Sequence grammar by developmental processing stages, not apparent difficulty. Teachability Hypothesis: instruction can’t push learners past a stage they aren’t ready for. You cannot ‘explain or quiz a learner into the next developmental stage’.
Claim
Pienemann (1984, SSLA 6/2, “Psychological constraints on the teachability of languages”); Processability Theory (1998). Instruction helps only when the learner is at the stage just before the target. Teachers should count the processing operations a structure requires (e.g. French passé composé with être: 6–7 sub-operations) against learners’ working memory.
Procedure
- Place each target structure in a processing stage. Conti’s French mapping: single words → canonical SVO → inflections → sentence-internal reordering → subordinate clauses → advanced.
- Count processing steps vs capacity.
- Simple before complex: basic questions before inversion; object pronouns before relatives.
- High-frequency structures early.
Limits & critique
- Conti himself: “not every persistent error is evidence of developmental unreadiness.”
- His French stage mapping isn’t shown to be validated.
- Working-memory figures (“4–6 items younger, 5–9 for 16+”) are given without a source.
- PT constrains the order of emergence. Instruction timed to readiness may still speed progress, though Spada & Lightbown (1999) found a messier picture than strict teachability predicts. (Claude)
Apply in my context (Claude)
- For English, the best-known PT sequence is question formation (Pienemann, Johnston & Brindley 1988; summarised in Lightbown & Spada, How Languages are Learned): single words/formulae → SVO with rising intonation (“You like it?”) → fronting (Do-/Wh-fronting without inversion: “Where you go?”) → yes/no inversion and wh + copula → inversion with auxiliary in wh-questions → tags, negative and embedded questions.
- Implication: “Where you live?” from a Movers child is on track, not a failure. Correct it lightly with recasts. Push hard on inversion once learners show stage-4 forms.
- Embedded questions (“Can you tell me where the station is?”) are stage 6. PET/FCE learners will still invert them. That’s expected.