Influencing factors in Second Language Acquisition

29 the structural and semantic simplification in which the L2 learners tend to omit the grammatical function words such as auxiliary verbs. The following stages of language acquisition in developmental perspectives are the acquisitions of grammatical morphemes particularly on the orders and sequences of language acquisitions. The main attentions of these stages are the morpheme studies, the acquisition of tenses and aspects as well as the acquisition of syntactic structures. The focus of morpheme studies is only on the order of acquisitions of grammatical functors, it does not focus on the sequences. Most of the morpheme studies employ cross-sectional data gathering method although there are also a few numbers of studies employ longitudinal data gathering method. Another study as a focus of the grammatical morpheme acquisition stage is the study of tenses and aspects. One of the studies was by Bardovi-Harlig 1999 and 2000 as well as Zielonka 2005 as cited in Ellis 2008 focus on how the language learners with different levels of acquisition in expressing the temporality. In which later Bardovi-Harlig 2000 find out that the acquisition of expressing the temporality occurs in a slow and gradual process. In addition, Conroy n.d. proposes five stages in language development and these stages apply to all languages 1 pre-production silent periods, 2 early production, 3 emergent stage, 4 intermediate fluency stage and 5 stabilization stage. The language learners in the pre-production stage have minimal comprehension and they do not produce verbal production, they start to have the receptive skills but not yet the productive skills. Therefore, this stage is also named as a silent period for the lack or the absence of productive skills in language learners. In an early production stage, the language learners start to 30 produce a few responses. Their comprehension level is low and it makes the learners make random error. The following stage is an emergent stage in which the learners’ comprehension level is improving. In this stage the learners start to produce simple sentences yet they still make errors and unable to correct it. In intermediate fluency stage, the comprehension level is improving and the sentences made by the learners becoming more complex with complex errors. Learners at this stage are able to correct their errors if it is pointed out. The last stage of language development is stabilization stage. The learners have a fluent language skill and they do not meet any problem in comprehension. In addition, they are also able to point out their errors and able to correct it. The language fossilizations occur in this stage and the learned language is embedded permanently. From these stages thus it can be concluded that skill of language learners is getting better and it is equivalent to their length of study, the longer time they get exposed to a certain language the more proficient they are.

c. Method in Identifying Developmental Pattern

In investigating developmental pattern, previous researchers utilized several methods. Ellis 2008 summarizes four different approaches employed by previous researchers to identify the developmental pattern. The first method is the obligatory occasion analysis. Brown 1973 as cited in Ellis 2008 elaborates three basic procedures of this method 1 obtain and collect samples of learners language that naturally occurs, 2 when the samples are collected then the obligatory occasions of the use of specific target language features are identified 3 calculate the percentage of accurate use of the specific language features. There