This document summarizes key aspects of second language acquisition based on two case studies. It describes how the case studies examined the development of learners' grammatical skills and communicative abilities over time. Some main findings were that learners make different types of errors, acquire fixed expressions and chunks of language before rules, and appear to follow a developmental pattern in their learning influenced by internal cognitive mechanisms interacting with external factors. The case studies provided insights into how learners extract and internalize information from the language they are exposed to.

1. Name: Ridha Ayu Karisma Dewi
NIM: 2201410050
Rombel 403-404

2. DESCRIBING AND EXPLAINING
L2 ACQUISITION

3.  Second language acquisition, or sequential
language acquisition, is learning a second
language after a first language is already
established.
 L2 acquisition defined as the way in which
people learn a language other than their
mother tongue, inside or outside the classroom

4.  The description of L2 acquisition.
 Identifying the external and internal factors that
account for why learners acquire an L2 in the way
they do.
 Describes how L2 acquisition proceeds and to
explain this process and why some learners seem to
be better at it than others.
 Illustrates more specifically how SLA researches
have set about trying to achieve these goals we will
now examine two case studies of L2 learners.

5. External factors relate to factors outside of
individual which give him/her opportunity to
acquire input of language and practice it.
 Social milieu in which learning take place
Social conditions influence the opportunities
that larners have to hear and speak the
language and the attitudes that they develop
towards it.

6.  the input that learner receive
The samples of language learning is exposed.
Language learning cannot occur without some
input. A question of considerable interest is
what type of input of input facilities learning.

7.  Internal
factors relate to cognitive
mechanisms which enable them to extract
information about the L2 from the input
such as aptitude, attitude, interest,
motivation and personality.

8. A case study is detailed study of a learner’s
acquisition of an L2. The two case studies
which we will now examine were both
longitudinal. One is learning English in
surrounding where it serves as a means of
daily communication and the other of two
children learning English in a classroom.

9. Wes(the object of investigation) is a naturalistic
learner : someone who learns the language at the
same time as learning to communicate in it.
The case : Wes did not have the same knowledge
of progressive –ing as a native speaker, He had
little or no knowledge at the beginning of the
study of most grammatical structure, he was still
far short of accuracy three years later. E.g. He
continue to omit –s from plural nouns, rarely put
–s on the third person singular of versbs, and
never used the regular past tense.

10.  Their request were verbless
 E.g. When J needed a cut out of a big circle in
a mathematics lesson he said:
“Big circle.”

11.  First, One issue has to do with what it is needs
to be described.
Schimdt was concerned broadly with how
Wes developed the ability to communicate in
an L2, examining his grammatical
development, his ability to use English in
situationally appropriate ways, and how he
learned to hold succesful conversations.

12.  Second, an issue concerns what it means to
say that a learner has ‘acquired’ a feature of
the target language.
Schmidt, like many other researchers,
defines ‘acquisition’ in terms of whether the
learner manifests patterns of language use
that are more or less the same as native
speakers of the target language.

13.  Third, there is a problem in determining
whether learners have ‘acquired’ a
particular feature. Both Schimidt and I point
out that the learners made considerable use
of the fixed expressions or formulas.
 Fourth, a problem in trying to measure
whether ‘acquisition’ has taken place
concerns learners’ overuse of linguistic
forms. Schimdt showed that Wes knew
when to use the present progressive
correctly but he also showed that Wes used
this form in contexts that did not require it.

14. These studies set out how to describe how
learners’ use of L2 changes over time and what
this shows is about the nature of their
knowledge of the L2.

15.  One finding is that learners make errors of
different kinds. We failed to use some
grammatical features at all and used others
incorrectly. These are errors of omission and
overuse.
 Another finding is that L2 learners acquire a
large number of formulaic chuncks, which they
use to perform communicative functions that
are important to them and which contribute to
the fluency of their unplanned speech
 One of the most interesting issues raised by
these case studies is wether learrners acquire
the language sistematically.

16.  What can account for these descriptive
finding?
 L2 acquisition involves different kinds of
learning.
 Learners internalize chunk of language
structure.
 They acquire rules.

17.  Why did Wes seem to learn some grammatical
items before others? Why did J and R learn the
different ways of making a request in the
particular sequence they did?
 Learners follow a particular developmental
pattern bacause their mental faculties are
structured in such a way that this is the way
they have to learn.
 Regulate what learners take from the input
and how they store the information in their
memories.
 External factors opposed with internal
factors.

18. Thank You