ERIC Number: ED225406
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1982
Pages: 14
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
The Early Stages of Interlanguage.
Schumann, John
The stages of interlanguage, the speech of beginning second language learners as they progress toward second language fluency, are described. Examples are drawn from the speech of Spanish speaking students of English as a second language. The continuum of interlanguage development from native language forms to target language forms includes three stages: basilang, mesolang, and acrolang, the closest stage to the target language. Examples of developing along this continuum describe the acquisition of English negation by Spanish speakers, noun phrase morphology, verb phrase morphology, formation of questions, and relative clauses. These examples illustrate the simplification, transfer, and relexification aspects of interlanguage which occur during the basilang stage. Although the goal of second language teachers is to eliminate interlanguage in their students' speech, observation of interlanguage can provide valuable information about how languages are learned. (RW)
Publication Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: California Association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: In its: "CATESOL Occasional Papers," Number 8, p.7-19, Fall 1982; Paper presented at the CATESOL Mini-Conference (San Francisco, CA, 1980); For related documents, see FL 013 455-463.