Schools of thought Second Language Acquisition

Introduction
While the general definitions of language, learning, and teaching offered above may meet the approval of most
linguists, psychologists, and educators, the points of clear disagreement become apparent after a little
investigation of the components of each definition. For example, is language a “set of habits” or a “system of
internalized rules”? The different points of view emerge from equally informed scholars. thought in second
language acquisition
However, with all the possible disagreements between applied linguists and SLA researchers, some historical
patterns emerge that highlight trends and fads in the study of second language acquisition. These trends will be
described here in the form of three different schools of thought that follow in some way historically, although the
components of each school overlap chronologically to some extent. Note that such an outline highlights
contrasting ways of thinking, and such contrasts are rarely overtly evident in the study of any subject in SLA.

Structuralism/behaviorism
In the 1940s and 1950s, the school of structural or descriptive linguistics, with its advocates — Leonard
Bloomfield, Edward Sapir, Charles Hockett, Charles Fries, and others — prided itself on a rigorous application
of the scientific principle of observation of human languages. Only “publicly observable responses” could be
investigated. The linguist’s task, according to the structuralist, was to describe human languages and identify the
structural characteristics of those languages. An important axiom of structural linguistics was that “languages can
differ from one another without limit” and that no preconceptions can be applied in this field. Freeman Twaddell
affirmed this principle in perhaps its most extreme terms:

Whatever our attitude towards mind, spirit, soul, etc., as realities, we must agree that the scientist proceeds as if
there were no such things as if all his information were acquired through processes of his physiological nervous
system. Insofar as he deals with psychic, not material forces, the scientist is not a scientist. The scientific method
is simply the convention that the mind does not exist …

The structural linguist examined only openly observable data. Such attitudes prevail in BF Skinner’s thinking,
particularly in Verbal Behavior, in which he said that any notion of “idea” or “meaning” is explanatory fiction
and that the speaker is simply the locus of verbal behavior, not the cause. . Charles Osgood reestablished meaning
in verbal behavior, explaining it as a “representational mediation process,” but has not yet departed from a
generally non-mentalistic view of language. Schools of thought in second language acquisition

Of greater importance to the structural or descriptive linguist was the notion that language could be dismantled
into small pieces or units and that these units could be scientifically described, contrasted, and added back to form
the whole. Out of this principle sprang a rampant rush of linguists, in the 1940s and 1950s, to the ends of the earth
to write the grammars of exotic languages.

Among psychologists, a behavioral paradigm also focused on publicly observable responses, those that can be
objectively perceived, recorded and measured. The “scientific method” was rigorously followed, and therefore
concepts such as consciousness and intuition were considered “mentalistic” and illegitimate domains of research.
The unreliability of observation of states of consciousness, thinking, concept formation, or knowledge acquisition
made such topics impossible to examine in a behavioral setting. Typical behavioral models were classical and
operant conditioning, verbal rote learning, instrumental learning, discrimination learning, and other empirical
approaches to studying human behavior. You may be familiar with the classic experiments with Pavlov’s dog and
Skinner’s boxes; these also typify the position that organisms can be conditioned to respond in the desired way,
given the correct degree and timing of reinforcement.

Rationalism and cognitive psychology

In the 1960s, the generative-transformational linguistics school emerged thanks to the influence of Noam
Chomsky. Chomsky was trying to show that human language cannot be scrutinized simply in terms of observable
stimuli and responses or the volumes of raw data collected by field linguists. The generative linguist was interested
not only in describing language (reaching the level of descriptive adequacy) but also in reaching an explanatory
level of adequacy in the study of language, that is, a “basis of principles, independent of any particular language,
for the selection of the descriptively adequate grammar of each language. Schools of thought in second language
acquisition
The first seeds of the generative-transformative revolution were planted at the beginning of the 20th century.
Ferdinand de Saussure claimed that there was a difference between probation (what Skinner “observes” and what
Chomsky called performance) and langue (similar to the concept of competence, or our underlying and
unobservable linguistic ability). A few decades later, however, descriptive linguists largely chose to ignore the
language and study probation, as noted above. The revolution brought about by generative linguistics broke with
descriptivists’ preoccupation with performance (the external manifestation of language) and capitalized on the
important distinction between the overtly observable aspects of language and the hidden levels of meaning and
thought that give birth and generate observable linguistic performance.

Similarly, cognitive psychologists stated that meaning, understanding, and knowledge were important data for
psychological study. Rather than focusing quite mechanistically on stimulus-response connections, cognitivists
attempted to discover psychological principles of organization and functioning.

