Larry Selinker ,The Interlanguage man

Larry Selinker, a professor emeritus on Linguistics at The University of Michigan , is one of the most

recognized linguist in the last few decades.He is currently a former director in The University

Language institute.

Selinker was born on September 19,1937, and received his B.A from his alma mater Brandeis

University in 1959.At that time, he studied Near -Eastern studies. Later on, he received his M.A

from The American University in Washington in 1960 in the subject of Linguistics.

He has spent many years in Second Language Acquisition research and while after defended a PhD

thesis on Psycholinguistic study of transfer in Georgetown University in 1966.

According to Wikipedia, Selinker also taught at The American University in Washington and spent

in Edinburgh´s Applied Linguistics Department in the company of Pit Corder ,who was the most

important influential in his career.

Although he spent the greater part of his studies at The University of Michigan, Selinker was

pointed to a chair at Birbe Uk College,University of London, there he taught SLA and supervised

some research.

Larry Selinker introduced two important concepts in Linguisticsin the 1970´s which are

fundamental in SLA: Interlanguage and Fossilization.

Even though Selinker, is critized for limited explanatory of his Interlanguage Theory , is noted for

his great contribution in modern research in SLA.

Some of his most relevant published works are:

• “Language transfer” (1969)

 • “Interlanguage” (1972)

• Workbook in Second Language Acquisition (1984)

• Rediscovering the Interlanguage (1991)

• Second Language Acquisition : An introduction course (1993)

• The current state of Interlanguage studies (1995)

• Second Language Learning Data analysis Teachers manuals (1998)

Larry Selinker ‘s breakthtoughs are mostly focused on the Linguistic and psychological aspects of

SLA reasearch. As mention before , his reasearch about linguistics fields led him to contribute

giving new perspectives to the SLA studies with The Interlanguage and Fossilization .

“The term “Interlanguage” has been crucial to the development of the field of research on Second

Language Acquisition, and to continue to exert a strong influence on both The development SLA

Theory and the nature of the central issues in that fields.”(Tarone,2006)

Interlanguage is an abstract linguistic system where second language learners keeps in their minds ,

taking information from his mother tongue and from the target language .This particular system is

different from L1 (mother tongue) and L2 (target language) , creating a new language system.

Mother tongue Learners’ Target Language

(L1) Interlanguage (L2)
It is important to mention that Selinker built The Interlanguage concept from Pit Corder´s 1967

article ´The significance of Learner’s errors´.In this work Pit Corder pointed the importance of

errors as an important element in the learning process.

According to Tarone,Corder (1967,1981) “was the first and the most persuasive scholar to develepo

and alternative framework :he idea that Second language learners do not begin with their native

language ,but rather with a universal ´built-in syllabus´ that guides them in the systematic

developement of their own linguistic system ,actually a combination on two languages”

As stated in Wikipedia, in the Interlanguage process the grammar is transitional it means learners

change their grammar from one to another , learners add and delete rules constantly and

restructuring the whole system.At the same time The learners´s mistakes are reflected in this

process.

In the Interlanguage process learners employ some learning strategies such as omission ,

overgeneralisation and transfer errors to develop their interlanguage. At some point of the process

learners´ grammar is likely to fossilize.Selinker suggests that the most important factors related to

Second Language Acquisition is the phenomenon of Fossilization, in which incorrect language

becomes a habit and can not be easily corrected.

The casual factors of Fossilization are : Learning strategy,training transfer,language

transfer,overgeneralisation,and other factors such as environmental ,cognitive ,neurobiological and

socio-affective factors.

There are two theories which are dealed with Selinker’s theory ; The Behaviourist Learning Theory

and Mentalist Learning language Theory .

One important implication of Selinker’s Interlanguage hypothesis is the fact that errors are accepted

as inevitable and are necessary tools to learn and understand a language.

As a final point taken in account, is the fact that Selinker’s Interlanguage according to some

linguists, must provide to teachers different ways to introduce some special activities in the

classroom for example free writing compositions (extensive writing) which could provide

information to permit the detection of some slips of the pencil.In oral production aswell recognize

some tongue slips ,and see clearly the structures that produce the greatest number of errors , the

errors that happen frequently and the structures that students use correctly most of the time.These

are some important issues that would improve the level of teaching and learning .

References

1.-E. Tarone (2006) .’Interlanguage’vol. 4 pp 15 17-17 19

2.-Selinker L. (1992) .´Rediscovering the Interlanguage.’ .

Webography

1.-Wikipedia(2018). LarrySelinker [internet] available in :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Selinker.

2.- X.Wei (2008).Implication of IL Fossilization in Second Language Acquisition .

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1082599.pdf

3.-Selinker Larry (1993).Fossilization as simplification?.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED371575.pdf