The investigation of the learning environment as one of the causal
variables in second language (L2) acquisition has built up an important
literature in the past twenty years. This is obviously crucial to the area of
study abroad and SLA. Likewise, research seems to indicate that second
language acquisition is characterised by a drive towards approximating
native speaker behaviour and accommodation to native speech norms.
Many learners with a desire to integrate into the second language community
need to understand what it is to sound like a native and so are
motivated to master native speech norms. Those who go abroad for a period
to live in the native speech community are thus motivated to find what
it is linguistically which makes them “fit in.” Another area related to sociolinguistic
competence is knowledge of native speech variation. Ferguson
(1991) says, “Every human language shows variation in linguistic structure
depending on the occasions of its use.” He points out that variation
is “a fundamental characteristic of human language, and it has not
received the attention it deserves in linguistics or in the study of second
language acquisition.” Variation in the native speech community is a feature
of what the learner must grasp. As much research shows, the learner
in a study abroad situation becomes sensitive to the choices the native
speaker makes in relation to possible variants of variables in the L2.