Skill Acquisition Theory and How it Helps People Understand Second Language Acquisition

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORIES
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Introduction
The study of second language acquisition (SLA) increased in the last century, and many people came up with theories that explain how people learn second language. The theories had different ways of explaining SLA. At the time, SLA could be explained by the story of elephant and four blind men. (VanPatten & Williams, 2015, p. 11). Each of the men had different elephant parts and described what an elephant looked like. Of course, the men did not understand what an elephant looks like. Therefore, it is hard to find one theory which describes SLA.
One of the theories that explains SLA is the skill acquisition theory (SAT). Dekeyser describes SAT as the process of ‘how people progress in learning a variety of skills, from initial learning to advanced proficiency. (Dekeyser, 2015, p. 149). The theory’s key point is from psychology that says that anyone can become an expert of any skills through continued pairing of stimuli and responses. Skills acquisition theory's main point is that learning involves a many skills. It starts from early changes in behavior to ‘eventual fluent, spontaneous, largely effortless, and highly skilled behavior’ (Dekeyser, 2015, p. 150). This process is in all skill acquisition processes, and it was copied to describe the acquisition of a new language. This essay will focus on SAT, its key points, and criticism.
Basic Claim
Some things in SAT comes from the Adaptive Control of Thought (ACT) theory by John Anderson. The ACT theory describes three stages of learning a skill. Several people have named these three stages differently; For example, Fitts and Posner call them the ‘cognitive, associative, and autonomous stages. (Dekeyser, 2015).’ Anderson calls them declarative, procedural, and automatic, and Byrne calls them presentation, practice, and production. (Dekeyser, 2015, p. 150). Each stage is has differences. The learner in each level understands language differently. For this essay, we use the terms used by Anderson in the ACT theory. Declarative phase is about knowledge acquisition. The learner masters facts and concepts (declarative knowledge). The knowledge comes from observation and analysis of others good in the skilled behavior. (Dekeyser, 2015, p. 150). The declarative knowledge becomes procedural by storing it in long-term memory. The learner knows concepts of how things in certain situations behave. Declarative knowledge becomes procedural through practice. For example, the learner has to practice the rules that govern the correct tense to verbs. After practice, they can produce the correct verb tense without thinking. The next phase is automaticity. The knowledge in the skill becomes procedural by default. According to Dekeyser,
‘In the broadest sense, automaticity of language refers to the whole process of knowledge change from initial presentation of the rule in declarative format to the final stage of entirely spontaneous, effortless, fast, and errorless use of that rule, often without being aware of it anymore. In a narrower sense, it refers to the slow process of reducing the error rate, reaction time, and interference with/from other ...