This document discusses various topics related to learner language including: - The errors that second language learners make and what they reveal about the learner's language development. - Contrastive analysis and error analysis frameworks for understanding learner errors. - Developmental sequences that all learners progress through regardless of their background. - Stages of acquiring grammatical morphemes, negation, and questions. - Influence of a learner's first language on acquiring features like possessive determiners, relative clauses, and verb tenses in the target language.

1. Universidad Nacional de Loja
Área de la Educación el arte y la Comunicación
English Language Departament
Semantics
Members: Génesis Guaman
Denisse Robalino

2. Learner Language
• The errors can tell us about the ss
knowledge and and his or her
ability to use it.
• Studying the language of second
language learners the teacher
analyses and determines whether
ss have learned what has been
taught and how closely their
language matches the target
language. Sometimes acquisition
is reflected in a decrease in the
use of a correct form that was
based on memorization and
errors maybe be an indicator of
progress.

3. Contrastive analysis ; errors analysis and inter
language
• According to contrastive
analysis hypothesis were
often assumed to be the
result of transfer from
learners’ first language
(similar).
• Erick Kellerman observed
that learners have intuitions
about which language
features they can transfer
from the first language t the
target language and which
are less transferable
(idiomatic , metaphoric,
expressions).

4. Definition of Developmental Sequence
All learners of a language
will pass through the
same order of acquisition
regardless of their
backgrounds and
different learning
environment

5. Stages of Developmental Sequences
Gramatical Morphemes –Studied and researched
by Stephen Krashen, are the smallest unit that
expresses a distinct meaning.
Examples: independent or free unit: jump, dog,
or happy.
prefix or suffix attached to another
morpheme to modify its meaning: –ed or –ing
for verbs, plural –s or possessive –s for nouns or
–ly or –ness added to adjectives to turn them
into adverbs or nouns.

6. Stages of Developmental Sequences
Negation- Researched by John Schumann and
Henning Wode, the use of a negative in a sentence to
express a thought. In L2 developmental sequence,
although the path is similar to L1 developmental
sequences, the L1 language background may
influence the stages.
Stage 1 - the use of “no” before the verb or noun.
“No cookie”
Stage 2 - using “don’t” compound negative.
‘He don’t want a cookie’

7. Stages of Developmental Sequences
Stages of Negation continue…
Stage 3 – placing the negative element after
auxiliary verbs. using ‘are’, ‘is’, and ‘can’ with
‘not’.
“You can not have a cookie”
Stage 4- using auxiliary verb with ‘not’ in
agreement with person, tense, and number.
“He doesn’t want a cookie”

8. Stages of Developmental Sequences
Questions – Researched by Pienemann, Johnston and
Brindley, is the development of asking questions. In L2
developmental sequence, although the path is similar
to L1 developmental sequences, the L1 language
background may influence the stages.

9. Stages of Developmental Sequences
Question Stages:
Stage 1 – single words or sentence fragments
Cookie?
Stage 2 – declarative word order(no fronting and
no inversion) The girl eat the cookie?
Stage 3 – fronting with ‘do’ or ‘wh-’ but no
inversion. Do you have a cookie in your hand?

10. Stages of Developmental Sequences
Question stages continue…
Stage 4 -inversion in ‘wh’+copula and yes/no
questions. Where is the cookie?
Stage 5 – inversion in ‘wh’ quesitons.
Why does he like the cookie?
Stage 6 – complex questions.
The cookie is good, isn’t it?

11. ENGLISH FRENCH AND SPANISH
His, her or it’s is determined by
the natural gender
The correct form of the
possessive determiner matches
the grammatical gender.
When the object possessed is a
body of part in French is use a
definite article rather than
possessive determiner.
Sa mére= his mother or her mother
Il s’est cassé le bras – He broke the (his)
arm

12. Joanna White (1998) four main stages to acquire possessive determiners by French-speaking students
Stage 1: Pre-emergence
Only is use the definite article or your for
all persons, genders and numbers.
Example:
The Little boy play with the bicycle.
Stage 2: Emergence
His or her with strong preference to use only
one of the forms.
Example:
The mother is dressing her Little boy, and she
put her colthes, her pant, her coat, and then
she finish.
Stage 3: Post-emergence
Differentiated use of ‘his’ and ‘her’ but
not when the object possessed has a
natural gender.
Example:
The girl fell on her bicycle. She look his
father and cry.
Stage 4
Error-free use of ‘his’ and ‘her’ in all contexts
including natural gender and body parts.
Example:
The little girl with her dad play together. And
the dad take his girl on his shoulder and he
hurt his back.

