SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION COURSE - VARIABILITY RESUME

VARIABILTY 

Variability refers to cases where a second language learner uses two or more linguistic variants to express a phenomenon, which has only one realization in the target language.

• Horizontal variation ‘refers to the variation evident in learner language at a particular moment or stage in a learner’s development.’ (Ellis, 1994:705) This is also commonly referred to as synchronic variation.
• Horizontal variation is variation dependent on demands of task type, situation, and language • Vertical variation ‘refers to the differences in learner language evident from one time to another. It reflects the development that is taking place in the learner’s interlanguage’ (Ellis, 1994:728). This type of variation is also commonly referred to as diachronic variation. 
• Vertical variation is that variation that represents a change in a learner’s knowledge over time. 

FREE VARIATION 

• Free Variation refers to the phenomenon that the learner possesses two or more form (variation), which he/she use to realize the same range of meanings. 

An research by Ellis (1989) They were produced by an eleven-year-old Portuguese boy (whom I shall call 'J') who was the subject of a longitudinal study. When 'J' arrived in Britain he was placed almost immediately in a language centre where he received day-long instruction in English. At the start of the study 'J' was an almost complete beginner. His productive English was limited to a few words. 

 1. No look my card. 

 2. Don’t look my card. 

The data were collected inside the classroom using a pencil-and-paper record of all the spontaneous speech (i.e. not speech elicited in instructional drills of any kind) that 'J' produced. An audio recording of each lesson was used to check the accuracy of the pencil-and-paper record. 'J' was visited once each week for a minimum of one hour throughout the school year. Before discussing these data, a few comments about J's use of negative utterances are in order. 

In the first month J produced a total of 18 spontaneous negative utterances.4 Out of these, 17 used the 'no' negation, as in utterance (1), and only one used 'don't'. Thus utterance (2) was the solitary example of a 'don't' negative in the first few weeks of the study. 

In the next month, however, the proportion of 'don't' negatives increased substantially, although 'no' negatives were still more frequent. 

It was not until the sixth month that negatives containing 'not' (i.e. either 'don't' or 'aux + not') were in the majority. This pattern of development parallels that reported in other studies (e.g. Cazden et al. 1975; Wode 1976).