Conference Proceeding Paper -

Approaching the Language of the Second Language Learner: Interlanguage and the Models Before
Approaching the Language of the Second Language Learner: Interlanguage and the Models Before

Conference Proceeding Paper -

Approaching the Language of the Second Language Learner: Interlanguage and the Models Before

1. Introduction Teachers and applied linguists have always been searching for the methods of teaching an L2 that may enable the learners to communicate with least amount of errors. Relying on trending schools of psychology that theorize the mechanism of second language acquisition (SLA), CA, EA, and IL have been proposed. Also, in the frame of these models, researchers (Lado 1957; Corder, 1967, 1981; Stern, 1983; Ellis, 1994, 1997) have attempted to account for L2 errors and explain their causes so as to suggest the appropriate solutions to be applied by teaching methodologists and L2 teachers. CA, pedagogically associated with behaviourism and structuralism, flourished in Europe and North America during the 1950s and the 1960s. Scholars like Fries, Lado, Weinreich, and others were the distinctive researchers in the domain. Later in 1967 when the seminal paper of Corder, The Significance of Learner’s Errors, EA appeared as a new and more welcome model to replace CA on one hand, and to signal the domination of cognitive psychology over behaviorism, on the other. With EA, according to this psychological framework shift, the orientation of pedagogists has switched from teaching to learning (Corder, 1967). Shifting from the interest of accounting for the L2 learner to the brain-based system responsible for the errors has lead Selinker to hypothesize IL in a seminal article entitled Interlanguage in 1972. Psychologically, latent linguistic system of Lennberg (1967), who believed that language acquisition was an age-confined process, was the trigger of Selinker’s IL theory besides his notice of the language of the L2 learner for being colored by forms which are neither of L1 nor of L2. Errors are attributed to different sources related to the basic processes of L2 learning. A detailed account of IL and the previous models are provided in the sections to follow.  

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Ayad Hameed Mahmood, Ibrahim Mohammed Ali Murad

The present paper attempts to provide a critical evaluation of the most prominent pedagogical models that have dealt with the language of the second language (L2) learner starting from the second half of the 20th century. The three most influential approaches in the domain are investigated in this study: contrastive analysis (CA), error analysis (EA), and interlanguage (IL). Each of these models is tackled in terms of its beginning, psychological background, essential tenets, mechanism, and its pedagogical value. Prominently, this work is aimed at teasing apart the confusion that surrounds the fields of acquiring second/foreign language. It also endeavors to clear out the overlapping of both terminology and concept that cloud these areas. Focus is placed on IL owing to the dominant share of attention it has received from researchers and applied linguists who have found many of their questions answered and many information-gaps filled in with this theory. This review paper is an extract of an in-progress PhD dissertation on interlanguage pragmatics of Kurdish university EFL learners, which is an applied study addressing both the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge of the students. 

 interlanguage, contrastive analysis, error analysis, second language acquisition, learning strategies, language transfer 

English

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