I am here after a long time. I did not write because I could not manage my daily duties. In other words, I was so, so busy by translating, by studying, by working and so on.
In this new post, I am going tell something about the rewarding ways of how young learners acquire their first words in English, especially those who are not native speakers of English. I will also present my "Diploma paper" because I wrote about it therein.
INTRODUCTION
One
of the most fascinating aspects of human development is the ability to learn
language.We all watch and listen with absolute fascination as the first `coos`
and `googles`.We all share in the pride and joy of parents whose one-year-old
has uttered the first `bye bye`. Learning a language is an amazing feat.Language
learning is hard work.One must make an effort to understand, to repeat
accurately, to manipulate newly understood language.Games help and encourage
many learners to sustain their interest and work.The contribution of drilling
lies in the concentration on a language form and its frequent use during a
limited period of time.Games provide the key feature of `drill` with the
opportunity to sense the working of language as living communication.
Games and Language Learning
Traditional
behaviourists believed that language learning is simply a matter of imitation
and habit formation.Children imitate the sounds and patterns which they hear
around them.They continue to imitate and practice these sounds and patterns
until they form `habits` of correct language use.According to this view[1],
the quality and quantity of the language which the child hears should have an
effect on the child`s success in language learning.Children`s imitation is
selective and based on what they are currently learning.Even when the child
imitates, the choice of what to imitate seems to be based on something the
child already knows, not simply on what is `available` in environment.Children
appear to pick out patterns and then generalize them to new contexts.
They
create new forms or new uses of words until they finally figure out how the
forms are used by adults.The behaviourist explanations for language acquisition
offer a reasonable way of understanding how children learn some of the regular
and aspects of language.The linguist Noam Chomsky claims that children are
biologically programmed for language and that language develops in the child in
just the same way that other biological functions develop.The child does not
have to be taught, most children learn to walk at about the same time.For
Chomsky language acquisition is very similar to the development of walking.The
environment makes a basic contribution.The child, or rather, the child`s
biological endowment will do the rest.Chomsky argues that the behaviourist
theory fails to recognize what has come to be called `the logical problem of
language acquisition`.
This
logical problem refers to the fact that children come to know more about the
structure of their language.According to Chomsky, the language the child is
exposed to in the environment is full of confusing information.The evidence
seems very strong that children are by no means systematically corrected or
instructed on language points.When parents do correct, they tend to focus on
meaning and not on language itself.According to Chomsky, children are born with
a special ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules of a language
system.Chomsky refers to this special ability as being based on a language
acquisition device(LAD)[2]. This
device was often described as an imaginary `black box` which exists somewhere
in the brain.This `black box` prevents
the child from going off on lots of wrong trails in trying to discover the
rules of language.For the LAD to work, the child needs access only to samples
of the natural language.
Once
it is activated, the child is able to discover the structure of the language to
be learned by matching the innate knowledge of basic grammatical relationships
to the structures of the particular language.Chomsky and his followers no
longer use the term LAD, but refer to the child`s innate endowment as Universal
Grammar.Universal Grammar is considered to consist of a set of principles which
are common to all languages.If children are pre-equipped with `UG`, then what
they have to learn is the ways in which their own language makes use of these
principles.Children seem to develop language in similar ways and on similar
schedule, in a way different from the way all children learn to walk.The child
comes to `know` certain things about the language simply by being exposed to a
limited number of examples.
[1] How Languages are Learned,Pasty M.Lightbrown and Nina
Spada, page 8
[2] How Languages are Learned, Patsy M.Lightbrown and Nina
Spada, page 11
The critical period hypothesis
Lennebreg
observed that this ability to develop normal behaviours and knowledge in
variety of environments does not continue indefinitely and that children who
have never learned language cannot return to normal.He argued the the language
acquisition device works successfully only when it is stimulated at the right
time.The strong version is that children must acquire their first language by
puberty.The weak version is that language will be more difficult and incomplete
after puberty.
The
interactionists`position is that language develops as a result of the complex
interplay between the uniquely human characteristics of the child and the
environment in which the child develops.To the interactionists' theory, what is
important is the conversational give-and-take in which the adult intuitively
responds to the clues provides as to the level of language he or she is capable
of processing.One-to-one interaction gives the child access to language which
is adjusted to his or her level of comprehension.
