Schmidt & Frota
German is the only foreign language that I learned, apart from English. Looking back my high school days when I learned German, I guess I was affected by my English even when I was quite poor at it. It would be mainly because German is relatively more similar to English than Korean. I remember that I kept asking the teacher if it was the SAME to English or it is DIFFERENT from English whenever I learned the new rule or vocabulary in German. Plus, English pronunciation slipped out of my mouth all the time and intentionally corrected the errors later on. Every class, the teacher called on students and had them read passages from the German textbook and English pronunciation kept popping out.
‘One-way transfer’
Now, I think of it, this possible factor would be called ‘one-way transfer’ that L1 pattern that are marked are unlikely to be transferred (Krashen,1983). The same thing happened to R(Richard W. Schmidt), who was the coauthor of this article as well as the Portuguese learner. More specifically, R had little difficulty with noun-adjective order which is the opposite of English. Considering R is a fluent Arabic speaker, R’s Portuguese was greatly affected by transfer from Arabic. Likewise, R’s major problem was the omission of indefinite article and it, again, holds for the transfer in that Arabic has no indefinite article. On his diary (he had kept a diary about the process of learning Portuguese) compensated that those errors seemed to have no reasonable explanation other than transfer from Arabic. The followings are the excerpts from his diary to illustrate ‘one-way transfer’.
“……L (R’s teacher) corrected my pronunciation to setenta. I realized that I have been saying [sittenta]. That’s from Arabic.”
“..Maybe schema theory fits it best: top-down processing, filling in the Arabic schema once it’s been activated by what I know so far about Portuguese.”
Again, ‘one-way transfer is not the only factor in learning the foreign language, of course. As Schmidt and Frota addressed in the article, the various aspects such as markedness, morphological confusion, psycholinguistic and discourse-based processing difficulties, transfer from the L1, innate developmental patterns, and overgeneralizations of target language norms must be all interwound.
‘One-way transfer’
Now, I think of it, this possible factor would be called ‘one-way transfer’ that L1 pattern that are marked are unlikely to be transferred (Krashen,1983). The same thing happened to R(Richard W. Schmidt), who was the coauthor of this article as well as the Portuguese learner. More specifically, R had little difficulty with noun-adjective order which is the opposite of English. Considering R is a fluent Arabic speaker, R’s Portuguese was greatly affected by transfer from Arabic. Likewise, R’s major problem was the omission of indefinite article and it, again, holds for the transfer in that Arabic has no indefinite article. On his diary (he had kept a diary about the process of learning Portuguese) compensated that those errors seemed to have no reasonable explanation other than transfer from Arabic. The followings are the excerpts from his diary to illustrate ‘one-way transfer’.
“……L (R’s teacher) corrected my pronunciation to setenta. I realized that I have been saying [sittenta]. That’s from Arabic.”
“..Maybe schema theory fits it best: top-down processing, filling in the Arabic schema once it’s been activated by what I know so far about Portuguese.”
Again, ‘one-way transfer is not the only factor in learning the foreign language, of course. As Schmidt and Frota addressed in the article, the various aspects such as markedness, morphological confusion, psycholinguistic and discourse-based processing difficulties, transfer from the L1, innate developmental patterns, and overgeneralizations of target language norms must be all interwound.
Input frequency hypothesis
Input Frequency is literally what was more frequent in input is more likely to be used. Apparently, R produced what he had heard more. It demonstrates in R’s diary as well.
“….Today in my SLA class I mentioned that some things I was taught I immediately heard all around me, like imperfect, which I heard frequently from the day it was taught….I suggested that perhaps I couldn’t hear the indirect object pronoun structure, but the class said no, the reason I haven’t heard it is that no one says it in Rio.....”
Input Frequency is literally what was more frequent in input is more likely to be used. Apparently, R produced what he had heard more. It demonstrates in R’s diary as well.
“….Today in my SLA class I mentioned that some things I was taught I immediately heard all around me, like imperfect, which I heard frequently from the day it was taught….I suggested that perhaps I couldn’t hear the indirect object pronoun structure, but the class said no, the reason I haven’t heard it is that no one says it in Rio.....”
Input Frequency hypothesis asserts that the reason why the learners do not produce what they have heard is that they do not NOTICE the input even when they HEAR. I wonder how learners notice the input if the input is not familiar to them, especially the learner is at novice level. For novice-novice level students, it must be almost impossible to divide the input by chucks or words. R, also finally recognized certain overheard input at the end of staying in Brazil.
