Daily Excerpt: Communicative Focus (Shekhtman): Why is the language performance of native and non-native speakers different?

 



Excerpt from Communicative Focus:

Why is the language performance of native and non-native speakers different?

 

    On the face of it the answer to this question is quite easy. The difference in language performance between native and non-native speaker can be explained by the degree of their command of the language. Native speakers have excellent command of the language and non-native speakers, poor command of it. But why is this so?

                                                             

    In his book The Native Speaker: Myth and Reality, Alan Davies (2003) defines 6 factors which make a person a native speaker. The most important factor is the acquisition of language in childhood. Successful acquisition of language typically happens by the age of four and is

 

guaranteed for children up to the age of six.  After that, the potential for native  language acquisition is steadily compromised until shortly after puberty and is rare thereafter. Maturational changes in the brain, such as the decline in metabolic rate and number of neurons during the early school age years as well as the bottoming out of the number of synapses and metabolic rate around puberty, are plausible causes. (Pinker, 1994, p.293).[1]

 

    There are other very important factors too, such as  “intuition about grammar” (Davies, 2003, p.210),  the “unique capacity to produce fluent spontaneous discourse”,  and “a huge memory stock of complete lexical items“ (Pawley and Syder, 1983 cited in Davies, 2003, p.210).

 

    Unfortunately, Davies’ identifiers of a native speaker do not help us much in teaching. We cannot change the childhood of our non-native speaker; we cannot inject him or her with intuition about grammar; and we cannot put a complete set of lexical items in his or her head.

 

    In answering the question with which we began this chapter—why does the language performance of native and non-native speakers differ—understanding the essence of speech itself is as important as, if not more important than, understanding the traits of native and non-native speakers. The essence of speech is rooted in the fact that speech consists of two parts: (1) meaning (i.e. the content of speech) and (2) language (i.e. the form of the utterance/writing). This corresponds to the what and the how, that is, to the ideational plane and mechanical plane. (Figure 1.1.) For example, in the sentence, “Watch me,” the meaning is a request to pay attention and the form is the verb, to watch, in the imperative mood, followed by a pronoun in the objective case. Of course, meaningless speech can be, and sometimes is, also produced, but in such cases, the purpose is either to make a joke or to make a point related to the linguistic nonsense.


[1] There is another opinion reflected in the work of David Birdsong (1999) who has documented the lack of a critical period in some people.




For more posts about Boris and his books, click HERE.






                                Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter

                          Follow MSI Press on Twitter, Face Book, and Instagram.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Memoriam: Carl Don Leaver

Image
  1948-2021 It is with great sadness that MSI Press notes the death of Carl Leaver, CEO of the Press and typesetter and graphic designer par excellence . Many authors have expressed not only condolences but also a sense of legacy from covers he designed that they love.  Here is his obituary: On August 16, 2021, Carl Don Leaver of San Juan Bautista passed into eternal rest. A forester with the US Forest Service in Idaho and Montana, he turned to nature photography while working in the Bitterroot National Forest. His photographs graced national magazine covers and on a weekly basis the local paper of Hamilton, MT, the Ravalli Republican. He later worked on photography projects for the US Army (AFEES) and taught photography at the New York Institute of Technology in Amman, Jordan. His final career change led him to computer graphics and publishing as co-owner of MSI Press LLC; his many typeset books and book covers have helped MSI Press authors win a large number of awards over t...
Read more

A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: Book Marketing vs Book Promotion

Image
It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.  Today's post looks at the difference between book marketing and book promotion, two terms that are frequently confused. Leading to the confusion is that some of the same activities are needed for both. In fact, good marketing is dependent upon good promotion. Perhaps the essential difference is that marketing focuses on sales, and promotion focuses on awareness --  noting that without awareness, sales generally do not happen. Book Marketing Book marketing includes promotion, sales, and increasing awareness of the availability of the book. It generally starts with a marketing plan that identifies the target audiences and selects marketing ...
Read more