Theories of first language acquisition
The
fascinating ability of child to acquire the native language has been a subject
of interest for linguists and psychologists for many centuries.Even if we ask
ourselves a very simple question:`How did we learn our own language?`, we will
find that it is almost impossible to answer.However,if a child is given a
normal developmental environment, he or she acquire the language fluently and
efficiently.The most amazing fact is that will acquire it almost intuitively,
without special instruction.As I mentioned previously, they are able to
communicate efficiently by about age 3.There are two polarized positions in the
study of first language acquisition.At the one pole, there are scholars who claim
that language acquisition is a learned behaviour, which is not different from
general learning system and that parents teach language to their children.They
claim that children come into the world with tabula rasa, a clean state without
notions about the world or about the language itself.At the other pole, there
are scholars who assume that language is innate, that there are universal principles,
which govern language acquisition and that children already have knowledge of
language and the world.
Theories of second language learning
It
is clear that a child or adult acquiring a second language is different from a
child acquiring a first language in terms of both personal characteristics and
conditions for learning.All second language learners regardless of age, have by
definition already acquired at least one language.This prior knowledge may be
an advantage in the sense that the learner has an idea of how languages
work.The first language learners does not have the cognitive maturity,
metalinguistic awareness or world knowledge of the older second language
learner.Young secong language learners have begun to develop cognitive maturity
and meta- linguistic awareness.
Behaviourism:The second language view
According
to the behaviourists, all learning, whether verbal or non-verbal takes place
through the same underlying process, habit formation.Learners receive
linguistic input from speakers in the environment.Where there are similarities
between the two languages, the learner will acquire target language structures
with ease.The influence is simply a matter of `habits`, but rather a systematic
attempt by the learner to use knowledge already acquired in learning a new
language.
Cognitive theory:A new psychological
approach
Cognitive
psychologists tend to see second language acquisition as the building up of
knowledge systems that can eventually be called on automatically for speaking and
understanding.At first, learners have to pay attention to any aspect of the
language which they are trying to understand or produce.Gradually, through
experience and practice, learners become able to use certain parts of their
knowledge so quickly and automatically that they are not even aware that they
are doing it.Cognitive psychologists have also investigated a phenomenon they
call `restructuring`[1]. They
seem rather to be based on the interaction of knowledge we already have, or on
the acquisition of new knowledge which somehow `fits into an existing system`. The theory itself cannot easily predict what kinds of structures will be automized
through practice.Cognitive theory is also not able to predict which first
language structure will be transferred and which will not.This theory is
incomplete without a linguistic framework of some kind.
Creative construction theory
What
is a distinctive about this theory is that it proposes that internal processing
strategies operate on language input without any direct dependence on the
learner.The creative construction theory which has had the most influence on
second language teaching practice is the one proposed by Stephen
Krashen. Krashen has developed an overall theory of second language
acquisition.Five central hypotheses constitute his `monitor model`. They are:
1)The
acquisition-learning hypothesis
2)The
monitor hypothesis
3)The
natural order hypothesis
4)The
input hypothesis
5)The
affective-filter hypothesis
The acquisition-learning hypothesis
There
are two ways for adult second language learners to approach learning a second
language: they may `acquire` it or they may `learn` it. He says, we acquire as we
engage in meaningful interaction in the second language, in much the same way
that children pick up their first language with no attention to form.For
Krashan, acquisition is by far the more important process. He asserts that
learning cannot turn into acquisition, citing that many speakers are quite
competent without ever having learned rules, while other speakers may `know`
rules but continue to break them.
The monitor hypothesis
Krashan
argues that the acquired systemacts to initiate the speaker utterances and is
responsible for fluency and intuitive judgements about correctness.The learned
system acts only as an editor or `monitor`, making minor changes and polishing
what the acquired system has produced. Krashan has specified three conditions
necessary for monitor use:sufficient time, focus on form and knowing the
rules.Thus, writing is more conducive to monitor use then is speaking, where
the focus is on content and not on form.The obvious weakness in this hypothesis
is that it is very difficult to show evidence of `monitor` use.It is impossible
to determine what has been produced by the acquired system. Krashan`s claim that
learning cannot turn into acquisition means that anything which is produced
quickly and apparently must have been acquired rather then learned.
[1] How Languages are Learned, Patsy M.Lightbrown and Nina
Spada, page 30
I will continue more in the next post. I hope that some of you will find this constructive for your studies.
I also want to thank all those people who visit my blog.
Everything the best
Best regards
Rade