英语教学法原著选读11：习得与学得之别
本篇选自克拉申《第二语言习得的原则与实践(Principles and Practice in SLA）》第二章“第二语言习得理论”A节“有关第二语言习得的五个假说”第一个假说，武太白翻译。
据我所知，此书没有中译本。如果朋友们知道有中译本，请告诉我是哪个出版社的，我要去找来看看。
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原文
The acquisition-learning distinction is perhaps the most fundamental of all the hypotheses to be presented here. It states that adults have two distinct and independent ways of developing competence in a second language.
The first way is language acquisition, a process similar, if not identical, to the way children develop ability in their first language. Language acquisition is a subconscious process; language acquirers are not usually aware of the fact that they are acquiring language, but are only aware of the fact that they are using the language for communication. The result of language acquisition, acquired competence, is also subconscious. We are generally not consciously aware of the rules of the languages we have acquired. Instead, we have a "feel" for correctness. Grammatical sentences "sound" right, or "feel" right, and errors feel wrong, even if we do not consciously know what rule was violated.
Other ways of describing acquisition include implicit learning, informal learning, and natural learning. In non-technical language, acquisition is "picking-up" a language.
The second way to develop competence in a second language is by language learning. We will use the term "learning" henceforth to refer to conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them. In non-technical terms, learning is "knowing about" a language, known to most people as "grammar", or "rules". Some synonyms include formal knowledge of a language, or explicit learning.
Some second language theorists have assumed that children acquire, while adults can only learn. The acquisition-learning hypothesis claims, however, that adults also acquire, that the ability to "pick-up" languages does not disappear at puberty. This does not mean that adults will always be able to achieve native-like levels in a second language. It does mean that adults can access the same natural "language acquisition device" that children use. As we shall see later, acquisition is a very powerful process in the adult.
Error correction has little or no effect on subconscious acquisition, but is thought to be useful for conscious learning. Error correction supposedly helps the learner to induce or "figure out" the right form of a rule. If, for example, a student of English as a second language says "I goes to school every day", and the teacher corrects him or her by repeating the utterance correctly, the learner is supposed to realize that the /s/ ending goes with the third person and not the first person, and alter his or her conscious mental representation of the rule. This appears reasonable, but it is not clear whether error correction has this impact in actual practice (Fanselow, 1977; Long, 1977).
Evidence from child language acquisition confirms that error correction does not influence acquisition to any great extent. Brown and his colleagues have shown that parents actually correct only a small portion of the child's language (occasional pronunciation problems, certain verbs, and dirty words!). They conclude from their research that parents attend far more to the truth value of what the child is saying rather than to the form. For example, Brown, Cazden, and Bellugi (1973) report that a sentence such as “Her curl my hair” was approved, because the mother was, in fact, curling Eve's hair" (p. 330). On the other hand, “Walt Disney comes on on Tuesday” was corrected, despite its syntactic correctness, since Walt Disney actually came on television on Wednesday. Brown et al. conclude that it seems to be "truth value rather than syntactic well-formedness that chiefly governs explicit verbal reinforcement by parents--which renders mildly paradoxical the fact that the usual product of such a training schedule is an adult whose speech is highly grammatical but not notably truthful" (p. 330).
The acquisition-learning distinction may not be unique to second language acquisition. We certainly "learn" small parts of our first language in school (e.g. for most people, the who/ whom distinction), and similar distinctions have been made in other domains (see, for example, Reber, 1976; Hall, 1959; and the review in d'Anglejan, 1978).
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译文
习得与学得之别也许是此处要介绍的所有假说中最基础的一个。此假说认为，成人在形成第二语言能力的过程中有两种各不相同、相互独立的方式。
第一种方式是语言“习得”，一种类似于——如果不能说“等同于”的话——儿童学习母语时形成能力之方式的过程。语言习得是一种下意识的过程；语言习得者通常对正在习得语言一事并不自知，只知道是在用语言进行交流。语言习得的结果，“习得的能力”，也是下意识的。我们一般并不会有意识地明了我们习得的语言规则，而是“感觉”到语言正确与否。语法正确的句子“听起来”是对的，或者说“感觉”是对的，而错误感觉就不对，即便我们并不会有意识地知道什么样的规则遭到了破坏。
其它描述习得的方式还有“隐性学习”、“非正式学习”、“自然学习”等。用非技术语言来说，习得就是“无意学会”了英语。
另一种形成第二语言能力的方式是采用语言“学得”。此后我们用“学得”这个术语来指对第二语言的有意识学习，明了其规则，清楚其存在，并能够探讨这些规则。用非技术语言来说，学得就是“了解”一门语言，也就是绝大多数人所知道的“语法”，或者“规则”。同类说法还有“语言的形式知识”，或“显性学习”。
一些二语理论家认定儿童习得语言，而成人只能学得语言。“习得-学得”之别假说则认为成人也能习得语言，“无意学会”语言的能力并不会随着成年而消失。这并不意味着成人就一定能够达到第二语言的母语者类似水平。其意义在于，成人也能够利用儿童使用的“语言习得机制”这一自然能力。我们随后会看到，习得在成人身上也是一种强大的过程。
改错对下意识的语言习得没有什么用，或者说根本就没用，但被认为在有意识学得过程中是有用的。改错据认为能够帮助学习者“诱导出”或者“想出”规则的正确形式。比如，要是学生说“I goes to school every day”，老师加以纠正，反复说正确的句子，那么学生就应该认识到第三人称单数形式的动词不能和第一人称连用，由此对有意识的规则运用进行修正。这看起来似乎有道理，但并不清楚改错在实践过程中是否真的有这样的效果。
儿童语言习得的证据表明，改错不会明显地影响到习得过程。布朗和他的同事已经证实，父母亲事实上仅修改孩子少部分的语言（偶尔出现发音问题、特定的动词、以及脏话！）他们根据研究得出结论，认为家长对孩子所说语言内容价值的关注程度要远远超过对语言形式的关注。例如，Brown，Cazden和Bellugi（1973）提出，Her curl my hair这样的句子得到认可，因为母亲的确在弯弄Eve的头发。然而，“Walt Disney comes on on Tuesday”却被纠正了，因为迪斯尼实际上是星期三才播放。布朗等人得出结论说，这看起来是“父母对语言的明确反馈主要关注言语内容而非句法正确——这就使得以下事实变得有点自相矛盾：对成人的语言培训课程高度关注语法正确性，对语言内容的真实性却不甚注意”。
习得与学得之别可能并不局限于第二语言习得。我们当然是在学校“学得”了我们母语的一小部分（比如对绝大部分人来说“who/whom”的区别就是这样学得的），而在其他领域也有类似的区分。