| Chapter 2: | Background Study |
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Studies of L2 Acquisition Sequences in General
Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991) summarized one of the major principles governing interlanguage (IL) development as follows: “ILs exhibit common accuracy orders and developmental sequences” (p. 81). This principle is based on the premise that there are inherent orders and developmental sequences in the learner language, and that those orders and developmental sequences are largely systematic and identifiable. This principle has been supported by findings from morpheme studies and studies of the acquisition of a number of syntactic structures.
Early empirical evidence of the existence of L1-neutral developmental sequences was provided by the so-called “morpheme studies,” which established the existence of a common acquisition order for a subset of English grammatical morphemes. Dulay and Burt (1973) adapted Brown’s approach to SLA research. Their participants were 151 Spanish-speaking children aged six to eight learning English in the United States. Samples of speech were collected by means of the Bilingual Syntax Measure, an instrument designed to elicit a range of grammatical structures by asking the learners 33 questions about a series of seven cartoon pictures. After eight grammatical morphemes supplied in the obligatory contexts were scored, it was found that the participants exhibited accuracy orders in the following way: plural -s → -ing → copula be → auxiliary be → the/a → irregular past → 3rd person -s → possessive -s.
The finding of a common morpheme order was confirmed, again using the Bilingual Syntax Measure, with 60 Spanish-speaking children and 55 Chinese-speaking children, by Dulay and Burt (1974), and with 73 Spanish-speaking and non-Spanish-speaking adults by Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974).
Reviewing over a dozen English as a second language (ESL) morpheme studies available at the time, Krashen (1977) postulated the following “natural order”: the group consisting of -ing, plural -s and copula be → the group consisting of auxiliary be and the articles the/a → the group consisting of irregular past → the group consisting of regular past, 3rd person singular and possessive -s. Krashen argued that it was more