The use of previously known languages among EFL learners: a review

Abstract

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.