A Comparison Between the Information-Processing and the Analysis/Control Approaches to Language Learning1

Two cognitive approaches to first and second language learning are juxtaposed: (1) the information-processing framework, and (2) Bialystok's Analysis/Control framework. It is concluded that, to the extent that both frameworks are descriptive ‘metaphors’, it is impossible to choose between them on empirical grounds. The main differences between the two appears to be a difference in focus. The Analysis/Control framework seems to be equipped mainly to account for performance differences on metalinguistic tasks, by considering the degree of Analysis of knowledge and the degree of Control of knowledge as independent skill components. It can account only poorly, however, for the initial stages of first and second language acquisition, notwithstanding claims by its proponents. The information-processing framework on the other hand seems especially equipped to account for the construction and reconstruction of both implicit and explicit mental representations of linguistic information, in declarative as well as in procedural form. It provides a parsimonious conceptualization of the acquisition of primary as well as of secondary (metalinguistic) skills, of both first and second languages.