Views on the nature of language
The view of language within cognitive approaches is underdeveloped.Many SLA researchers working on these approaches do not see language as a separate module in the human mind, but as just another form of information which is processed through general cognitive mechanisms. The question of the specificity and innateness of the language faculty is far from resolved, in both the L1 and L2 acquisition fields., in both the L1 and L2 acquisition fields and the opposition between cognitivists and innatists should be seen more in terms of two ends of a continuum rather than a dichotomy.
Cognitive theorists of SLA fall into two main groups:
Processing approaches: Pienemann (2005a, 2010), Towell (2000, 2004) and Towell and Hawkins (1994, 2004), or VanPatten (2002, 2007)who are concerned to develop transition\processing theories to complement property theories such as UG or, in the case of Pienemann, another linguistic theory (Lexical Functional Grammar).
Emergentist/constructionist approaches: N. C. Ellis, MacWhinney, Tomasello and others (N. C. Ellis 2003, 2007, 2008b; N. C. Ellis and Larsen-Freeman 2006; N. C. Ellis and Schmidt 1998;they do not make the distinction between competence and performance. They believe that one can explain both the nature of language knowledge and how it is processed through general cognitive principles.the learner is seen as operating a complex processing system which deals with linguistic information in similar ways to other kinds of information.
View of the learning process
The learning process is the main focus of cognitive approaches, and in particular its computational dimension. Information processing approaches investigate how different memory stores (Short Term Memory (STM); Long Term Memory (LTM) declarative and procedural) deal with new L2 information and how this information is automatized and restructured through repeated activation.
The learning process is not itself the object of study. but rather how learner characteristics impact on this process.
View of the language learner
Cognitive approaches are interested in the learner's mind as a processor of information, rather than in the specificity of the linguistic information it contains.Cognitive approaches view the learner as responding to the multitude of information surrounding us processing it, organizing it and storing it.The individual differences approach, on the other hand, focuses on individuals' specific characteristics rather than on what is universal, and on how these individual characteristics interact with the learning process.
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Cognitive approaches and SLA research agendas/findings
Cognitive approaches have primarily investigated research questions 3 and 4:
Question 3. How do learners develop their ability to access and use their L2 system in real time. i.e. their processing capability?
Question 4. What are the roles of individual differences and learning styles in shaping and/or facilitating L2 development?
(a) Developmental stages Processability theory (Pienemann 1998, 2005a, 2008, 2010) has argued that the acquisition of processing in the second language is incremental and hierarchical, thus explaining developmental stages in a principled way, with word-level processing preceding phrase-level processing which in turn precedes sentence-level processing.
(b) Interlanguage rules are often unlike both the L1 and the target language
(c) Selective transfer of L1 properties
(d) Variable rate and outcome of SLA process
Conclusion: contribution of cognitive approaches to SLA theory building
There is no doubt that they have greatly enriched our understanding of SLA processes. Although there are some similarities between cognitive approaches and formal linguistic approaches, in that both focus on language and/or learning within the mind of the individual learner, there are also major differences between these theoretical families. Formal linguistic approaches focus on the linguistic system, whereas the territory of cognitive approaches is the learning mechanisms involved in the SLA process and what impacts upon them. Their focus on different parts of the human mind, language or learning mechanisms respectively, has meant that their respective research agendas and research questions have often been complementary rather than contradictory. Neither of these approaches, however, have embedded the study of SLA within its social and interactional context.
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