The use of previously known languages among EFL learners: a review
Laburpena
When in classroom contexts, learners tend to experience communication
breakdowns which apart from making them believe that they are not making any
progress in their Target Language (TL), they lead them to get stuck at some point in
their production. In order to cope with these situations, learners usually resort to their
Previously Known Languages (PKL). In recent years, the use of these PKL has been
studied from two different perspectives, a cognitive and a sociocultural perspective. The
cognitive perspective deals with both learning and communication strategies, and the
sociocultural perspective is more aimed at exploring the First Language (L1) as a useful
tool to assist during collaborative dialogue, which has been demonstrated to mediate
Second Language (L2) acquisition (Swain & Lapkin, 2000). This paper provides a
review of investigations framed within sociocultural perspectives carried out on
different factors that constrain PKL use: task-modality, task repetition, age and
proficiency, instructional context and gender.
Differences between adults and children have been found in some variables.
Regarding task-modality, children seem to resort to their PKL to a higher extent.
Furthermore, with respect to PKL functions, whereas adult learners resorted to their
PKL to discuss grammar issues in the speaking + writing tasks, grammar talk was not
frequent in young learners. In speaking tasks, whereas adults made a greater use of PKL
for vocabulary, children resorted to their PKL for this function in equal proportions in
both tasks. As for proficiency and age, in general terms, in the case of adults, their need
to use their PKL decreases as their proficiency increases. In addition, in the case of
children, not only the variable proficiency might affect their use of PKL, but also age.
Concerning gender, while investigations targeting adults have found that females make
greater use of their PKL, studies dealing with young learners have indicated that males
use their PKL to a higher extent. This dissertation finishes with a set of pedagogical
implications and identifies where more research should be done.