Week 5 Cognition

We examined second language acquisition from a cognitive perspective this week. On Tuesday, we separated into four groups. Each group worked on a topic and had a brief report to the class afterward. The topics that were introduced under the framework of cognition included: information processing and skill acquisition theory, memory and language learning, the role of attention in language learning, and finally the imminent trend of emergentism.
Grounding on information processing theories, skill acquisition theory defines L2 learning as the gradual transformation of performance from controlled to automatic. Controlled processing takes more efforts and resources than automatic processing does. Through practice over many trials, learners are expected to be able to convert their explicit knowledge into implicit-procedural knowledge, which allows learners to use their L2 automatically. Note that automaticity does not simply equate to speedy behavior. The qualitative changes in the knowledge representation, such as making the stored knowledge become more elaborated, specified, and analyzed, are essential in proceduralization as well.

The idea of knowledge representation is related to the studies on long-term memory. A well-studied area is how L2 vocabulary knowledge is stored and represented in long-term memory. However, memory is not just about passively recording things. The other type of memory is called working memory, which allows us to manipulate information as we hold it in our minds. Researchers have concluded that working memory capacity is smaller in the L2 than the L1, possibly due to the reason that processing of L2 materials costs more cognitive resources than that of L1. The working memory capacity, as pointed out by Randall Engle, is not directly about memory, but about the ability to control attention to maintain information in an active, quickly retrievable state. Specifically, attention heightens the activation level of input and thus makes it available for entering long-term memory. However, the quality of attention required for L2 learning is still under debate. SLA researchers have investigated whether L2 learning is possible without intention (i.e. incidental learning), without attention (i.e. implicit learning), and without rules. Supporting the idea of learning without rules, emergentists view L2 acquisition as an associative, probabilistic, rational, usage-based, and grounded learning process. Such interpretations have guided us to reconsider the nature of L2 acquisition.

Centering on the issue of awareness, we examined Rosa and O’Neill’s study on Thursday. Rosa and O’Neill’s clever research designs tackled the questions about: a) how explicit and implicit learning influence what is intaken, b) whether different levels of awareness have a differential effect on intake, and c) whether the above two factors (explicit/implicit leaning vs. levels of awareness) interact. The results supported Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis—more awareness leads to more learning. Explicit formal instruction associated with high-level awareness (understanding) and was superior to implicit learning. Also, the surprising performance of the treatment-only group demonstrated that task essentialness was important. A good task design could lead to a similar effect as what formal instruction could achieve.

The study of cognition has important implications for L2 acquisition. It not only provides us with another perspective to study how people acquire L2, but also shed lights on classroom teaching. Learners go through successive stages of cognitive analysis and representation of the input. Aware of the findings in cognitive science, teachers can adjust their teaching methods and designs of activity and curriculum to better meet learners’ needs. For instance, as demonstrated in Rosa and O’Neill’s investigation, immediate task-essential feedback can contribute to learning as well as explicit rule explanation. Teacher may also organize the content in ways that facilitate information retrieval and integration. By activating learners’ existing knowledge that is related to the new content, teachers can start a lesson from what the learners have known to help them make connections between old and new information. Besides, teachers need to draw students’ attention to the target structures in order to help learners to convert input to intake.