From the point of view of cognitive theorists, the attempt to ignore conscious states or to reduce cognition to
mediational processes that reflect implicit behavior not only removes from the field of psychology what is most
worth studying but also simplifies dangerously complex psychological phenomena.

Cognitive psychologists, like generative linguists, sought to uncover the underlying motivations and deeper
structures of human behavior by using a rational approach. That is, they freed themselves from the strictly
empirical study typical of behaviorists and used the tools of logic, reason, extrapolation, and inference to derive
explanations of human behavior. Going beyond the descriptive power to the explanatory power acquired the
utmost importance. Schools in Second Language Acquisition
Schools of thought in second language acquisition
Both the structural linguist and the behavioral psychologist were interested in description, in answering what
questions about human behavior: the objective measurement of behavior under controlled circumstances. The
generative linguist and the cognitive psychologist were undoubtedly interested in the question of what; but they
were much more interested in a more fundamental question, why: What underlying reasons, genetic and
environmental factors, and circumstances caused a particular event?

If you see someone enter your home, grab a chair and throw it out the window; and then go out, different kinds
of questions could be asked. One set of questions would relate to what happened: the physical description of the
person, the time of day, the size of the chair, the impact of the chair, etc. Another set of questions would ask why
the person did what he did: what were the motives and psychological state of the person, what could have been
the cause of the behavior, etc. The first series of questions is very rigorous and demanding: it does not admit
failures or errors in the measurement; but does it give you the definitive answers? The second group of questions
is richer, but obviously riskier. By daring to ask some tough questions about the unobserved, we can lose some
ground but gain a deeper understanding of human behavior.

Constructivism Schools of thought in second language acquisition

Constructivism is not a new school of thought. Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, names often associated with
constructivism, are by no means new to the language studies scene. However, constructivism emerged as the
prevailing paradigm only in the latter part of the 20th century. What is constructivism and how is it different from
the other two views described above?

Constructivists, like some cognitive psychologists, argue that all human beings construct their own version of
reality, and thus multiple contrasting ways of knowing and describing are equally legitimate. This perspective
could be described as an emphasis on active processes of construction [of the meaning], attention to texts as a
means of better understanding those processes, and an interest in the nature of knowledge and its variations,
including the nature of knowledge associated with belonging to a particular group. Constructivist scholarship can
focus on “individuals engaged in social practices, … in a collaborative group, [or] in a global community” Schools
of thought in second language acquisition
A constructivist perspective goes a bit beyond the rationalist/nativist and cognitive psychological perspective in
its emphasis on the primacy of the construction of each individual’s reality. Piaget and Vygotsky, both commonly
described as constructivists differ in the extent to which each emphasizes social context. Piaget highlighted the
importance of individual cognitive development as a relatively solitary act. Biological timelines and stages of
development were basic; It was claimed that social interaction only triggered development at the right time. On
the other hand, Vygotsky, described as a “social” constructivist by some, argued that social interaction was
fundamental in cognitive development and rejected the notion of predetermined stages.

Researchers studying first and second language acquisition have demonstrated constructivist perspectives through
studies of conversational discourse, sociocultural factors in learning, and interactionist theories. In many ways,
constructivist perspectives are a natural successor to the cognitivist studies of universal grammar, information
processing, memory, artificial intelligence, and interlanguage systematics. Schools in Second Language
Acquisition

All three positions should be considered important to create balanced descriptions of human linguistic behavior.
Consider for a moment the analogy of a very tall mountain, seen from a distance. From one direction, the mountain
can have a sharp peak, easily identifiable glaciers, and distinctive rock formations. However, from another
direction, the same mountain could now appear to have two peaks (the second was previously hidden from view)
and different configurations of its slopes. From yet another direction, even more, features emerge, hitherto
unobserved. The SLA study is very similar to the visualization of our mountain: we need multiple tools and
observation points to know the whole picture

Schools of Second Language Acquisition timeline

Time Frame Schools of Thought Typical Themes

description
observable performance
Structuralism & scientific method
Early 1900s & 1940s& 1950s
Behaviorism empiricism
surface structure
conditioning, reinforcement

generative linguistics acquisition,

innateness
Rationalism & Cognitive interlanguage
1960s & 1970s
Psychology systematicity
universal grammar competence
deep structure

Interactive discourse
sociocultural variables
cooperative group learning
1980s, 1990s& early 2000 Constructivism
interlanguage
variability
interactionist hypotheses

Reference: englopedia.com/schools-in-second-language-acquisition-with-explanation/