ON ROUTINES AND PATTERNS IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

AND PERFORMANCE1

Stephen Krashen and Robin Scarcella2

University of Southern California

It is sometimes claimed that routines and patterns play a

major role in language acquisition: specifically, that routines and
patterns directly foster the development of syntactic structure. In
order to determine the true status and function of routines and
patterns in language acquisition and performance, we examine
several explanations of routines and patterns in light of the
literature on automatic speech in neurolinguistics, child first
language acquisition, child second language acquisition, and adult
second language acquisition. In doing this, we relate routines and
patterns to what has been called “automatic speech” and the
“gestalt mode”. We conclude by: 1. asserting that the use of
routines and patterns may be encouraged when conversational
demands are present and the acquirer is not yet competent in the
second language and 2. arguing that routines and patterns, while
useful in establishing and maintaining relations (Fillmore 1976), do
not serve a primary role in language acquisition and performance.

In this paper, we will consider the role of prefabricated

routines and patterns in first and second language acquisition and
performance. The relationship of these “fixed and semi-fixed”
expressions to the development of syntactic structure and their
status in performance are issues that are both theoretically
interesting and of practical importance in second language teaching.
In defining terms, we distinguish between routines and
patterns. Prefabricated routines are simply memorized whole
utterances or phrases, such as ‘How are you?’ or ‘Where is your
hotel?’. A performer may use these without any knowledge at all
of their internal structure. Entire lines from memorized dialogues
qualify as prefabricated routines, as do expressions learned from
foreign language books. Hakuta (1974) has noted that pre-
fabricated patterns are distinct from routines. These are partly
‘creative’ and partly memorized wholes; they consist of sentence
frames with an open ‘slot’ for a word or a phrase, such as ‘That’s a

IPartial support for this research was provided by the Center for the
Humanities, University of Southern California.
2We thank Kenji Hakuta, Ann Peters, Peg Griffen and Elinor Keenan for
helpful comments.

283
284 LANGUAGE LEARNING VOL. 28, NO. 2

.’ (pen, knife, banana), or Lyon’s (1969) example, ‘Down

with .’ Lyons called such constructions “phrase and sentence
schemata”, and defined them as “utterances that are grammatically
unstructured or only partially structured, but which can yet be
combined in sentences according to productive rules” (pp.
177-178). Audio-lingual pattern practice is based on the use of
prefabricated patterns.
The issue we will be dealing with here is the relationship of
routines and patterns to language acquisition, namely, whether
routines and patterns play a direct role in the creative construction
process. We can distinguish three different positions with regard to
this question:
(1) Prefabricated routines may evolve into prefabricated
patterns. According to this position, purely propositional
language does not exist and performers rely solely on
patterns and routines to communicate.
(2) Prefabricated routines may evolve into patterns, but at
the same time, independently, the creative construction
process develops. This implies that in some situations
propositional language may “catch up” with automatic
speech; that is, the language acquisition process may
“reanalyze” patterns and routines as creative con-
structions.
(3) Prefabricated routines may evolve into prefabricated
patterns, (as in position one), and these patterns may
evolve directly into creative language. In other words
routines and patterns may be ingredients of the creative
process.
The following sections will briefly review the literature on
routines and patterns in neurolinguistics, child first language
acquisition, child second language acquisition, and adult second
language. We interpret this literature as fully consistent with only
position two.

Neurolinguistic Status of Automatic Speech

Van Lancker (1972:25) defines automatic speech as “con-

ventional greetings, overused and overlearned expressions, (such as
‘be careful’ and ‘first things first’), pause fillers such as ‘you know’
and ‘well’, certain idioms, swearing, and other emotional language,
perhxps stereotyped questions and answers, commands,. . .” Auto-
matic speech (AS) thus appears to share some of the characteristics
of routines and patterns.
 KRASHEN AND SCARCELLA 285

