when is a form acquired?

SLA defined | Jake Kimball | November 29th, 2001

While on the subject, I'd like to throw out a related question. I'm currently reading 'Intro to SLA' by Larsen-Freeman and Long.

When exactly has someone acquired a form? As early a 1968, Cazden generalized acquisition as 3 speech samples which were used properly with 90% accuracy.

Does anyone have opinions about when a learner has acquired a form/structure?

Telling a student/parent that "you're doing fine and you're improving" is a bit empty without evidence to back it up.

So far I've been going by that old pornography standby- I can't quite articulate what it is, but when I see (hear) it, I know what it is for sure.

Jake Kimball

Re: SLA defined | Catherine Buhler | November 29th, 2001

Dear Jake,

I can only answer your question from my own experience. When I arrived in Switzerland 20 years ago I spoke about 10 words of German and no Swiss-German. The first three months I didn't understand a word anybody said to me (except in English). After these three months, I went for a drink with some work colleagues. We drank coffee with "schnaps" which was new to me. After I'd had about three, someone said to me, "Hey, you're speaking Swiss German". After that I continued to improve. I think it was after about two years in Switzerland that I started to write notes and shopping lists to myself in German. I found that I was thinking in the language. Now I even dream in Swiss German!- Obviously, I was in constant contact with the language which our students aren't. I do tell my students quite early on though to write shopping lists in English and also notes for themselves. It doesn't have to be written perfectly but you do have to think in the language you are writing and given time there is a certain routine.

With my group of senior citizens who have now been "beginners" for about two years, I have begun to make half the lesson a conversation class. They work in small groups of three and four and have to see how long they can keep a conversation going. They discuss topics that are of interest to them as senior citizens and as tourists. In the last couple of lessons, one student in particular has made real progress and when I asked her if she had realized that, she said that she wasn't having to search for words as much as before and wasn't concentrating on finding a particular word, but just trying to get her opinion across.

This is a fascinating topic and I shall be interested to read other contributions.

Catherine Buhler

 

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