The Relationship Between Interlanguage, Learning and Cross-Cultural Communication

Although large numbers of educators and linguists are currently involved in the study of second-language acquisition (SLA), its research history is not very long. SLA research had its beginnings in the late 1960s when early researchers first attempted, through empirical studies, to describe the characteristics of learner language. Not satisfied with merely descriptive research, many researchers soon began attempts to explain why learners made errors, why regularities appeared in their language and why their language displayed systematic change over time. They wanted to know the mental processes that second-language (L2) learners used to convert input knowledge such as the learner’s employment of knowledge about her first language (L1), universal language, and general learning strategies used to acquire L2. Through such processes the learner constructs an interim language between L1 and L2. The term used most frequently today to describe this transitional language, interlanguage, was created by Selinker in (1972). Interlanguage was the first significant theory which tried to explain L2 acquisition. Interlanguage refers to the language a learner has constructed at a specific point in time, ‘an interlanguage’. It also refers to the series of languages that have been constructed over a period of time, ‘interlanguage’. Ellis (1985 and 1989) proposed that interlanguage develops simultaneously in three phases: (1) innovation (the acquisition of new forms), (2) elaboration (the use of more complex language as the use of forms in different contexts is discovered), and (3) revision (the adjustments of language that are made as a result of innovation and elaboration). Another important feature of Selinker’s interlanguage theory is that it distinguishes between L2 ‘communication strategies’ and ‘learning’. Communication strategies are ways in which the learner uses her linguistic resources to communicate fluently or to handle communication difficulties. Learning involves “the mechanisms that learners use to (1) notice features in the input, (2) compare these features with those that are currently part of their mental grammars or interlanguages, and (3) integrate the new features into their interlanguages.” (Ellis, 1994, pp. 30). This paper will discuss interlanguage and learning strategies from a cultural perspective, focusing on Chinese learners of English.