The most striking neurolinguistic fact about atuomatic speech

is that AS, as contrasted with propositional language, which is
lateralized to the left hemisphere, (see Krashen 1976, for a review),
may be represented in both sides of the brain. That is, automatic
speech is localized in both the right and left cerebral hemispheres.
The primary evidence for this is the fact that routines and
patterns are often preserved in cases of nonfluent (syntactic)
aphasia and after left hemispherectomy. Patients who have suffered
left brain damage, who have lost the ability to speak, can often use
automatic speech, as can those who have undergone removal of the
left hemisphere during adulthood. A. Smith (1966) describes a case
of a man who underwent left hemispherectomy at age 48. The
surgery left him nearly totally speechless:
“E. C.’s attempts to reply t o questions immediately after
operation were totally unsuccessful. He would open his mouth and
utter isolated words, and after apparently struggling to organize
words for meaningful speech, recognized his inability and would
utter expletives or short emotional phrases (e.g. ‘Goddamit.’)
Expletives and curses were well articulated and clearly understand-
able. However, he could not repeat single words on command or
communicate in ‘propositional’ speech until 10 weeks post-oper-
atively .” Expressive speech showed some development in E.C., but
Smith reported that his creative language was still “severely
impaired” eight months after the operation.
A patient studied by Whitaker (1971) suffering from
nonfluent aphasia exhibited an interesting sort of automatic speech
behavior: He responded to nearly every question or attempt at
conversation with the utterance ‘What’cha gonna do right now? yea
yea’. . Whitaker points out to the student of neurolinguistics that
one cannot use such utterances as data in determining a patient’s
true linguistic competence “. . . on the basis of (this one)
utterance, it would be rather farfetched to assume that L.S. (the
patient) had retained the WH-question transformation and correct
pronominal reference.. . .” (pp. 145-146).
Thought to be related to automatic speech are “ictal speech
mechanisms”, words or utterances spoken by psychomotor epi-
leptics during, before, or immediately after seizures. Ictal speech
mechanicms consist of stereotyped expressions (‘I beg your
pardon.’) and emotional utterances which are spoken out of
context. As in the case with AS associated with the right side of
the brain as well as the left. Serafatinides and Falconer (1963), in
agreement with other studies, found that “of 15 patients with
286 LANGUAGE LEARNING VOL. 28, NO. 2

truly ictal speech automatisms 4 were operated on the left side and
11 on the right or recessive side.” (p. 345).
The neurolinguistic evidence, then, points to the fact that
automatic speech is neurologically different from creative language
in that it is localized on both sides of the brain, as opposed to just
the left hemisphere, and can be preserved in cases of aphasia. If AS
is related to routines and patterns, then routines and patterns may
have a fundamentally different mental representation than other
kinds of language.

Routines and Patterns in First Language Acquisition

R. Brown (1973), in his study of first language acquisition,

noted that some of his subjects’ sentences were memorized wholes
and patterns. He hypothesized that prefabricated routines in
children were the result of very high input frequency of a structure
that was, at that time, beyond the child’s linguistic maturational
level. We cannot improve on Brown and Hanlon’s (1970: 50-51)
description of this phenomenon (see also Cazden 1972:llO).
“The parents of Adam, Eve, and Sarah did produce certain
WH-questions at a very high rate in a period when children did not
understand the structure of WH-questions. What happened then? The
children learned to produce the two most frequently repeated
WH-questions, What’s that? and What doing? on roughly appropriate
occasions. Their performance had the kind of rigidity that we have
learned to recognize as a sign of incomprehension of structure: they did
not produce, as their parents of course did, such structurally close
variants as What are these? and Who’s that? and What is he doing?
When, much later, the children began to produce all manner of
WH-questions in the pre-posed form (such as What h e wants.) it was
interesting to note that What’s that? and What are y o u doing? were not
at first reconstructed in terms of the new analysis. If the children had
generated the sentences in terms of their new rules they ought to have
said What that is? and What are y o u doing? but instead, they, at first,
.
persisted with the old forms.. . We suggest that any form that is
produced with very high frequency by parents will be somehow
represented in the child’s performance even if its structure is far beyond
him. He will find a way to render a version of it and will also form a
notion of the circumstances in which it is used. The construction will
become lodged in his speech as an unassimilated fragment. Extensive use
of such a fragment probably protects it, for a time, from a reanalysis
when the structure relevant t o it is finally learned.”
Thus, routines appear to be immune to rules at first. This
clearly implies that routines are part of a system that is separate
from the process generating rule-governed, propositional language.
I t is also evidence that automatic speech does not “turn into”
creative constructions. Rather, the creative construction process
evolves independently. This is exactly position two as stated above.
 KRASHEN AND SCARCELLA 287

Another indication that automatic speech forms are generated

by a different process than creative construction is the fact that
Brown’s subject Adam produced many patterns, (such as ‘It’s a
- 9 ’ and ‘That’s a -. ’) which were characterized by very high
initial performance. Related propositional forms, Brown notes,
show a learning curve with a gradual increase in accuracy over
time. Patterns and routines, on the other hand, do not. Brown is
thus solidly behind position two for children language acquisition.
Patterns and routines may develop due to high frequency in input
in advance of linguistic maturity, but such automatic speech is
independent of the creative construction process; it may fall away
in some situations and be re-analyzed by the language acquisition
process.
On the other hand, R. Clark (1974),in a paper appropriately
titled “Performing without Competence”, argues that for some
children routines do evolve into patterns which in turn become
creative language. In her word, “our research findings suggest that
(child’s speech) becomes creative through the gradual analysis of
the internal structure of sequences which begin as prepackaged
routines.” (p. 9). Clark’s conclusions are based on her analysis of
her son Adam, (not to be confused with Brown’s subject of the
same name) who was about three years old at the time of the
study. Adam, according to Clark, would often use his own or
another’s previous utterance as constituents for his own utterances.
For example,
Adam R.C.
-
Mummy you go. Where?
Mummy you go swings.
Do you want to get off?
No I want to get on. (This was an error: Adam meant
to say “stay on”.
In addition t o this use of patterns, Adam tended to use
routines as well, trying to use a phrase in situations close to where
he heard it. For example, he would say, “I carry you” when he
wanted to be carried, having heard his father say this sentence on
numerous occasions.
This use of routines and patterns may not be atypical. Clark,
however, suggests that for Adam routines evolve into patterns,
consistent with positions one and three above. For example, when
a hot meal was brought to the table
(1) Wait for it to cool.
was said, which became a routine for Adam. After several weeks of
hearing this, Adam was heard to say
288 LANGUAGE LEARNING VOL. 28, NO. 2

(2) Wait for it to dry.

when hanging up a washcloth. Also, many of Adam’s long
sentences were the result of juxtaposing existing routines. For
example,
(3) I want you to get a biscuit for me.
consists of the pattern ‘I want .’ plus the underlined portion,
which existed as an independent routine for Adam.
Clark claims that routines and patterns were primary in
Adam’s development of language: “In Adam’s speech at this time a
number of routine sequences seemed to coexist with a few simple
productive rules. Many, though not necessarily all, the productive
rules originated as invariable routines, which were in use for some
time with the original lexical items before new lexical items were
inserted.” (p. 4). Thus Clark, while not denying the existence of a
separate creative construction process, supports position three as
the central means for language development for Adam. This seems
t o be in conflict with Brown’s conclusion.
The work of A. Peters (1976) helps to resolve this apparent
conflict. Peter distinguishes “analytic” and “gestalt” styles of first
language development. The analytic style, which is used for
referential, labelling functions, is the “one word at a time”
development described in most studies of child language acqui-
sition, such as those by Brown and his co-workers. The “gestalt”
style, on the other hand, is the attempt t o use whole utterances in
a socially appropriate situation; it is thus used in more
“conversationally defined” contexts. Peters suggests that there is
individual variation among children as to which style will
predominate. One of the factors that may determine which style a
child will prefer is input type: the “analytic” child may have
received clear caretaker speech, while the ‘gestalt’ child may have
received more rapid, conversational input.
A given child may use one style for one situation and the
other for other situations: Peter’s subject Minh appeared to speak
analytically when naming, and used the gestalt style for social
functions. Other investigators (Dore 1974; Nelson 1975) have also
noted this kind of variation. Nelson, for example, distinguishes a
“referential style” used by children who are more oriented to
things, objects, and actions on objects, from an “expressive” style,
used by children who are personal-social oriented. Perhaps the
latter is related t o Peters’ gestalt style and the former to the
analytic style.
Peter’s analysis is strengthened by Dore’s (1974) analysis of
two child L1 acquirers, M (female) and J (male). While M
 KRASHEN AND SCARCELLA 289

produced words during the period her speech was studied, J

produced more primitive speech acts, that is, he tended to make
more use of language for communication, often using intonation
alone. J’s language use also tended to involve other people more
than M’s did; he used language more instrumentally than M, who
was more prone to “label, imitate, and practice words’’ (p. 628).
Input for the two children was, to some extent, different. M’s
mother “set up routines in which she would pick up an item, label
it, and encourage her daughter to imitate it” (p. 627). “J and his
mother did not participate in word-learning routines.” (p. 628).
Dore suggests that “there may be two partly separate lines of
development-word development versus prosodic development.” (p.
628). The diagram below depicts parallels in terminology among
Peters, Nelson, and Dore.

analytic language gestalt language

-‘one word at a time’ development w h o l e utterances in conversational
-referential, labelling functions contexts
at first -rapid, conversational input
--clear mother-ese
“analytic”: Peters “gestalt”: Peters
“referential”: Nelson “expressive”: Nelson
“word development”: Dore “prosodic development”: Dore

Peters suggests that gestalt users may “have to convert slowly

and painfully to a more analytic approach to language’ (p. 13),
holding that “creative language” (analytic language) eventually
predominates. This is most consistent with position two: gestalt
language, which involves the heavy use of routines and patterns
may be a temporary strategy for the performer t o outperform his
analytic competence, to solve certain communication problems that
his creative language has not evolved far enough to handle. Yet,
since automatic speech appears to have a more limited use in
actual speech performance than propositional language, all per-
formers must eventually come to generate creative utterances at
some point in their language development.

Automatic Speech in Child Second Language Acquisition

The impression one gets from the literature on child second

language acquisition is that the second language performer relies far
more on routines and patterns than does the first language
acquirer. As we shall see below, Hatch and Hakuta provide
290 LANGUAGE LEARNING VOL. 28, NO. 2

evidence and slightly different, although complementary, reasons

for this phenomenon. Then we will examine a study by
Wagner-Gough which supports position two. After this, we will
review what is easily the most thorough treatment of routines and
patterns in the language acquisition literature, L. Fillmore’s
documentation of routines and patterns in five Spanish speaking
children acquiring English as a second language.
Hatch (1972) describes the case history of Paul, a four year
old acquirer of English as a second language (see also Huang 1972,
Hatch and Huang 1978). Paul, a Chinese speaker, was exposed to
English in an informal environment, interacting with American
children in school and in the playground. He made early use of the
gestalt style. During the first month, “it seemed as if Paul was
learning by imitation. He might repeat the sentence immediately
after the other person said it, or he might remember it and use it
later in the appropriate situation.” (p. 31). “Propositional” speech
appeared in the second month and looked quite similar to the
analytic speech one generally sees in descriptions of child first
language acquisition. Some typically analytic sentences included
This kite.
Ball no.
Paper this.
Wash hand?
At the same time, Paul was using complex routines such as
Get out of here.
It’s time t o eat and drink.
which he had learned by imitation. Hatch’s comment neatly
summarizes the situation: “Quite clearly two separate and very
distinct strategies were running side by side. After week 12 it
became increasingly difficult to separate out imitations since Paul’s
rule stages moved so fast that he quickly caught up with the
language as it was spoken by the children in the playground.” (p.
31).
The picture Hatch describes for Paul resembles, in reverse,
what one may see in recovery patterns in aphasia. Alajouanine
(1956) notes that when propositional speech returns, “fixed
phrases” may disappear. The automatic speech is immune to the
ungrammaticality of the aphasic’s developing language.
The relationship of analytic and gestalt speech in Paul is again
that predicted by position two: the two modes are independent
and the analytic mode eventually predominates, with gestalt speech
primarily serving only as a short-cut, a pragmatic tool to allow
social interaction with a minimum of linguistic completence.
 KRASHEN AND SCARCELLA 291

Hatch suggests a reason why second language acquirers may

use more routines and patterns than first language acquirers. She
emphasizes the second language performer’s greater capacity to
remember longer utterances: “The person (L2 acquirer) brings with
him a great capacity to create language by rule formation. At the
same time he is capable of storing, repeating, and remembering
large chunks of language via imitation. He can repeat them for use
in an appropriate situation. While he is still at the two-word stage
in rule formation, he can recall and use longer imitated sentences.”
(P. 33).
In another case history, Hakuta (1974) reported on the
linguistic development of Uguisu, a Japanese speaking five year old
acquiring English as a second language in informal situations in the
United States. Hakuta reports that he found evidence for “a
strategy of learning on the surface structure level: learning through
rote memorization of segments of speech without knowledge of
the internal structure of those speech segments.” (p. 287).
Hakuta’s study is mostly concerned with patterns (as opposed
to routines): “segments of sentences which operate in conjunction
with a movable component, such as the insertion of a noun phrase
or a verb phrase”, and the evidence he provides for the existence
of patterns in his corpus is quite similar to that provided by Brown
(1973) in his discussion of Adam (see discussion above). For
example, copula forms are judged to be patterns due to very high
learning performance, or the lack of a learning curve. Uguisu
produced forms like ‘This is .’ accurately from the outset,
while learning curves for other items (like the progressive and
auxiliary morphemes) were gradual. Also, Uguisu overgeneralized
the use of patterns, using patterns like ‘These are .’ in singular
contexts much of the time. Another example is the do y o u phrase
used as a question marker. Uguisu correctly produced sentences
like:
What d o you doing, boy?
These forms gradually gave way t o correctly inflected forms for d o .
In discussing why the child second language acquirer may use
routines and patterns more than the first language acquirer, Hakuta
emphasizes the older child’s greater need to communicate: “. . . in
the case of the second language learner, we would expect that,
with advanced semantic development and yet no form with which
to express such thoughts, the need to learn the various linguistic
structures of the target language is especially acute.’’ Until the
structure of the language is acquired, i t is conceivable, Hakuta
suggests, that “the learner will employ a strategy which ‘tunes in’
292 LANGUAGE LEARNING VOL. 28, NO. 2

on regular, patterned segments of speech, and employs them

without knowledge of their underlying structure, but with the
knowledge as t o which particular situations call for what patterns.
They may be thought of as props which temporarily give suppport
until a firmer foundation is built. . . .’ (p. 288).
Synthesizing both Hatch and Hakuta, one may conclude that
the child second language acquirer has both an increased need and
ability to use routines and patterns. The child second language
performer is placed in peer and school situations that demand
linguistic interaction before competence is attained the “slow
way”, and the older child’s advanced short term memory allows
him to pick up and retain the necessary formulas to facilitate
interaction.
Another study which examines the use of routines and
patterns in child second language acquisition is that of Wagner-
Gough 1975, see also Wagner-Gough and Hatch 1975). Wagner-
Gough noted that her subject Homer relied heavily on routines and
patterns to communicate and often incorporated them into his
speech. This is similar to what Clark found in her study of Adam.
Wagner-Gough hypothesizes that patterns do not directly evolve
into creative mle-governed language: “It is quite clear that there is
no transfer between some imitations and subsequent free speech
patterns. For example, a learner may say ‘My name is Homer,’ in
one breath and ‘He Fred.’ in another, the former being a
memorized pattern and the latter the learner’s own rule.” (p. 71).
Thus, Wagner-Gough supports position two.
The most complete study of routines and patterns in child
second language acquisition is L. Fillmore’s doctoral dissertation
(Fillmore 1976), an exhaustive examination of the speech
produced by five acquirers of English as a second language in an
English-speaking kindergarten. Unlike Wagner-Gough, Fillmore
comes o u t strongly for position three:
“. . . the strategy of acquiring formulaic speech is central to
the learning of language: indeed, it is this step that puts the
learner in a position to perform the analysis which is
prerequisite to acquisition. The formulas. . . constituted the
linguistic material on which a large part of their (the
children’s analytical activities could be carried o u t . . . Once
they were in the learner’s repertory, they became familiar,
and therefore could be compared with other utterances in the
repertory as well as with those produced by other speakers.”
(p. 640).
 KRASHEN AND SCARCELLA 293

All the children studied by Fillmore used routines and

patterns very early and very heavily: “The most striking similarity
among the spontaneous speech records of the five children was the
acquisition and use of formulaic expressions. All five quickly
acquired repertoires of expression which they knew how to use
more or less appropriately, and put them to immediate and
frequent use.” (p. 640). Including only the clearest cases of
formulaic expressions, Fillmore calculated that their use ranged
from 52% to 100% of the total number of utterances at the early
stages, down to a low of 37% in the most advanced performer at
the end of the year. Two children, in fact, remained nearly
completely dependent on routines and patterns even at the end of
the year.
Routines and patterns evolved into creative language in a
manner not unlike that reported by R. Clark (1974).Larger units
were broken into smaller units, routines became patterns, and parts
of patterns were “freed” to recombine with other parts of
patterns. This break-up of routines and patterns provided the basis
for syntax, while morphology appeared much later:
“In the development of productive structure, the children all
seemed to be following the strategy of working the major
constituents first and dealing with the grammatical details later. . . .
The process of gradual analysis by which parts of formulas become
freed from their original frames yields sentence patterns . . . in the
process, some of the grammatical morphemes and processes are
unnoticed and lost.” (p. 656).
Fillmore documents many cases of these processes, and the
interested reader is urged to consult her forthcoming book. We
present here only a single example. Nora, Fillmore’s fastest
language acquirer, had these two formulas:
(1)I wann play ’wi dese.
(2) I don’ wanna d o dese.
She then discovered that the constituents following wunna were
interchangeable, and that she could say
(3) I don’ wanna play dese. and
(4)I wanna do dese.
She thus acquired the patterns ‘I wanna VP’ and ‘I don’ wanna
VP’. ‘Play with NP’ then became a “formulaic verb phrase unit”
which could be used for other slots requiring VP, e.g., ‘Le’s VP’, as
in :
(5) Le’s play wi’ that one.
This “formula-based analytical process. . . was repeated in
case after case of the children’s spontaneous data” (p. 645).
 LANGUAGE LEARNING VOL. 28, NO. 2

“Rules” came about when all the constituents of a formula were

“freed”.
Why did these children follow such a route? This question can
be subdivided into several smaller ones. First, one may ask why so
many routines and patterns occurred. Fillmore points out that the
linguistic environment of the classroom and playground was
condusive to the learning of routines and patterns. The daily
classroom routine, for example, allowed the acquirers to figure out
what was being said easily-all teachers followed, to a larger extent,
predictable routines. “Such language, because it is used daily and
with only minor variation, becomes highly predictable. The
children can figure out what utterances mean by observing how
they relate to activities, and by noticing what their classmates do
in response.” (p. 637). The children thus rapidly acquired
classroom expressions which were used daily (‘It’s time to clean
up.’ ‘Finish your milk.’). Playground games also have predictable
language components that can be picked up rapidly.
Combined with this sort of environment, Fillmore also points
out, as did Hakuta earlier, her subjects’ need to immediately
establish social contact via language:
“. . . the desire t o maintain contact and sustain social relations
with members of the group is the motivation for the acquisition of
formulaic speech.” Further,
“. . . what he (the acquirer) must do is to acquire some
language which will give the impression of ability to speak it,
so that his friends will keep trying to communicate with him.
The use of formulas by the learners in this study played an
important part in their being able to play with English
speakers as they did. . . . This kind of language was extremely
important, because it permitted the learners to continue
participating in activities which provided contexts for the
learning of new material.” (p. 670).

