Pedagogical grammar as the framework of tefl research. part 4. foreign language acquisition: strategies, procedures and processes

Abstract

The paper deals with the problems of the foreign language acquisition (FLA), focusing on the notions of ‘build-up’, ‘breakdown’, ‘completion’, ‘pivot grammar’, ‘fronting’ and ‘telegraphic speech’, as well as their role in the acquisition. The analysis showed that, similar to the native language acquisition (NLA), the purpose of the first three procedures seems to be the verification of the cognitive organizer’s hypotheses concerning the underlying grammar rules. Using the data of the original experiments, the author analyses the mechanism of fronting, which is (in some aspects) similar to the pivot grammar, the child’s first systemic grammar, a characteristic feature of the language development at the word-combination stage in the NLA. Basing on his own experimental observation, the author concludes that fronting is not an accidental sentence elements rearrangement, but a rule-governed communication behaviour, which reflects the individual’s intuitive grammar composition at a particular stage of its development. This conclusion is supported by the fact that the same patterns were systematically used both by the same subjects and by other subjects in the same group. The author claims that such sentences indicate the intuitive grammar configuration. Basing on it, the students generate sentences of the similar structure, which they did not and could not hear or see in their environment, and which contradict the explicit grammar rules they had been given as the part of their formal tuition.The author corroborates the assumption that, similar to the NLA, the ‘telegraphic speech’ is a logical outcome of the students’ intuitive grammar application, taking into account the distinctive feature of the latter – skipping function words and grammar morphemes. The paper argues in favour of further research directed at the establishment of the degree of similarity between the native language acquisition, on the one hand, and the foreign language acquisition – on the other. The data obtained in such research could be taken into account in the process of Pedagogical Grammar development.