preview

Review Of ' Interlanguage And It Contributions On Understanding Of Learners ' Language Development

Best Essays

‘Interlanguage and it contributions to our understanding of how a learner’s language develops’
1. Introduction
In this essay, I offer an analysis of the concept of interlanguage and the way in which it contributes to the understanding of the development of learners’ language. To illustrate the actual meaning of this concept and the different stages of learners’ language development, I rely on corpora from CHILDES, especially, Paradis and Liceras corpora. The former concentrates on spontaneous data elicited from children acquiring English as a second language (L2), while the latter consists of naturalistic samples of native speakers of English learning Spanish as an L2.
From Paradis corpus, I use the data of a Spanish speaking child called …show more content…

In section 3, I expound the conclusions reached throughout the study. Ultimately, in section 4, you can find a list of previous publications on which I have relied in order to carry out this study.
2. Interlanguage and second language acquisition (SLA)
The term ‘interlanguage’, coined by Selinker (1972), tries to describe the competence of L2 learners and the source of that competence. Brown defines interlanguage as “[…] a structurally intermediate status between the native and the target languages” (2000:215). Nevertheless, Brown’s definition omits some nuances of interlanguage, thus, it can be defined as the in-between system used in L2 acquisition which contains aspects of the L1 and the L2, but which is an inherently variable system with its own rules as example (1) below illustrates.
(1) She name is María. [L1SP/L2EN]
Example (1), which is an example typically used to explain interlanguage, is produced by an L1 Spanish speaker who is learning English as L2. This sentence is ungrammatical both in Spanish and English; therefore, the speaker is not using either a Spanish or English structure for the production of this sentence. This led scholars to establish that interlanguage has its own rules odd to either her L1 or L2. This the idea that innate predisposition for language acquisition may result in the

Get Access