English 333 : Second Language Acquisition

Syllabus for Fall 2007

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:30 - 3:45 p.m., 1651 Humanities

Instructor	Assignments
Texts	Assessment and Grading
Aims of the Course	Course Outline

Professor Richard F Young 7163 Helen C White Hall Office hours: Thursdays, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m., or by appointment E-mail: rfyoung at wisc dot edu Home Page: www.wisc.edu/english/rfyoung Phone: 263-2679

Class E-mail List. You may send e-mail messages to me and to all students registered for this course through the class e-mail list.  Send your messages to english333-1-f07 at lists dot wisc dot edu.  In order for you to receive messages from the e-mail list, your e-mail address must be in the Registrar's database.  You can update your preferred email address by accessing My UW-Madison, "Student Records" tab, "Preferred Address" module.

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Required Texts

	Gass, S. M., & Selinker, L. (2001). Second language acquisition: An introductory course. (2nd edition). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.  "The textbook" is available in the College Library Reserve Book Collection, 1st Fl. West, Room 1191.  Call Number: P118.2 G37 2001.
	Gass, S., Sorace, A., & Selinker, L. (1999). Second language learning: Data analysis. (2nd edition). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.  "The workbook" is available in the College Library Reserve Book Collection, 1st Fl. West, Room 1191.  Call Number: P118.2 G374 1999. I will make available audio recordings for use with the workbook.
	Course packet available from Bob's Copy Shop.

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Aims of the Course

This course is a general introduction to scientific research into how people learn a second language. Although the course is designed to be accessible to students from a wide variety of backgrounds, some knowledge of the linguistic structure of English will be assumed.

Second language acquisition, or SLA, is a theoretical and experimental field of study which, like first language acquisition studies, looks at the phenomenon of language development -- in this case the acquisition of a second language.  The term "second" includes "foreign" and "third", "fourth" (etc.). Since the early nineteen seventies, SLA researchers have been attempting to describe and explain the behavior and developing systems of children and adults learning a new language.

The dominant aim behind this research is to extend our understanding of the complex processes and mechanisms that drive language acquisition.

By virtue of the fact that language itself is complex, SLA has become a broadly-based field and it now involves:

	Studying the complex pragmatic interactions between learners, and between learners and native speakers
	Examining how non-native language ability develops, stabilizes, and undergoes attrition (forgetting, loss)
	Carrying out a highly technical analysis and interpretation of all aspects of learner language with the help of current linguistic theory
	Developing theories that are specific to the field of SLA that aim to account for the many facets of non-native behavior
	Testing hypotheses to explain second language behavior

The goal of SLA is to understand how learners learn and it is not the same as research into language teaching. However, applied linguists whose particular interest is in facilitating the language learning process should find ways of interpreting relevant SLA research in ways that will benefit the language teacher.  SLA, in this light, should become an essential point of reference for those involved in educational activities and researchers looking at how to facilitate the learning process.

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Assignments

Attendance and Readings. All students are expected to attend class regularly and to complete weekly readings assigned from the textbook and from the course packet.

Exams. Your knowledge and interpretation of the readings and lectures will be assessed by two take-home examinations.  The mid-term exam will be handed out on Tuesday, October 17 and is due on Thursday, October 19.  The midterm will focus on chapters 1 - 7 of the textbook.  The final exam will be handed out on Thursday, December 14 and is due before Wednesday, December 10 at 12:05 p.m.  Exams that are handed in or emailed late will receive a failing grade.  The final will focus on chapters 8 - 14 of the textbook.  Questions on both exams will be taken from the "Points for Discussion" sections at the end of each chapter in the textbook.  After you receive your grade for the midterm, you have one week in which you may choose to rewrite your answer to one question that you have attempted. I will read your new answer and re-grade your midterm accordingly.  No rewrites are possible for the final exam.

Presentations of SLA Research. In groups of 3-4 students, you will be responsible for making one or more presentations of SLA research from articles that I assign from the course packet.

In preparing your presentation, you should ...

	Read the chapter or articles.
	Prepare an oral presentation that summarizes and critiques for the rest of us the theory described in the reading, and (if empirical studies of SLA are reported), describe and critique the methods used in the studies and their results. Your oral presentation should last no longer than 20 minutes.
	Write up your presentation as a paper and hand it to me for comments and grading.
	Your seminar paper should be between 2 and 4 pages long (not including title page and bibliography).

