Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning

to speak the language they were learning, or if so, only haltingly..." (p. 34). This evidence is consistent with the generalization that the chief value of second language classes is their ability to provide the acquirer with appropriate intake, a conclusion that language teachers, through practice and experience, have come up with, and one which "theory", in this case "theory of language acquisition", also supports.

Especially important are routines that enable acquirers to "manage" conversations with speakers who are more competent than they are in the language, routines that allow acquirers to get speakers to slow down, interrupt when necessary, change the subject, get help with vocabulary, etc.

It often "looks like" learning causes acquisition. This occurs when a second language acquirer has learned a rule before actually acquiring it, and then subsequently does succeed in acquiring the rule. It may appear as if the learning led to the acquisition. I am claiming that this is not the way the acquisition really occurred. A hypothetical example may make this clear.

Consider the case of two ESL performers living in the United States, M and U, M is a Monitor users, while U is not. They have acquired equal amounts of English and are exposed to identical input/intake. Let us also assume that there does indeed exist an "average" order of acquisition for grammatical items, as claimed in Chapter 4. Figure 3 illustrates M's and U's progress along this natural order.

    M                   Items to be acquired            U
                               1                               
                               2                               
                               3                               
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Time 1
                               4                               
                               5                               
                               .                               
                               .                               
                               i                               
                               .                               
                               .                               
                              28                               
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Time 2

Fig. 3. Hypothetical case of two ESL acquirers.

At time 1, both M and U have acquired up to item 3. (This is, of course, a vast oversimplification; there is some individual variation in order of acquisition, and it is known that items are not acquired in a rigidly linear order. Also, acquisition is not "all or none" as Brown (1973), Hakuta (1974), and Rosansky (1976) show; acquisition is not sudden and "acquisition curves" are not even necessarily linear.) Item 28, far down the line, happens to be an item that is easily "learnable" (such as the third person singular morpheme on regular verbs in English), and is typically presented early in ESL classes. M, being a conscious learner, has no problem gaining