13. RELATIVE CLAUSES
First learners whose first language does not have a particular clause type
it is more difficult to learn to use that type in English.
Second, where learners have a first language with a substantially different
way of forming relative clauses they may avoid using relative clauses even
when their interlanguage is fairly advanced.
Third, first language influence is seen in the errors learners make.
Language influence observations in the acquisitions of relative
clauses
The table referred to as the ‘accessibility
hierarchy’ and it reflects the apparent case
with which learners have access to certain
structures in the target language.

14. REFERENCETOPAST
According to Jurgen Meisel (1987) observed:
 Learners with limited language may simply refer to events in order in which they occurred.
 Learner start to attach a grammatical morpheme marking the verb for past.
 After they begin marking past tense on regular verbs, learners may overgeneralize the regular –ed
ending.
According Kathleen Bardovi-Harling (2000) found:
 Learners are more likely to mark past tense on some verbs than on others. For example: ‘I broke
the vase’ and ‘she seemed happy last week’
 Learners seem to find easier to mark past tense on verbs that refer to something whose end point
can easily be determined. These are referred to as ‘accomplishments’ and ‘achievements’.
According Laura Collins (2002) investigated the different English verb form used by French speakers:
 French speakers use more past perfect tense rather than past simple
 The first language influence does not appear to override the effect of lexical aspect; rather it
occurs within it.

15. MOVEMENT TROUGH DEVELOPMENTAL SEQUENCES
When a more advanced stage comes to dominate in a learner’s speech,
conditions of stress or complexity in a communicative interaction can cause
the learner to ‘slip back’ to an earlier stage.
Progress to a higher stager not always means that the learners produce few
errors
Learners do not appear to assume that they can simply transfer the
structures of their first language into the second.

16. MORE ABOUT FIRST LANGUAGE SEQUENCE
Perdue (1993) report, there
were substantial similarities in
the interlanguage patterns of
the learners. The similarities
were greatest in the earliest
stages of second language
acquisition.
When learners reach a certain stage and
perceive a similarity to their first
language, they may linger longer at that
stage or add a sub stage to the sequence
regardless of their first language.
There are patterns in the
development of syntax
and morphology that are
similar among learners
from different language
backgrounds.
Learners’ first language can affect
second language acquisition is in
making it difficult for them to notice
that something they are saying is
not a feature of the language as it is
used by more proficient speakers.
The phenomenon ‘avoidance’
Jacquelyn Schechter( 1974)
described appeared to be caused at
least in part learners perception that
a feature in the target language was
so distant and different from their
first language that they preferred not
to try it.
Hakan Ringbom (1986) found
that the interference errors
made in English by both
finish Swedish and Swedish
finish bilinguals were most
often traceable to Swedish,
not finish.

17. VOCABULARY
In 1980, Paul Meara characterized vocabulary as a ‘neglected aspect of language learning’.
It is important because communication often breaks down if we do not use the correct
word
English is estimated to have anywhere from 100,000 to one million words
It is difficult for adults and older childre referring or guess a Word in contex.
Paul Nation (2001) suggest that a learner needs to have many meaningful encounters with
a new word before it becomes firmly established in memory.
The ability to understand the meaning of the most words without focused attention is
essential for fluent reading as well as for fluent speaking.

18. Stephen Krashen (1985, 1989) has asserted that the best source of vocabulary growth is
reading for pleasure.
Bhatia Laufer (1992) and others have shown that it is difficult to infer the meaning and
learn new words from reading unless one already knows 95 percent or more of the words
in a text.
Jan Hulstijn and Bhatia Laufer (2001) provide evidence that vocabulary development is
more successful when learners are fully engaged in activities that require them to attend
carefully to the new words and even to use them in productive tasks.

19. study of how language is
used in context to express
such things as directness,
politeness, and deference.
Learners need to acquire
skills for interpreting
requests, responding
politely to compliments or
apologies, recognizing
humors and, managing
conversation.
Requests are an
interesting pragmatic
feature because are
made in different
languages as well as
differences in how they
are expressed across
languages and cultures.
According to Gabriele
Kasper and Kenneth
Rose (2002) there are
five stages of
development.
Stage 3. productive speech and some
mitigation of requests
Stage 4. complex language and increased
used of mitigation
Stage 5. more refinement of the force of
requests.
Stage 2. includes memorized routines
and frequent use of imperatives.
Stage1. minimal language that is often
incomplete and highly context-
dependent.

20. PHONOLOGY
Pronunciation was a central component in language teaching during
the audio-lingual era. Were developed several teachniques which
learners perceive and produce distinction between single sounds in
minimal pair drills.
Tracey Derwing and her colleagues (1998, 2003) found that learners who received pronunciation lessons
emphasizing stress and rhythm were judged to be easier to understand than learners who received lessons
focused on individual sounds.
Spanish speakers will often say ‘ I e-speak e-spanish’ because spanish words do not have consonant clusters
beginning with s. Few languages have th sound. Learners may substitute similar sounds from their language for
example: t or d, s or z.