in SLA research has little to do
with the tried and true collection of grammatical ideas for teaching that teachers
have evolved, as will be illustrated in Chapter 2. It is perfectly possible, for exam-
ple, for the same person to say ‘I hate grammar’ (as a way of teaching by explain-
ing rules) and ‘I think grammar is very important’ (as the mental system that
organizes language in the students’ minds). It is dangerous to assume that words
used by teachers every day, such as ‘vocabulary’, ‘noun’ or ‘linguist’, have the same
meaning in the context of SLA research.