SLA Problem Sets. All students are expected to attempt assigned problem sets involving the analysis and interpretation of second language data from the workbook and textbook.  Some problem sets involve analysis of audio data, which is available for download here. The problem set relating to topics covered in Thursday's and Tuesday's lectures is due on the following Thursday.  Each activity must be done in groups of between 3 and 5 students. Each member of the group will receive the same grade. Hard copies of your responses are due on the day specified in the Course Outline. If you miss class on a day when an assignment is due, you may send your responses as an email attachment to the class grader, Betsy Tremmel, with a copy to me.  Late assignments will not be accepted.

Authorship. Many of your assignments for this course involve integrating information from published sources into your own writing. This means that you need to be careful not to plagiarize: "to steal or pass off (the ideas and words of another) as one's own" or to "present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source" (Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, p. 888). For advice on what sources you should document and how to document them, consult Quoting and Paraphrasing Sources published by the Writing Center, from which the preceding statement is taken.

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Assessment and Grading

Letter grades will be awarded for the SLA problem sets and for the presentations of SLA research. Percent scores will be awarded for the exams. The meanings and equivalencies of the grades follow.

The final grade for the course will take into account grades awarded on all assignments in the following proportions.

Incompletes. The grade of "Incomplete" will only be used for a student who has carried the course with a passing grade until near the end of the semester and then, because of illness or other unusual and substantial cause beyond his/her control, is unable to take the final exam.

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Course Outline

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Course Packet

Bardovi-Harlig, K. (1999). From morpheme studies to temporal semantics: Tense-aspect research in SLA. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21(3), 341-382.

Bialystok, E. (1990). Communication strategies: A psychological analysis of second-language use. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Chapter 2.

Bialystok, E., & Sharwood Smith, M. (1985). Interlanguage is not a state of mind: An evaluation of the construct for second-language acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 6(2), 101-117.

Corder, S. P. (1967). The significance of learners' errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 5(4), 161-172.

Cumming, A. H. (1994). Alternatives in TESOL research: Descriptive, interpretive, and ideological orientations. TESOL Quarterly, 28(4), 673-703.

Dörnyei, Z., & Skehan, P. (2003). Individual differences in second language learning. In C. J. Doughty & M. H. Long (Eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 589-630). Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Doughty, C., & Williams, J. (1998). Pedagogical choices in focus on form. In C. Doughty & J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp. 197-261). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Dusková, L. (1984). Similarity-An aid or hindrance in foreign language learning? Folia Linguistica, 18(1-2), 103-115.

Eckman, F., Moravcsik, E., & Wirth, J. (1989). Implicational universals and interrogative structures in the interlanguage of ESL learners. Language Learning, 39(2), 173-205.

Hyltenstam, K., & Abrahamsson, N. (2003). Maturational constraints in SLA. In C. J. Doughty & M. H. Long (Eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 539-588). Malden, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Kanno, K. (1997). The acquisition of null and overt pronominals in Japanese by English speakers. Second Language Research, 13(3), 265-287.

Kellerman, E. (1986). An eye for an eye: Crosslinguistic constraints on the development of the L2 lexicon. In E. Kellerman & M. Sharwood Smith (Eds.), Crosslinguistic influence in second language acquisition (pp. 35-48). New York: Pergamon.

Lado, R. (1957). Linguistics across cultures. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Excerpts reprinted in S. M. Gass & L. Selinker (eds.), Language transfer in language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, (pp. 21-32).

Lantolf, J. P., & Appel, G. (1994). Theoretical framework: An introduction to Vygotskian approaches to second language research. In J. P. Lantolf & G. Appel (Eds.), Vygotskian approaches to second language research (pp. 1-32). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Mackey, A. (1999). Input, interaction and second language development: An empirical study of question formation in ESL. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21(4), 557-581.

MacWhinney, B. (1997). Second language acqusition and the competition model. In A. M. B. de Groot & J. F. Kroll (Eds.), Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 113-144). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Poulisse, N., & Bongaerts, T. (1994). First language use in second language production. Applied Linguistics, 15(1), 36-57.

Schachter, J. (1974). An error in error analysis. Language Learning, 24(2), 205-214.

White, L. (1990). Second language acquisition and universal grammar. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 12, 121-133.

Young, R. (1993). Functional constraints on variation in interlanguage morphology. Applied Linguistics, 14, 76-97.

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This page was last updated on November 20, 2007 .