Scribd
Upload
216 views

What Is Language Acquisition

Language acquisition refers to how children learn their native language and additional languages. There are several theories for how this occurs, such as imitation, reinforcement, and analogy, but these do not fully explain the process. Children progress through stages from babbling to one-word sentences to telegraphic speech with content words but no function words. Their errors in areas like pronunciation, morphology, and grammar follow systematic rules. The Innateness Hypothesis and Critical Period Hypothesis suggest humans are biologically primed to acquire language most easily during a critical period in childhood. Second language teaching methods include grammar-translation, direct method, and total physical response among others. All four language skills - listening, speaking, reading, and writing - need continual

Uploaded by

William Drake
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
216 views

What Is Language Acquisition

Language acquisition refers to how children learn their native language and additional languages. There are several theories for how this occurs, such as imitation, reinforcement, and analogy, but these do not fully explain the process. Children progress through stages from babbling to one-word sentences to telegraphic speech with content words but no function words. Their errors in areas like pronunciation, morphology, and grammar follow systematic rules. The Innateness Hypothesis and Critical Period Hypothesis suggest humans are biologically primed to acquire language most easily during a critical period in childhood. Second language teaching methods include grammar-translation, direct method, and total physical response among others. All four language skills - listening, speaking, reading, and writing - need continual

Uploaded by

William Drake
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

What is Language Acquisition?

First language acquisition refers to the way children learn their native language. Second
language acquisition refers to the learning of another language or languages besides the native
language.

For children learning their native language, linguistic competence develops in stages, from
babbling to one word to two word, then telegraphic speech. Babbling is now considered the
earliest form of language acquisition because infants will produce sounds based on what
language input they receive. One word sentences (holophrastic speech) are generally
monosyllabic in consonant-vowel clusters. During two word stage, there are no syntactic or
morphological markers, no inflections for plural or past tense, and pronouns are rare, but the
intonation contour extends over the whole utterance. Telegraphic speech lacks function words
and only carries the open class content words, so that the sentences sound like a telegram.

Three theories
The three theories of language acquisition: imitation, reinforcement and analogy, do not
explain very well how children acquire language. Imitation does not work because children
produce sentences never heard before, such as “cat stand up table.” Even when they try to
imitate adult speech, children cannot generate the same sentences because of their limited
grammar. And children who are unable to speak still learn and understand the language, so
that when they overcome their speech impairment they immediately begin speaking the
language. Reinforcement also does not work because it actually seldomly occurs and when it
does, the reinforcement is correcting pronunciation or truthfulness, and not grammar. A
sentence such as “apples are purple” would be corrected more often because it is not true, as
compared to a sentence such as “apples is red” regardless of the grammar. Analogy also
cannot explain language acquisition. Analogy involves the formation of sentences or phrases
by using other sentences as samples. If a child hears the sentence, “I painted a red barn,” he
can say, by analogy, “I painted a blue barn.” Yet if he hears the sentence, “I painted a barn
red,” he cannot say “I saw a barn red.” The analogy did not work this time, and this is not a
sentence of English.

Acquisitions
Phonology: A child’s error in pronunciation is not random, but rule-governed. Typical
phonological rules include: consonant cluster simplification (spoon becomes poon), devoicing
of final consonants (dog becomes dok), voicing of initial consonants (truck becomes druck),
and consonant harmony (doggy becomes goggy, or big becomes gig.)

Morphology: An overgeneralization of constructed rules is shown when children treat


irregular verbs and nouns as regular. Instead of went as the past tense of go, children use goed
because the regular verbs add an -ed ending to form the past tense. Similarly, children use
gooses as the plural of goose instead of geese, because regular nouns add an -s in the plural.

The “Innateness Hypothesis” of child language acquisition, proposed by Noam Chomsky,


states that the human species is pre-wired to acquire language, and that the kind of language is
also determined. Many factors have led to this hypothesis such as the ease and rapidity of
language acquisition despite impoverished input as well as the uniformity of languages. All
children will learn a language, and children will also learn more than one language if they are
exposed to it. Children follow the same general stages when learning a language, although the
linguistic input is widely varied.

The poverty of the stimulus states that children seem to learn or know the aspects of
grammar for which they receive no information. In addition, children do not produce
sentences that could not be sentences in some human language. The principles of Universal
Grammar underlie the specific grammars of all languages and determine the class of
languages that can be acquired unconsciously without instruction. It is the genetically
determined faculty of the left hemisphere, and there is little doubt that the brain is specially
equipped for acquisition of human language.

The “Critical Age Hypothesis” suggests that there is a critical age for language acquisition
without the need for special teaching or learning. During this critical period, language
learning proceeds quickly and easily. After this period, the acquisition of grammar is difficult,
and for some people, never fully achieved. Cases of children reared in social isolation have
been used for testing the critical age hypothesis. None of the children who had little human
contact were able to speak any language once reintroduced into society. Even the children
who received linguistic input after being reintroduced to society were unable to fully develop
language skills. These cases of isolated children, and of deaf children, show that humans
cannot fully acquire any language to which they are exposed unless they are within the critical
age. Beyond this age, humans are unable to acquire much of syntax and inflectional
morphology. At least for humans, this critical age does not pertain to all of language, but to
specific parts of the grammar.

Second Language Acquisition Teaching Methods


Grammar-translation: the student memorizes words, inflected words, and syntactic rules and
uses them to translate from native to target language and vice versa; most commonly used
method in schools because it does not require teacher to be fluent; however, least effective
method of teaching
Direct method: the native language is not used at all in the classroom, and the student must
learn the new language without formal instruction; based on theories of first language
acquisition
Audio-lingual: heavy use of dialogs and audio, based on the assumption that language
learning is acquired mainly through imitation, repetition, and reinforcement; influenced by
psychology
Natural Approach: emphasis on vocabulary and not grammar; focus on meaning, not form;
use of authentic materials instead of textbook
Silent Way: teachers remain passive observers while students learn, which is a process of
personal growth; no grammatical explanation or modeling by the teacher
Total Physical Response: students play active role as listener and performer, must respond to
imperative drills with physical action
Suggestopedia: students always remain comfortable and relaxed and learn through
memorization of meaningful texts, although the goal is understanding
Community Language Learning: materials are developed as course progresses and teacher
understands what students need and want to learn; learning involves the whole person and
language is seen as more than just communication
Community Language Teaching: incorporates all components of language and helps students
with various learning styles; use of communication-based activities with authentic materials,
needs of learner are taken into consideration when planning topics and objectives
Four skill areas
The four skill areas of learning a foreign language need to be addressed consistently and
continually. Good lesson plans incorporate all four: Listening, Speaking, Reading (and
Vocabulary), and Writing (and Grammar). Native speakers do not learn the skill areas
separately, nor do they use them separately, so they shouldn’t be taught separately. However,
it is easy to fall into the trap of teaching about the language, instead of actually teaching the
language.

Source: http://ielanguages.com/

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy