Language Acquisition Issues

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Language Acquisition Issues

• CH 15 TESOL Dr. Schneider

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Outline of topics

• Stages of first language acquisition
• Stages of second language acquisition
• Students internal system of language
• Developmental mistakes in language acquisition

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General comments

• Please note that the characteristic
  developmental stages address ORAL development,
  NOT WRITTEN LANGUAGE development.
• First research on L1 language and L2 language was
  conducted by parents who were interested in their
  childrens development beginning in the early
  20th century.
• One study documents 5 siblings over a period of
  10 years in their acquisition of 5 different
  languages.

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General comments

• Each linguistic area develops according to
  stages.
• In each linguistic area, children move from more
  generalized patterns to more fine-tuned and
  narrowed-down ones.
• Children do not play copy cat without using
  their own logic and language combinations.
• They ability to go through these phases in
  universal to all languages whether L1 or L2 or L3

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Language Development in L1

• (1) Crying and cooing stage
• Oral communication tools of the first months
• (2) Babbling stage
• Oral exploration of sound and intonation
  repertoire of the language around baby
• gtcorrect intonation precedes correct
  pronunciation

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Language Development in L1

• (3) Acquisition of PHONOLOGY
• Up to 6 months, every baby has the brain wired to
  learn any language
• By 9 months, the first pruning takes place and
  the brain gives preference to the sound patterns
  that the child hears around him/her.
• Sounds that distinctly differ from each other are
  learned first
• Consonants are easier to learn than vowels
• Among consonants, the ones that glide easily into
  the next sound are learned first /d/ /b/ /m/
  /n/

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Language Development in L1

• (3) Acquisition of PHONOLOGY
• Among vowels, children learn distinctly different
  ones first. They are also the ones that are
  universal to most languages /a/, /i/, /u/
• Consonant clusters such as /st/ /gr/ or /bl/ are
  learned later because they require sequencing
  abilities of challenging sounds
• Pronunciation of syllables occurs early the most
  commonly produced one is /C V/ as in /da.da/
  /ma.ma/

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Language Development in L1

• Acquisition of MORPHOLOGY
• Between 2-5, children recognize and apply
  essential suffixes that carry grammatical meaning
  grammatical morphemes at the end of words
• Later, they recognize and apply suffixes and
  prefixes that are mostly semantic in nature
  semantic morphemes these change the meaning of
  words, sometimes the part of speech. E.g., -ly
  for adverbs, -er for comparison, un-

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Language Development in L1

• Acquisition of SYNTAX
• A general rule of thumb is
• 1 year of age gt 1 -word sentences
  holo-phrastic stage
• 2 years of age gt 2-word sentences telegraphic
  stage
• 3-yers of age gt 3 word sentences
  transitioning out of telegraphic stage
• In the one word stage, intonation plays a key
  role in differentiating between messages (?!)

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Language Development in L1

• Acquisition of SYNTAX
• Grammatical marking of plural occurs early but
  must develop
• Every new differentiation added, goes through
  phases of overgeneralization and gradual
  fine-tuning and repairing of a generic
  hypothesis about the dynamics of a specific
  grammatical element
• EX. For sentence length, plural, questions and
  negations , see p. 126-127

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Language Development in L1

• Acquisition of SEMANTICS
• Here, too children overgeneralize a dynamic that
  they have discovered gradually, they narrow down
  more fine-tuned meanings and replacement of one
  word for a category (tuck-tuck noise, something
  moving, wow-wow an animal) with different
  expressions.

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Language Development in L2

• GENERAL COMMENT about L2 acquisition
• L1 and L2 acquisition go through stages in each
  linguistic area
• For L2 learners, interference with L1 knowledge
  will occur, the older the learner the more and
  the more conscious this transfer is

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Language Development in L2

• GENERAL COMMENT about L2 acquisition
• Transfer from L1 to L2 can lead to incorrect L2
  or to correct L2
• Incorrect transfer from L1 to L2 leads to error
  in L2 e.g. false friends
• Correct transfer from L1 to L2 leads to
  acceptable L2 e.g. cognates
• Transfer from L1 to L2 depends on
• The learners age and cognitive
  development/maturity
• The degree of comparability between L1 and L2

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Language Development in L2

• PHASE 1 COMPREHENSION PHASE or SILENT PHASE
• The learner is a silent, absorbent sponge
  listening to L2 productions, internalizing
  anything that makes sense to him/her.
• The learner builds hypotheses about what s/he
  hears.
• Asked to produce speech usually leads to high
  levels of anxiety.
• DO NOT FORCE CHILDREN TO SPEAK in this phase!

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Language Development in L2

• PHASE 2 EARLY PRODUCTION PHASE
• The learner produces 1-2 word sentences taking
  intonation as a sentence filler
• DO NOT OVERCORRECT,
• CALMLY SIGNAL UNDERSTANDING (or need for
  clarification) and MODEL CORRECT WAY TO SAY IT
• PROVIDE STUDENT WITH OPPORTUNITY TO PRACTICE
• ENCOURAGE, ENCOURAGE, MOTIVATE paying attention
  to what the learners culture reads as
  encouragement

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Language Development in L2

• Acquisition of PHONOLOGY
• The older the student the more likely are
  distinct pronunciation difficulties that leave
  the learner with an accent.
• Good auditory processing abilities in combination
  with thorough, explicit pronunciation practice
  that clearly shows the learner what to do to
  create an unfamiliar sound in L2 can prevent or
  minimize pronunciation difficulties and often
  negatively labeling accents.

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Language Development in L2

• Acquisition of PHONOLOGY
• All L2 Learners with transfer established
  pronunciation routines from L1 into the new
  language.
• Particular pitfalls occur when
• (1) L2 has a sound that does not exist in L1
  (e.g. Japanese has no /l/ English /r/ creates
  confusion because it sounds like Japanese /l/
• (2) an L1pPronunciation rule does not exist in
  L2. E.g. French and German pronunciations of /r/
  or the pronunciation of a final voiced consonant
  as an unvoiced one.

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Language Development in L2

• Acquisition of PHONOLOGY
• Particular pitfalls occur when
• (3) an L2 Pronunciation rule does not exist in
  L1. E.g Common initial and final consonant
  clusters such as /st/ or /fr/ do not exist in
  Spanish or Egyptian Arab gt the learner inserts a
  vowel to avoid the cluster to be initial or final.

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Language Development in L2

• ACQUISITION OF MORPHOLOGY
• Similar to L1 development, young L2 learners
  (ages 3-5) will first experiment with
• Grammatical morphemes such as Plural -s/-es,
  -ing,
• 3rd person singular s is a challenge and follows
  later followed by past tense -ed and possessive
  -s markers

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Language Development in L2

• ACQUISITION OF MORPHOLOGY
• Similar to L1 development, young L2 learners
  (ages 3-5) will experiment with semantic
  morphemes later than with grammatical morphemes.
• Semantic morphemes such as -er (comparison) or
  -ly for adverbs are acquired before more abstract
  suffixes like
• -ize (make) or -ment

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Language Development in L2

• ACQUISITION OF SYNTAX
• Regardless of L1 background knowledge, L2
  learners first try to master negations.
• Questions are first (incorrectly) formed by
  making a statement and rising the intonation at
  the end of the sentence. Cat is here?

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Language Development in L2

• ACQUISITION OF SEMANTICS
• L1 and L2 vocabulary acquisition are similar.
  Each follow overgeneralization leading to
  narrowing down specific semantic features every
  animal is animal until specific words are
  aquired for them
• Idiomatic expressions and homophones take a long
  time and do not happen initially
• L2 learners use what they know to circumscribe a
  word they do not know