16、 the second language (L2) speech of learners. When a Chinese speaks English, his English sounds Chinese. The learners L1 also affects the other language levels-vocabulary and grammar. This is perhaps less immediately evident, but most language learners and teachers would testify to it. It is also a。

17、popular belief that the role of the L1 in SLA is a negative one. That is, the L1 gets in the way or interferes with the learning of the L2, such that features of the L1 are transferred into the L2. In fact, the process of SLA is often characterized in popular opinion as that of overcoming the effect 。

18、s of L1, of slowly replacing the features of the L1 that intrude into the L2 with those of the target language and so of approximating ever closer to native-speaker speech. Corder (978) has referred to this view of SLA as a restructuring process. It is a view that is based on a theory of general lea 。

19、rning, as will be explained in the next section.B. Behaviorist learning theoryIn order to understand the early importance that was attached to the role of the first language, it is necessary to understand the main tenets of behaviorist learning theory. Up to the end of the 1960s, views of language l 。

20、earning were derived from a theory of learning in general. There were few studies of SLA based on the actual language that learners produced, and few attempts to examine the process of SLA empirically before this. The dominant school in psychology, which informed most discussions of language learnin 。

21、g, was behaviorism. There are two kinds of notions can be identified in these discussions: habits and errors. C. Habits Behaviorist psychologists attributed two important characteristics to habits. The first was that they were observable. As Watson argued, the true basis for psychological enquiry ex 。

22、isted only in objects that could be touched and actions that could be observed. Watson denied the existence of internal mental processes, dismissing them as superstition and magic. The second noteworthy characteristic was that habits were automatic, that is, they were performed spontaneously without 。

23、 awareness and were difficult to eradicate unless environmental changes led to the extinction of the stimuli upon which they were built. The learning of a habit, then, could occur through imitation (i.e. the learner copies the stimulus behavior sufficiently often for it to become automatic) or throu 。

24、gh reinforcement (e.g. the response of the learner is rewarded or punished depending on whether it is appropriate or otherwise, until only appropriate responses are given. Theories of habit formation were theories of learning in general. They could be and were applied to language learning. In L1 acq 。

25、uisition children were said to master their mother tongue by imitating utterances produced by adults and having their efforts at using language either rewarded or corrected. In this way children were supposed to build up knowledge of the patterns or habits that constituted the patterns or habits tha 。

26、t constituted the language they were trying to learn. It was also believed that SLA could proceed in a similar way. Imitation and reinforcement were the means by which the learner identified the stimulus-response associations that constituted the habits of the L2. Language learning, first and second 。

27、, was most successful when the task was broken down into a number of stimulus-response links, which could be systematically practiced and mastered one at a time.D. ErrorsAccording to behaviorist learning theory, old habits get in the way of learning new habits. Where SLA is concerned, therefore, the 。

28、 grammatical apparatus prop rammed into the mind as the first language interferes with the smooth acquisition of the second (Bright and McGregor 236). Behaviorist learning theory predicts that transfer will take place from the first to the second language. Transfer will be negative when there is pro 。

29、active inhibition. In this case errors will result. Transfer will be positive when the first and second language habits are the same. In this case no errors will occur. Thus differences between the first and second language create learning difficulty which results in errors, while the similarities b 。

30、etween the first and second language facilitate rapid and easy learning. In behaviorist accounts of SLA, errors were considered undesirable. They were evidence of non-learning, of the failure to overcome proactive inhibition. Some language teaching theorists even suggests that there was a danger of。

31、errors becoming habits in their own right if they were tolerated. However, as errors were the result of the negative transfer of first language habits (i.e. were habits already);
it is difficult to see how they could become habits simply by tolerating them. Errors, according to behaviorist theory, w 。

稿源：(未知)

【傻大方】网址：/a/2021/0711/0022846114.html

标题：The|The Role of Mother Tonguein English Learning( 二 )