Challenges of the Teachability Hypothesis

Do we need a formal structural syllabus? How should it be constructed? Is grammar best taught implicitly or explicitly? Should there be a focus on form, and when should it occur in the overall curriculum? Which forms are amendable to a focus on form? Are some forms resistant to a focus on form? Can tasks and techniques be designed during which problematic forms are likely to arise, so that an opportunity to focus on form occurs only if a learner asks for it?

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Some years ago, Krashen (1985) has claimed that teaching has a minimal effect on acquisition. He (1985: 35) has demonstrated that ‘not all the research literature concludes that language teaching is good for SLA’. In all cases, the Teachability Hypothesis may not be effective, since students have a rich source of comprehensible input outside the classroom which they can take advantage of. In addition, even though the appropriate instruction could accelerate learning, some research results suggest the contrary - that premature instruction can actually be harmful, and not just ineffective (Boss, 1996; Johnston, 1987). The Teachability Hypothesis does not imply an alternative teaching method or provide explicit help to teachers to make choices about what structures to present and what errors to correct in terms of the premature input.

Even though ‘practice does not make perfect in language learning because neither teaching nor practice can beat the natural order of acquisition’ (Pienemann, 2008a), appropriate instructions constrained by processability could have a positive influence on L2 learners’ language acquisition, as proposed by the Teachability Hypothesis. Pienemann cited in Pfaff (1986: 162) has suggested that ‘in order to develop psychologically founded language teaching methods, it will be necessary to more closely investigate the process of transmission of rational knowledge to the unconscious system of language processing’. Thus, the blind point – the potential negative effects from premature input – probably could be ‘swept away’.

Moreover, the recent research in PT has applied the Teachability Hypothesis to error correction. Kessler et al. (cited in Pienemann and Kessler, 2011: 153) have concluded that ‘not all learner errors should be treated in the same way’ as there are developmental errors and variational errors. Developmental errors occur since the learners could not process the input in the current state of interlanguage development while the variational errors are due to the choices made by the learners when they try to solve the developmental problems. In this case, if the learners are not ready to process the grammatical structures at certain stage, correcting their developmental errors could not lead to any success in the acquisition process. However, ‘not

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correcting variational errors may lead to a simplified variety in interlanguage development, which may result in stabilization’ in language acquisition (Kessler et al. cited in Pienemann and Kessler, 2011: 154).

In addition, the Teachability Hypothesis completely rules out the possibility that a learner could have the chance to beat the acquisition order of a given language (Johnston, 1987). In fact, some examples in previous studies have already shown that ‘exceptional cases’ do exist, due to unconfirmed reasons.

In conclusion, even though Pienemann’s ideas on teachability offer the teacher ‘more hope to actively assist the learning process’ (Smith, 1994: 118), as it currently stands, the Teachability Hypothesis should be built up strongly with more experiments and research evidence to prove its generalization.

2.7 Summary

The description of the fundamental issues of the language processing and development in this chapter has provided the required concepts in the Processability Theory, from fundamental studies, through the empirical basis, and then to the Lexical Functional Grammar. The fundamental research contributing to the founding of PT has been paid more attention, due to the fact that it is important to know what is inclusive in the processability hierarchy. Besides, the theoretical and empirical support explains how the L2 learners move towards the target languages; while the LFG could present the process of the movement of the lexical items explicitly.

Basically, Processability Theory (which is a psychologically plausible grammatical model) involves the psycholinguistic processes in the acquisition of a language. It hypothesizes different approaches, from lexical entries to syntactic structures, along the lexical-grammatical continuum. It is stated by Pienemann (1998c and 2005) that the key idea behind PT is that language acquisition is constrained by language processing. The processing procedure is incremental and its components operate largely automatically, which could not be consciously controlled.

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develop procedures in a predetermined sequence over time in order to use their implicit systems for production in communicative contexts. Pienemann posits further that the processing devices will be acquired only if the learners have acquired the necessary processing prerequisites in the production process (VanPatten, 1996 and 2003).

In addition, PT affords a new perspective on how a learner acquires the language and how a teacher teaches the language based on the prerequisite knowledge and natural acquisition orders. In one sense, PT provides a wider theoretical context for the ‘Teachability Hypothesis’. The danger of some teaching approaches ignores the learners’ mental architecture of the language processor and the central psychological mechanisms. The Teachability Hypothesis, built upon learnability issues, has then provided thoroughly information in these aspects. The inclusion of language processing in a syllabus does guarantee that it is in accordance with the principles which underlie the learner’s own reconstruction of the target language (Pienemann, 1995). Without a doubt, the drawbacks of the Teachability Hypothesis should also be significantly investigated against the counter-evidence.

Generally speaking, the Processability Theory, building on LFG, learnability, interlanguage dynamics and relevant models, explains and predicts the sequential acquisition process of a second language as a result of the hierarchically-ordered development of the processing procedures. It enables a clearer view of morphosyntactic development and variation. Apart from that, the Teachability Hypothesis, added on PT, allows the teacher to comprehend what structures to teach and how to avoid ineffective structural teaching objectives.

According to these theoretical rationales and previous research, my study is going to contribute to the PT application in acquiring Chinese as a second language at the morphosyntactic level; therefore, the next chapter will discuss the relevant features in the Chinese language.

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