In other words, Fillmore’s subjects were under great pressure

to produce early and get along in the classroom and playground.
Their use of routines and patterns was due to the fact that their
communicative needs exceeded their linguistic competence, and
they were forced to make the most of what they had. This
resulted in the tremendous use of routines and patterns observed:
“The children managed to get by with as little English as they did
because they made the greatest use of what they had learned-and
in the early part of the acquisition period, what they had learned
was largely formulaic.” (p. 654).
 KRASHEN AND SCARCELLA 295

A second question is whether this is the way language is

generally acquired. Clearly, the sort of early output demands
Fillmore’s subjects had imposed on them, and the routinized
predictable input are not present in most language acquisition
situations. As we have seen in first language and second language
acquisition by children, the “gestalt” route is used by acquirers
under similar conditions: where input is complex, and where
conversational demands are present, acquirers may tend to use
whole utterances in conversationally appropriate places without a
full grasp of their internal structure. The situation Fillmore
describes certainly appears to be a clear case of this. According to
Fillmore, her children did get some “mother-ese” from their
playmates, who did many things that fit the description of parental
modification of language described for child L1 acquisition and
informal child L2 acquisition (Clark and Clark 1977, Brown and
Hanlon 1970, Wagner-Gough and Hatch 1975). However, the
overall input t o these children may have been very complex, more
so than the analytic acquirer usually gets. They were also faced
with classroom input and much child input that, at least at first,
they could not understand.
Fillmore’s analysis shows clearly that under certain conditions
the “gestalt” mode may be encouraged t o a remarkable degree. It
does not demonstrate that all language is acquired this way by all
acquirers or even that the analytic style may be totally
circumvented.

Routines and Patterns in Adult Second Language Acquisition

The use of routines and patterns is reported in only one adult

study to our knowledge. (This rarity is undoubtedly due more to
the paucity of data on adult second language acquisition than to
the lack of automatic speech in adult second language perform-
ance.) Hanania and Gradman (1977) studied the English develop-
ment of Fatmah, a 19 year old Arabic speaker living in the
United States. Fatmah had little formal schooling in Arabic and
encountered English “primarily in natural communicative settings”
(p. 76). Hanania and Gradman report that at the start of their
study, Fatmah’s English output “consisted mainly of memorized
items that are commonly used in social contexts with children.”
They also noted that “the use of these expressions, however, does
not imply that she recognized the individual words within them, or
that she was able to use the words in new combinations. They
296 LANGUAGE LEARNING VOL. 28, NO. 2

were merely strings of sounds that she used appropriately in

particular situations.” (p. 78). In other words, she knew routines.
Fatmah also used patterns in the early stages: “An attempt
was made to find out if Fatmah recognized units within sentences
and could use them in new combinations, but such activity was
apparently alien to her learning strategies. Structures like Thank
you, I can’t. . ., Do you l i k e . . ., were perceived as single units,
and she resisted segmentation. Furthermore, she associated strings
with particular situations. For instance, See y o u meant ‘I’ll be
seeing you,’ and it was used on occasions when her friends were
parting. Attempts to lead her to combine it with I can to form I
can see y o u were not only unsuccessful but confusing.” (p. 79).
Ordinary analytic style grammatical development began sub-
sequently. Hanania and Grandman report a slow development of
sentence structure and morphology not at all unlike that seen in
child first and second language acquisition: “Starting with simple
structures made up of essential substantive units, she proceeded to
build up her constructions by enlarging these units and linking
them together. . . .” (p. 82). Hanania and Gradman’s summary
statement concerning Fatmah’s syntactic development is also worth
repeating:
“The adult in the present study proceeded to learn the
language creatively. She did not simply imitate models of the
language but acquired elements selectively and built them into
syntactic units which became progressively more complex. The
pattern of her linguistic development was similar to that of first
language learners. Early constructions were constrained to two-term
utterances, and the growth of sentence complexity occurred along
the same lines.” (pp. 87-88). The similarity of natural adult
language acquisition has been noted elsewhere in terms of the
acquisition order of certain structures (See Bailey, Madden, and
Krashen 1974; and also Krashen 1977).
While Hanania and Gradman d o note the disappearance or
re-analysis of routines and patterns in Fatmah’s speech, pro-
positional language appears to be independent of gestalt language
in her case, as in Brown and Wagner-Gough’s subjects and in Paul,
the child L2 acquirer discussed above. Language development
appears to proceed analytically, in the “one word a t a time”
fashion, and routines and patterns are not mentioned after the
early stages. (We are presupposing that the “gestalt” mode is
available to both the child and the adult. I t is possible, however,
that this mode is manifested somewhat differently for these two
classes of acquirers: the child L1 acquirer, as Peters notes,
 KRASHEN AND SCARCELLA 297

