Language Acquisition

Chapter 1 KEY POINTS : LANGUAGE LEARNING IN EARLY

CHILDHOOD

1. THE FIRST THREE YEARS: MILESTONES AND DEVELOPMENT

SEQUENCES

I. GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES

• Longitudinal studies (Adam, Eve and Sarah)

• Cross-sectional study

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II. Negation

• Stage 1

No. No cookie. No comb hair.

• Stage 2

Daddy no comb hair.

Don’t touch that!

• Stage 3
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

I can’t do it. He don’t want it.

• Stage 4

You didn’t have supper. She doesn’t want it.

I don’t have no more candies.

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III. Questions

• What-where-who-why-how-when

• Stage 1
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Cookie? Mummy book?

Where’s Daddy? What’s that? (correct because they have been learned as
chunks)

• Stage 2

You like this? I have some? (declarative sentence, intonation)

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 Language Acquisition

• Stage 3

Can I go? Are you happy?

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Is the teddy is tired? Do I can have a cookie?

Why you don’t have one? Why you catched it? (fronting stage*)

• Stage 4

Are you going to play with me?

Do dogs like ice cream?

• Stage 5

Both wh- and ‘yes/no’ questions are formed correctly.

Are these your boots? Why did you do that? Does Daddy have a box?

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*Why the teddy bear can’t go outside? (*negative questions can still be
difficult)

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LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Ask him why can’t he go out.

• Stage 6

At this stage, children are able to correctly form all question types,
including negative and complex embedded questions.

2. THE PRE-SCHOOL YEARS

a) Metalinguistic awareness

The ability to treat language as an object separate from the meaning it

conveys. (in the preschool years)
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3. THE SCHOOL YEARS

i. Registers

ii. Standard Variety

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 Language Acquisition

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 EXPLAINING FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

1. The behaviourist perspective: Say what I say

- 1940s/1950s B.F Skinner

- Imitation and practice are the primary process in language acquisition

- Imitation ( they selectively pick out patterns and generalize them to

new contexts)

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2. The innatist perspective : It’s all in your mind

 Noam Chomsky

 Universal Grammar (UG)

 Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)

-Viktor and Genie cases (wild children)

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

 Deaf children

 Logical problem of language acquisition

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3. Interactionist/developmental perspectives: Learning from inside

and out

I. Dan Slobin (1973) the close relationship between children’s

cognitive development and their acquisition of language

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II. Piaget
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He saw the language as a symbol system that could be used

to express knowledge acquired through interaction with the
physical world.

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III. Vygotsky

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 Language Acquisition

He supported that thought was essentially internalized

speech, and speech emerged in social interaction.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)**

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IV. Cross-cultural research

Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES)

Child-Directed Speech ***

Interlocutor: A participant in a conversation {Jacqueline Sach

(1981) Jim case}

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V. Connectionism

A theory of knowledge (including knowledge) as a complex

system of units that become interconnected in the mind as
they are encountered together. The more often units are
heard or seen together, the more likely it is that the presence
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of one will lead to the activation of other.

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4. Childhood Bilingualism

• Simultaneous bilingualism:

• Sequential bilingualism:

• Subtractive bilingualism: Partially or completely losing the first language as

a second language is acquired.

• Additive bilingualism: Learning a second language without losing the first.

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Chapter 2 KEY POINTS : EXPLAINING SECOND LANGUAGE

LEARNING

1. Learner characteristics

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 Language Acquisition

- Very young language learners

- Young second language learners

- Older learners or adult learners

2. Learning Conditions

- Foreigner talk or Teacher talk (Child-directed speech in first

language acquisition)

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-------------------Explaining Second Language Learning: Theories and
Perspectives

I. Behaviourism

- 1940s/ 1970s

- Nelson Brooks (1960) and Robert Lado (1964)

- Language learning happens as ‘habit formation’ (imitation and

repetition)

- Audio lingual Teaching Method

- Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) : The expectation that

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

learners will have less difficulty acquiring target language

patterns that are similar to those of the first language acquisition
than those that are different.

II. The Innatist Perspective: Universal Grammar

- Noam Chomsky

- Universal Grammar (UG): Innate linguistic knowledge which

consists of a set of principles common to all languages

- ‘Logical problem’ of SLA: learners eventually know more about

the language than they could reasonably have learned if they had
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to depend entirely on the input they are exposed to.

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III. Krashen’s Monitor Model

- Stephen Krashen (1982) Monitor Model

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 Language Acquisition

- He was influenced by Chomsky’s first language acquisition theory

1. Acquisition-learning hypothesis

2. The monitor hypothesis

3. The natural order hypothesis

4. The input hypothesis

*Affective filter hypothesis

- Communicative Language Teaching Method

- Content-Based Instruction

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CURRENT PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES: THE

COGNITIVIST/DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE

1. Information Processing

- Norman Segalowitz (2003)

- A psychological theory that uses a computer metaphor for the

human brain. It includes the idea that the brain has a very large
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

capacity to store information for the long term, but a more limited
capacity for information that requires our attention.

- ‘Pay attention’

- Declarative knowledge

- Procedural knowledge

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2. Connectionism

- According to connectionists, learners gradually build up their

knowledge of language through exposure to the thousands of
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instances of the linguistics features they eventually hear.

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3. The Competition Model

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 Language Acquisition

- Language acquisition occurs without the necessity of a learner’s

focused attention or the need for any innate brain module that is
specifically for language.

- This model is an explanation for language acquisition that takes

into account not only language form but also language meaning
and language use.

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SECOND LANGUAGE APPLICATIONS: Interacting, noticing, and

processing

1. The Interaction Hypothesis

- Modified interaction

- Comprehension checks

- Clarification requests

- Self-repetition or paraphrase
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

2. The Noticing Hypothesis

- Richard Schmidt (1990, 2001)

- Nothing is learned unless it is has been noticed.

3. Input Processing

4. Processability Theory

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THE SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

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- Vygotsky: cognitive development, including language

development, arises as a result of social interactions.

- Learning is thought to occur when an individual interacts with an

interlocutor within his or her zone of proximal development
(ZPD).

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 Language Acquisition

- The ZPD is a metaphorical location or ‘site’ in which learners co-

construct knowledge in a collaboration with an interlocutor.

- Comprehensible output hypothesis Swain (1985)

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
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