Blackwell Reference Online

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This chapter discusses core concepts in the cognitive psychology of second language learning: what are the various components of L2 knowledge? how are these components used? and most importantly, how are they learned or acquired, monitored, practiced, and consolidated? While this is the oldest and most widely known of the distinctions we are discussing in this chapter, having been formulated by Chomsky (1965 , p. 4), and having been the subject of countless books and articles, both in the L1 and L2 domains (e.g., Chipere, 2003 ; Hymes, 1972 ; McNamara, 1995 ; Sorace, 2003 ; Tarone, 1983 ; Taylor, 1988) , it is probably the least useful for our purposes. It leaves out the whole area of processing, explicitly so (see, e.g., Chomsky, 1965 , p. 9), and gives the impression that whatever is not part of competence is not systematic and not of linguistic interest. At the same time, of course, it presupposes that the rules of grammar are indeed rules of the mind (cf. e.g., Pinker, 1999 ; Pinker & Prince, 1988 ; Pinker & Ullman, 2002a, 2002b ; Ullman, 2004) , and not just a convenient summary of probabilistic behaviors, as the connectionists would have it (cf. e.g., Elman et al., 1996 ; McClelland & Patterson, 2002a, 2002b ; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986) , and that competence is not merely an emergent property of performance (as Hall, Cheng, & Carlson, ... log in or subscribe to read full text