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Book Report
Second Language Acquisition, R.Ellis, Oxford University Press, 1986.
by Teacher Eddy Hsu
 A key issue in second language acquisition is whether a ‘natural’ route of development exists. To understand this, one must first come to agreement that the learner’s first language does not affect him learning the second language. Otherwise, learners with different first languages would learn the second language in different ways, and thus would require different second language learning environments (teaching methodology, teaching order, etc.). Thus, it should be considered that a universal route for learning second language does indeed exist.
If this is true, then, the ‘L2=L1’ hypothesis should be given great merit. The L2=L1 hypothesis states that the route of development of second language is very similar to that of the route of development of first language. The learner employs the same strategy – code cracking. How this is done is through application of mechanisms in the human language faculty. Should this be true, then, structures in which errors are more prevalent must have been ‘acquired’ later than structures with fewer errors. Studies show that different second language learners learn a second language in similar fashion.
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