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FIRST LANGUAGE
ACQUISITIONBY: Marisol Barraza
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HOW DO CHILDREN COMMUNICATE?
SMALL BABIES
END OF FIRST YEAR
18 MONTHS
3 YEARS
SCHOOL AGE
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First Language Acquisition
Children have a remarkable ability to
communicate.
1. Small babies: children babble and coo andcry and vocally and non-vocally send
messages and receive messages.
2. End of first year: children start to imitatewords and speech sounds and about this
time use first words.
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3. 18 months: their vocabulary in terms of wordshas increased and are beginning to use 2 word
3 word utterances (telegraphic utterances)
4. 3 years: Children can comprehend anincredible quantity of linguistic input, they
chatter nonstop.
5. School age: Children start to internalizeincreasingly complex structures, expand their
vocabulary and sharpen their communicationskills and they also learn the social functions oftheir language.
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FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
WHAT ARE THE THREE POSITIONS IN
FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION?
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Theories of First Language
Acquisition Theories of language acquisition attempt to
answer some questions about how people
can have the amazing language acquisitionability.
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FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Behavioristic Position
Nativist Position
Functional Position
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Behavioristic Position
Individuals are born without built-in mentalcontent and their knowledge comes fromexperience and perception(tabula rasa).
Assumes a learner is essentially passive,responding to environmental stimuli.
Behavior is shaped through positivereinforcement or negative reinforcement.
Consider effective language behavior to be theproduction of correct responses to stimuli. If aparticular response is reinforced, it thenbecomes habitual, or conditioned.
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Behavioristic Position
Behaviorist Learning Theory is a process of
forming habits; the teacher controls the
learning environment and learners areempty vessels into which the teacher pours
knowledge.
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Nativist
We have an innate predispositionto learn
language, and learning is in our genetics.
According to Chomsky, this innate knowledgeis embodied in a little black box of sorts, a
language acquisition device (LAD).
All human beings are genetically equipped with
the ability that enables them to acquire
language. (a system of universal linguistic rules
or Universal Grammar)
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Nativist
Cognitive Learning Theory emphasized the
learners cognitive ability, involving
reasoning and mental processes rather thanhabit formation.
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Nativist
The childs language at any stage is systematic inthat the child is constantly forming hypotheses conthe basis of the input received and then testing thosehypothesis in speech and comprehension.
The early grammars of child language were referredto as pivot grammar.
The parallel Distributed Processing: a childslinguistic performance may be the consequence of
many levels of simultaneous neuralinterconnections rather that a serial process of onerule being applied, then another, then another andso forth.
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Functional Approaches
Two emphases emerged
1. Researchers began to realize that language
was a cognitive and affective ability tocommunicate with all the things including
the self.
2. They dealt with the forms of language, notthe deeper functional levels.
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Functional Approaches
Cognition and Language Development
Bloom found three possible underlying relationships:agent-action, agent-object, and possessor-possessed.
In addition, he concluded that children learn underlyingstructures, not superficial word order.
Piaget insisted that what children learn about languageis determined by what they already know about the
world. Dan Slobin demonstrated that semantic learning
depends on cognitive development.
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Functional Approaches
Social Interaction and Language Development
Social constructivist emphasized on thefunction of language in discourse.
Discourse has a special meaning in that
language is used for interactivecommunication.
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Functional Approaches
The functional context approach to learning
stresses the importance of making learningrelevant to the experience of learners and their
work context. The learning of new information is facilitated
by making it possible for the learner to relate itto knowledge already possessed and transform
old knowledge into new knowledge. By using materials that the learner will use
after training, transfer of learning from theclassroom to the "real world" will be enhanced.
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What issues in First Language Acquisition
were covered in this chapter?
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Issues in First Language Acquisition
Competence and Performance
Competence:
Refers to ones underlying knowledge of asystem, event, or fact.
It is the nonobservableability to do something,to perform something.
Competence & Language: it is ones knowldegeof the system of a language (rules of grammar,vocabulary)-all the pieces of language and howthey fit together.
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Competence and Performance
Performance
It is the overtly observable and concrete
manifestation or realization of competence. It is the actual production (speaking,
writing) or the comprehension (listening,
reading) of linguistic events.
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Issues in First Language Acquisition
Comprehension and Production
They are both aspects of competence and
performance. Children seem to understand more than
they actually produce like adults do.
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Issues in First Language Acquisition
Is language acquisition nature or nurture?
Even if Nativists insist that a child is born with
an innate knowledge toward language, thereare a number of problems.
The innateness is important, but we should not
ignore the environmental factors.
Language is both acquired and learned
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Issues in First Language Acquisition
UNIVERSALS
Children go through similar Universal Language Acquisition stagesregardless of cultural and social circumstances.
Language is universally acquired in the same manner, and the deepstructure of language at its deepest level may be common to alllanguages.
According to Maratsos (1988), universal linguistic categories suchas word order, morphological marking tone, agreement, reducedreference of nouns and noun clauses, verbs and verb classes,
predication, negation and question formation are common to alllanguages.
There are principles and parameters which specify some limitedpossibilities of variation.
Parameters determines ways in which languages can vary.
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Issues in First Language Acquisition
Systematicity and Variability
Systematicity means that children show aremarkable ability to infer the phonological,
structural, lexical and semantic system oflanguage.
However, in the midst of all this systematicity,there is an equal amount of variability in the
process of learning. This means that something children once
learned may easily be changed or forgotten dueto the perception of new language systems.
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Issues in First Language Acquisition
Language and Thought
Piaget claimed that cognitive developmentaffects language.
On the other hand, others claimed that
language has an effect on thought. The truth is that language and thought are
closely related.
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Issues in First Language Acquisition
Imitation
One of the most important strategies a childuses in language learning is imitation.
Behaviorists assume one type of imitation, buta deeper level of imitation is much moreimportant in the process of languageacquisition.
When children imitate the surface structure ofthe language, they are not able to understandwhat they are imitating.
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Issues in First Language Acquisition
Practice
A behavioristic model of first language acquisition wouldclaim that practice - repetition and association is thekey to the formation of habits by operant conditioning.
Practice is usually regarded as referring to speakingonly. But we can also think about comprehensionpractice.
The child learns not only how to initiate a conversation
but how to respond to anothers initiating utterance andrecognize the function of the discourse.
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Issues in First Language Acquisition
Input
The role of input in the childs acquisition oflanguage is very important.
Children can speak what they hear. Adult and peer input to the child is far more
crucial that nativists earlier thought.
Adult input shapes the childs acquisition andthe interaction patterns between child andparent change according to the increasinglanguage skill of the child.
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Issues in First Language Acquisition
Discourse
Berko-Gleason mentioned that interaction,
rather than exposure, is required in orderfor successful first language acquisition totake place and children learn language inthe context of being spoken to.
Sinclair and Coulthard proposed thatconversations should be examined in termsof initiations and responses.
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In Conclusion
In order to understand why its not easy to
learn a second language in spite of the first
language acquisition, we should understandthe nature of initial acquisition process.