Chapter I. The role of feedback in learning english as a second language

The practical value of the course paper:
The material on which this 
study is based consists of a questionnaire answered by students and their 
teachers in three classes in upper secondary school. 

---

5
CHAPTER I. THE ROLE OF FEEDBACK IN LEARNING ENGLISH AS A 
SECOND LANGUAGE 
1.1 Learning English as a second language 
A second language (L2) traditionally refers to a language acquired in the 
environment in which the language is used and works as the main means of 
communication . Often, a second language is seen as a complement to a person's 
mother tongue or “first language” (L1). Second language acquisition refers to 
learning the language that is used by the majority of speakers in society or is the 
official language, but which is not the learner’s mother tongue .The term 
foreign 
language, 
on the other hand, refers to those languages that are learned in an 
environment where the language is not used for everyday communication. 
Foreign language acquisition is consequently when a learner acquires the 
language of another country. However, the term 
second language acquisition 
is 
often used as an encompassing term for language learning and therefore, this 
paper will use the terms 
English as a second language 
(ESL) and 
second 
language acquisition
, even though, strictly speaking (and according to the 
definitions given above), English is a foreign and not a second language in 
Sweden. 
Research shows that errors are important in the acquisition of a second 
language, since they are proof that the student is making progress in acquiring 
the language. The term 
interlanguage
, coined by Selinker, stands for the type of 
language produced by second and foreign language learners who are in the 
process of learning a new language. In short, it is a term used when second 
language learners produce results which are neither fully native-language-like 
nor target-language-like.
Lightbown 
and 
Spada 
explain 
that 
interlanguage 
has 
“some 
characteristics influenced by previously learned languages, some characteristics of 
the second language and some characteristics such as the omission of function 
words and grammatical morphemes that seem to be general and to occur in all 
or most interlanguage systems.” Moreover, interlanguage is systematic, but also 

---

6
dynamic and evolves continually as learners receive more input and revise their 
hypotheses about the second language . 
Errors in interlanguage are evidence for the teacher that the learner’s 
language is developing. Errors should not be regarded as undesirable results 
of faulty learning, or even a threat to the continued learning process, but as 
entirely natural and inevitable forms that reflect the course of a natural 
developmental process . Also Lightbown and Spada stress that an increase 
in the number of errors may be an indication of progress in language learning 
since errors can be regarded and explained in terms of learners' developing 
knowledge of the structure of the target language. There is a difference in 
acquiring a first and a second language. In his article “Nine Ideas about 
Language”
, 
Daniels mentions that language operates by rules, which means 
that when a child begins learning his or her native language, he or she 
acquires a system of mostly subconscious rules. These rules concern sounds, 
words, the positioning of words and aspects of the social act of speaking. 
This makes it possible for the child to make meaningful and increasingly 
complex utterances. Which set of rules the child will acquire depends on 
what language is spoken in his or her environment. This is a reminder that 
human language is, in an important sense, arbitrary, e.g. a 
chair 
is a 
chair 
because it is has been decided on by the speakers of English that this 
combination of sounds meant 
chair.
Language is a species-specific trait of 
human beings and all children will acquire the oral language they hear 
around them as naturally as they learn to walk, provided that the child is not 
severely retarded or completely deprived of exposure to speech. The 
three major components of all languages are a sound system, a system of 
grammar and vocabulary. The vocabulary, also called the lexicon, is as 
Daniels calls it “the individual's storehouse of words” and the young child 
tries to expand his or her lexical inventory.
2
Children learn their native 
language swiftly, efficiently and they are not “taught” by their parents to 
2
(Daniels, 2008: 6) 

---

7
talk; children 
learn 
to talk the surrounding language and use other speakers 
as their testing devices for their own emerging ideas about language (Daniels, 
2008: 4). 
The acquisition of a second language, on the other hand, may be a 
complex process. In learning a second language, the words do not come 
naturally and therefore they have to be taught. Second-language learners probably 
need to know several thousand word families (Ur, 2012: 64). The term 
word family 
means a word and all its morphological variants. The forms 
need, needs, needed, 
and 
needing 
count as a single word and also derivations of the base word, e.g. 
needful 
and 
necessity 
should be included in the word family (Ur, 2012: 2, 3, 7, 63, 
64). Researchers today generally agree that in order to understand a text, one 
needs to be able to understand between 95% and 98% of its words. Thus, one of 
the important parts of learning a second language is acquiring vocabulary. A 
learner never finishes this learning process because the acquisition of new 
vocabulary is an ongoing process . The importance of vocabulary is also 
mentioned by Wilkins who said that “without grammar very little can be 
conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” Furthermore, Ur 
claims that it is important for students to use English both fluently and correctly 
in order to get the message across effectively while using standard lexical 
conventions. By lexical conventions Ur means e.g. a group of words like 
post office 
or expressions, like 
in any case 
.