EI elicited imitation
ESF European Science Foundation
ESL English as second language
IL interlanguage
L1 first language
L2 second language
LARC Language Acquisition Research Centre
LESLLA Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition
NLLSD Native Language Literacy Screening Device
NNS non-native speaker
NS native speaker
SLA second language acquisition
SPEAK Speaking Proficiency English Assessment Kit
TLU target-like use
ZISA Zweitspracherwerb Italienischer und Spanischer Arbeiter
ZPD Zone of Proximal Development
Introduction: Questioning assumptions in SLA research
A prominent goal of research on second-language acquisition (SLA) is to identify universal cognitive processes involved in acquiring ‘second languages’,1 or L2s. Yet there has been very little SLA research to date on the cognitive processes of illiterate or low-literate adult L2 learners.2 Almost all the adult learners studied in SLA research have been literate, in the sense that they have been able to decode printed or embodied text. Typically, they have even been college students, such as undergraduates in foreign-language programs, graduate students in intensive English programs, or international teaching assistants. These L2 learners have all been initiated into the social practice of print literacy, which is an essential skill that affords them access to, and power in, the academic world. It is a skill providing access to many of academia’s other literacies as well, including media and digital literacies.
But can these literate L2 learners be assumed to be representative of all L2 learners? Can we base an SLA theory of universal cognitive processes on data drawn only from literate learners? What about L2 learners who do not participate in the social practice of print literacy at all? These learners are sometimes referred to as ‘preliterate’ (Robson 1982). Such learners clearly exist in large numbers throughout the world, but we know next to nothing about their processes of oral second language acquisition. Because illiterate and low print literate L2 learners rarely if ever set foot in the social world of academia in which SLA researchers operate, they have been left out of the SLA database. For example, at least since 1990, ours has been the only study published in the TESOL Quarterly that documents the SLA processes of post-critical period L2 learners with low print literacy levels (Bigelow, delMas, Hansen, and Tarone 2006). To leave these learners out of SLA research is both to deny their existence or relevance and to deny them any educational benefits that might accrue for pedagogy, from our improved understanding of the way they may learn L2s differently from literate learners.
This omission is also important for theory generalizability. Theories need to account for major accepted findings in the field if they are to be viable (Long 1990). Of course, if those accepted findings are drawn only from Population Y, and not from Population Z, then, as far as we know, our theory applies only to Population Y. If we want to know whether our theories apply to Population Z, then we will need to test them with data and findings from Population Z. This is the situation we currently face in the field of SLA. Virtually all of our findings on SLA are drawn from Population Y: a group of highly literate learners. We have almost no findings on the SLA processes of members of Population Z: low-literate and illiterate adult learners.
This omission restricts the usefulness and practical applicability of the entire SLA research enterprise. Illiterate and low-literate adults learn second languages all the time. As early as 1970, Hill stated that it was common for unschooled and illiterate individuals in remote places of the world to learn second languages. In 1980 and thereafter, some learners moved from those remote places of the world and into US cities. Large numbers of illiterate Hmong immigrants to the USA had an urgent need to learn English as an L2. Yet, when ESL teachers have asked SLA scholars for research-based advice, the scholars have had little to say to them that pertained directly to the SLA of illiterate learners. There was no research on the SLA processes of illiterate adults.
The cost of disregarding social context in SLA theory-building
The omission of low-literate or illiterate L2 learners from the SLA database can be viewed as an outcome of a more general theoretical problem in SLA research – namely, a general neglect of the social dimension in the process of SLA. In modeling L2 learner competence as an (undefined) abstraction, neutral in terms of its variable realization in different modes of use, SLA researchers have taken the position that social context simply does not matter (cf. Long 1998). Tarone (2000b, 2007, forthcoming) points out that SLA researchers have allowed their investigation of such crucial constructs as L2 learners’ ‘abstract competence’, L2 ‘input’, ‘output’, and even ‘context/setting’ to be restricted to the laboratory-like environment of the academic world, a world that is more conducive to psycholinguistic than sociolinguistic thinking. She argues that major adjustments are needed if these concepts are to make any sense in the socially embedded experiences of L2 speakers in their own worlds. And she cites studies showing that social factors in fact influence the cognitive processes of L2 learners. For example, according to Bondevik (1996), salesmen in a Minnesota electronics store did not provide corrective feedback in the way ESL teachers on the UCLA campus did in Long’s study (1980); Bondevik’s findings raise questions about Long’s claim that corrective feedback behavior is ‘universal’ (cf. Tarone 2007, forthcoming).
A very serious outcome of SLA researchers’ construction of SLA as an abstract cognitive process, universal and unaffected by social context, is that it has led to a general failure to study the process of SLA as it is routinely engaged in by a whole range of populations of L2 learners in a range of social contexts outside schools and academia. As a consequence, we know very little about the process of SLA of such learners as: completely illiterate but bi- or multilingual learners in newly industrialized countries; unschooled (but possibly functionally literate) L2 learners in newly industrialized countries; immigrant and refugee L2 learners in low-wage jobs in industrialized countries. Indeed, we even know little about the way SLA occurs in classrooms and communities closer to home, or in learners with different individual or cultural learning styles from our own. To take just one example: how did Kao Kalia Yang, as a young Hmong refugee, manage to acquire oral English L2 in St Paul, Minnesota classrooms when, by her own account, she said almost nothing in her classes for years and years? She was not the traditional ESL learner that our SLA theories assume. Yet, as a graduate of Carleton College and author of a well-written memoir (Yang 2008), she was clearly a successful learner of L2 reading and writing. We do not know how she achieved this. We need longitudinal SLA studies of non-traditional L2 learners embedded in a range of real social contexts. Current SLA theory that minimizes the importance of social context leads to major omissions and gaps in our database such as these; models of SLA that incorporate social context, such as Preston (2000, 2002) and Lantolf (2000a), will help us address such omissions and gaps.
In this book, we would argue that the inclusion of less-literate L2 learners will contribute to SLA theory-building. Perhaps most fundamentally, it will enable us to examine the impact that some of our own uncritically accepted cultural assumptions and presuppositions, founded in our own literacy, have on our perceptions as researchers. In enabling us to do these things, research with this unstudied population will broaden our view of the nature of SLA and of the human potential for language learning.
The impact of native language literacy on second language literacy
As pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, there has been virtually no research on the impact of literacy on L2 oral skills; however, a good deal of research has documented the impact of first language (L1) literacy on the development of L2 literacy. Cummins (1991) has taken the position that L1 literacy facilitates learners’ acquisition of L2 literacy. Collier (1989), for example, reviewed the published literature