What is the scope of SLA?

By Davut Nhem, M.A. (TESOL), Institute of Foreign Languages, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

'''The Scope of SLA'''

SLA has become a disciplinary of language education and its scope covers various aspects studied by different researchers. This could mean that the more scholars do research on SLA, the more issues needed to be studied. In this paper, the scope of SLA is gathered from three authors who investigated and explained about SLA.

According to Rowland (2014) who studied “Child Language Acquisition” and informs readers the most significant elements of SLA for this last fifty years, he includes the study of SLA with various features such as the sounds and meaning of words of a language, how children acquire syntax and morphology, language for commuincation, multilingual language acquisiton, variations of a language and the search for langauge universals.

Another research, Troike (2006), elucidates the scopes of SLA in some important aspects. Troike (2006) starts with the explanation of Second Langauge Acquisition, how it is different from first language acquisition, and diversity of learnes. In the second part of the book, Troike (2006) further explains the foundatons of SLA which investigates the world and nature of SLA, the differentiation of L1 and L2, logic problems of langauge learning, and framework of langauge learning. The next part, he elaborates the linguistics of SLA which covers the nature of language, approaches to SLA, Universal grammar and Functional approaches. Psychology and social contexts SLA are also included in the book. The last two parts, he shows the acquisition of knowledge for L2 use and Second language education.

Ortega (2009) also starts with the introduction of SLA and next he discusses about the age that is one of the important aspects in SLA. Later on he explains about the crosslinguistcs influences which means the differentaitaion and similarity of L1 and L2. The linguistic environment and cognition are also included in the discussion of the book. The other aspects such as Development of learner language, Foreign language aptitude, Motivation, Affect and other individual differences, Social dimensions of L2 learning are carefully discussed in the book.

Therefore, when we talk about SLA, there are varieties of aspects to be considered. It is a new disciplinary but has so many elements to discuss.

= Reference = Ortega, L. (2009). ''Understanding Second Langauge Acquisition.'' London and New York: Routledge.

Rowland, C. (2014). ''Child Language Acquisition.'' New York: Routledge.

Troike, M. S. (2006). ''Introducing Second Language Acquisition.'' New York: Cambridge University Press.