sometimes approximates whole sentences which are characterized

by “a ‘melody’ unique enough so that it can be recognized even if
badly mumbled.” (Peters 1976: 562). The adult may use routines
and patterns, but not ‘tunes’. This child-adult difference may have
a psychological-affective basis. (See Krashen 1978.))
Other than Hanania and Grandman’s study, there is no direct
data on actual use of routines and patterns in adult second
language performance. There is, however, some interesting litera-
ture from scholars concerned with materials and language peda-
gogy. Consider the “standard” audio-lingual technique of first
memorizing a dialogue (as a routine) and then working on pattern
practice. This is an implicit version of position one: The routine is
acquired from the dialogue and then broken into patterns for
pattern practice, and it is suggested that the adult gains fluency
through the use or transfer of these patterns to real conversational
contexts. In other words, routines and patterns constitute all of
language performance. (This is certainly not the view of all those
acquirers who encourage the use of pattern practice; see, for
example, Rivers 1972:10-12.)
To be sure, audio-lingual language teaching does result in
increased student proficiency in second language, although other
systems seem to be more efficient (See von Elek and Oskarrson
1973). Does this mean that position one is correct? Not
necessarily. It may appear to be the case that routines and patterns
are being learned in the classroom and used as such in
performance. In reality, proficiency gained in such circumstances is
more likely due to the creative construction process, which is
present in both adults and children (Krashen 1977), as well as the
learning of explicit conscious rules, (hypothesized to be used only
as a monitor; Krashen 1977).
First, even meaningless pattern practice may provide some, if
less than optimal, input for the creative construction process.
Second, such practice may also provide a domain for conscious
rule learning, either as an environment for working out rules
(inductive) or as a place to practice rule application (deductive)
and to receive feedback.
The use of routines and patterns is certainly a part of
language, but it is probably not a large part. In fact, many second
language performers report that it is often quite difficult to find a
spot in a conversation for a routine or pattern learned in a
dialogue (K. Schlue, personal communication). In addition,
sometimes performers report having to run through an entire
dialogue to get to the appropriate line!
298 LANGUAGE LEARNING VOL. 28, NO. 2

Even if the gestalt mode per se were learned in the

audiolingual class, there are dangers in encouraging adults to use it.
The outside world for adults is nowhere near as predictable as the
linguistic environment around Fillmore’s children was. The wide
use of routines and patterns other as discourse conventions, (such
as greetings and attention-getters), and in limited contexts, (for
example, commercial and sports domains) encourages very complex
input that may be useless to the performer or that may place him
in an awkward situation. Consider what often happens when the
traveler attempts to use his phrase book to ask ‘Where is the
opera?’ The answer may be a barrage of incomprehensible input,
for example, ‘You go two blocks until you see a big church, then
turn left until you come to a traffic light.. . .’ Use of strategies
such as employing yes/no questions instead of WH-questions may
alleviate this problem. Still, responses to adult routines and
patterns may be highly unpredictable and complex.

Conclusions

The available evidence indicates that routines and patterns are

essentially and fundamentally different from creative language:
Most studies support the correctness of position two, that the
creative construction process is independent of routines and
patterns. I t appears to be the case, however, that the use of the
gestalt mode is possible and may be encouraged by certain
environmental conditions. This alternative route may be the
acquirer’s reaction to demands for early production before
sufficient competency has been built up. Routines and patterns
may be very useful for establishing social relations and encouraging
intake. They could conceivably serve as intake for the creative
construction process. This intake, however, is probably insufficient
for successful language acquisition. Adult language teaching
systems, such as the audio-lingual, seem to imply that positions
one or three are correct. But these systems enjoy the limited
success they do because they also provide at least some intake for
the creative construction process. More successful teaching systems
expose second language acquirers to input in which routines and
patterns play a minor, though significant role.

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