SUPPLEMENTARY ACTIVITY – SLA

SUPPLEMENTARY ACTIVITY:
SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Student: Yuri Paola Infante Tejada

Group: 2017-06
Date: June 8th/2018

Subject: FP003 Second Language Acquisition

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Supplementary activity:
Look at the cartoons below and answer the following questions:

1. What are the comic strips about? Write a brief passage explaining the conflict.
Why happens what happens?
2. What is the connection between the stories, negotiation of meanings and
communicative competence?

Source: http://www.newyorker.com/wp-
Source: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/ content/uploads/2012/12/121210_cn-dog-
236x/c3/c0/7a/c3c07a9027f12366ad276b206a0af722.jpg 15_p465.jpg

1) Comic strip story and main conflict.

First of all, it can be seen two different situations in these comics in which both of them
involved the same conflict on language discourse and misinterpretation on behaviors
and pragmatic competence (Byram, 1997).

On the first picture, a dog might have confused a cat’s gesture to his own ways and
made a terrible mistake on meaning negotiations (Swain, 1985). On the other hand the
same problem is appreciated correspondingly. Language based on gestures and
customs based on language behaviors is being misunderstood by the dog. Something
that should be taken as a scolding is misconceived as a greeting or a sign of
excitement.

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Based on that, this language misconceptions could happen because due to the fact the
dog doesn’t know the mother tongue and its gestures, and through a superficial
interaction it assumed the meaning of the gesture as a greeting or a sign of happiness.
In that way, the dog’s communicative competence is showing some comprehension
about others culture and communication ways at first sight, but still lacks the pragmatic
sub-competence in order to negotiate the meaning, because maybe it is dealing with a
situation which presents the meaning of different gestures which are attached to
expressions that according to their intonation or in this case behavior context may
mean something different.

According to the behaviorist theory, language is based on the formation of stimulation

of certain and conditioning. In this case, the dog responds to both stimulation based on
his own experienced, behavior and habits conditioning (Skinner, 1957). Thus, another
aspect to be taken into consideration is the importance of input and output, in this case
the dog failed in his noticing-function and received a wrong result in his hypothesis-
testing function by acting in a way it thought it was righteous (Chomsky, 1959; Swain,
1985). If the dog had had the opportunity of negotiating meaning built on its mental
process and pragmatic linguistic environment both misunderstandings would not have
happened.

2) Negotiation of meanings and communicative competence.

As it was mentioned before, the cartoons are connected to negotiation of meanings

and communicative competence when we focused on the language physical
environment, which concerns to the different physical things that surround people
during their experience when interacting in a foreign language. In this case dog’s
language with cat’s and human’s. (Bull and Solity, 1987)

The social system deals with the set of conducts that beings could acquire from their
culture. For instance, native speakers who are around foreign speakers. This issue is
truly important to consider because they can imitate all the manners and behaviors
they learn from people around them. Norms and values are the subjective part that
they learn from the environment. (Sisakhti; 1998, p. 30)

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Furthermore, not only the context will play an important role but also the dynamics of
communication that a certain population has, there is where the communicative
competence involves the development of language as the main tools to communicate
due to the necessity to interact and be understood. The use of a L2 language to convey
and exchange ideas will offer a more meaningful output; challenging non- native
speakers to look for extra vocabulary, for phrases that are involved in a real
conversation, pragmatically manners, social and cultural norms. Hence, a significant
conversation may be born, and won’t end up in a simply systematic and rigid dialog.
(Bowen, n.d; Krashen & Terrell; McLaughlin, 1987; 1983; Richards, 2006; Rogers,
2001).

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Bibliography.

Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence.

Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Bowen, T (N.D) An article discussing the communicative language teaching approach.

Recovered from:
http://www.onestopenglish.com/methodology/methodology/teaching-
approaches/teaching-approaches-the-communicative-classroom/146489.article

Bull, S., & Solity, J. E. (1987). Classroom management: Principles to practice. London:
Routledge.

Chomsky, N. (1959). Review of Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner. Language, 35, 26-

58.

Krashen, S.D. & Terrell, T.D. (1983). The natural approach: Language acquisition in
the classroom. London: Prentice Hall Europe.

Krashen, S. (2003) Explorations in Language Acquisition and Use: The Taipei

Lectures.

Krashen, S. (2009) Principles and practice in second language acquisition: university of

southern California. Available in:
http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf

McLaughlin, B. (1987). Theories of second language learning. London: Edward Arnold.

Richards, J. C. (2006) Communicative Language Teaching Today. Cambridge

university press: Cambridge, New York.

Rogers, T. (2001) Language teaching methodology, online resource

(http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/rodgers.html), Sep. 2001.

Skinner, B. (1957). Verbal Behavior. Nueva York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Sisakhti, R. (1998). Effective learning environments: creating a successful strategy for

your organization. Alexandria: American Society for Training and Development.

Swain, M. (1985) Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input

and comprehensible output in its development. In Gass, S. and Madden, C.

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(Eds.), Input in Second Language Acquisition, pp. 235-256. New York: Newbury
House.