I’ve heard that if the learner memorizes a single word without any effort, he/she has to listen to the word around 2000 times!!!
Input frequency hypothesis does satisfy R’s use of ‘perfect, imperfect past tense’. In general, the frequency of the perfect in the input from S(R’s teacher) was much higher than the frequency of the imperfect. On the other hand, some verbs that R used exclusively in the imperfect tense were not present in input either exclusively or overwhelmingly in the imperfect. This article made an assumption out of it: Language learning is subject to the “easy confirmation principle.” Learners look for verification of their hypotheses, not disconfirmation (Schachter 1983)
Input frequency hypothesis does satisfy R’s use of ‘perfect, imperfect past tense’. In general, the frequency of the perfect in the input from S(R’s teacher) was much higher than the frequency of the imperfect. On the other hand, some verbs that R used exclusively in the imperfect tense were not present in input either exclusively or overwhelmingly in the imperfect. This article made an assumption out of it: Language learning is subject to the “easy confirmation principle.” Learners look for verification of their hypotheses, not disconfirmation (Schachter 1983)
Socio-linguistics
This article points out the ability to carry on conversations, which is a reflection of grammatical competence and a control of turn taking and adjacency pairings in the new language. It reminded me of Conversation Analysis class. I learned that conversation is the accomplishment by turn taking based on the mutual understanding among speakers, in other words, if one of the speakers fails to understand what the previous speaker has said, the conversation will break down. R’s conversational behavior in the early stages was quite different with the end of his stay in Brazil. On the first conversational tape, he spoke with hesitation and a great deal of difficulty and the conversation didn’t work out well, but R was able to express notions in a smoother and communicatively more effective manner over time. However, I couldn't see that how he got improved that much in only 22 weeks. When he just arrived in Brazil, he couldn't understand a word and felt frustrated because he couldn't even order coffee at the restaurant. and -BAM! after 22WEEKS, he was able to carry on the basic conversation quite fluently. I have learned English for 22 YEARS !!! :(
Thinking of some factors I have learned from Dekeyser’s, it explains to some extent. He must have the high verbal aptitude and problem-solving capacities. And I also remember something that professor mentioned the other day: multilingual person can acquire the new language relatively a lot easier and faster. He learned six langauges although the proficiency for each langauge varies.
Learning Style
One of R’s learning styles is to learn with a preference for a telegraphic style, focusing on the big things (counts words) and letting the details wait. While reading his learning style, I thought of mine. I would say, exemplifying. When I learn a new term, I tend to keep thinking of proper examples because it makes the term easier to understand and better to internalize. When it comes to SLA, I can draw out an example from my learning history. I am lucky(?) in that my bitter moments in learning a foreign language can be utilized in SLA to understand the concepts.
Brushing upon the concepts
One of the reasons why I found this article interesting is that this thick paper went over a wide selection of terms that I have learned in SLA class. For example, when I encountered the term ’one-way transfer’ in class at first, I grasped the only rough meaning of it, however, bumping into the concept again in this article, helped me understand it better. Not to mention other terms that have more frequently appeared in this article like overgeneralization of target language, interlanguage, i+1 input hypothesis, just to name a few. Those overwhelming notions do not seem to give clear-cut definitions at first, but they are getting familiar and more meaningful by reading further articles and linking the new concepts with my previous learning experience.
Learning Style
One of R’s learning styles is to learn with a preference for a telegraphic style, focusing on the big things (counts words) and letting the details wait. While reading his learning style, I thought of mine. I would say, exemplifying. When I learn a new term, I tend to keep thinking of proper examples because it makes the term easier to understand and better to internalize. When it comes to SLA, I can draw out an example from my learning history. I am lucky(?) in that my bitter moments in learning a foreign language can be utilized in SLA to understand the concepts.
Brushing upon the concepts
One of the reasons why I found this article interesting is that this thick paper went over a wide selection of terms that I have learned in SLA class. For example, when I encountered the term ’one-way transfer’ in class at first, I grasped the only rough meaning of it, however, bumping into the concept again in this article, helped me understand it better. Not to mention other terms that have more frequently appeared in this article like overgeneralization of target language, interlanguage, i+1 input hypothesis, just to name a few. Those overwhelming notions do not seem to give clear-cut definitions at first, but they are getting familiar and more meaningful by reading further articles and linking the new concepts with my previous learning experience.
Yes, Schmidt raises some important concepts in this article...several of which you've already addressed. I look forward to discussing this article tomorrow!
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