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FIRST LANGUAGE

ACQUISITIONWEEK 1

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Definition of Language• A consolidation of a number of possible definitions of language

yields the following composite definition:

1. Language is systematic

2. Language is a set of arbitrary symbols

3. Those symbols are primarily vocal, but may also be visual

4. The symbols have conventionalized meanings to which they differ5. Language is used for communication

6. Language operates in a speech community or culture

7. Language is essentially human, although possibly not limited to

humans8. Language is acquired by all people in much the same way; language

and language learning both have universal characteristics.

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INTRODUCTION• "What theory implies, quite simply, is that language acquisition, first or second,

occurs when comprehension of real messages occurs, and when the acquirer isnot 'on the defensive'... Language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious grammatical rules, and does not require tedious drill. It does not occurovernight, however. Real language acquisition develops slowly, and speakingskills emerge significantly later than listening skills, even when conditions areperfect.

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• The best methods are therefore those that supply 'comprehensible input' in lowanxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear.

• These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allowstudents to produce when they are 'ready', recognizing that improvement comes

from supplying communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcingand correcting production.

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• The first language is the language a person is most comfortable with incommunication.

• This may be the first language he or she required but need not be so.

•

For example, many non-Malay children in Malaysia may have acquired theirmother tongue first and be most proficient in it at the point of entry into school.

• But after several years of Malay medium education, they may regard BahasaMelayu as their first language, although it may not be the language they acquiredfirst.

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The Relationship of Theory toPractice

In deciding how to develop language teaching methods and

materials, one can take three approaches: make use of second

language acquisition theory, make use of applied linguistics

research, and make use of ideas and intuition from experience. Theseapproaches should in fact support each other and lead to

common conclusions. This book incorporates all three approaches,

with a hope of reintroducing theory to language teachers. While

"most current theory may still not be the final word on secondlanguage acquisition," it is hoped that teachers will use the ideas

in this book as another source alongside of their classroom and

language-learning experiences.

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• We know what is involved in the process of language learning but unfortunatelywe do not know exactly how a person learns a language.

• Even so, in order to make efforts to language teaching and learning effective, wehave to base our classroom practice on sound theories of learning.

•

Certain theories from the field of psychology, sociology and linguistics have had aprofound effect upon what we do in the language classroom.

• There are some major theories that had impact on language learning

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Behaviourist

• In early 20th century

•Pavlov, Watson and Thorndike believe that it is possible topredict and explain the way people learn by studying thebehaviour of animals.

•They believed that it is possible to train an animal to behave

in any desired manner by using a learning model whichconsists of a stimulus, response and reinforcement.

• In a classic experiment to support the behaviorist theory, arat was used.

Stimulus- light

Response – rats goes up

Stimulus - food

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• Skinner showed that reinforcement is very important in early stages of learning,and should be given frequently.

• Each step in the learning process should be as small as possible so that correctbehaviour is reinforced with rewards and mistakes are corrected immediately.

• The behaviorist theory of learning provided teachers with a set of principles andeasy to implement classroom procedures.

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.....Constructivism• All three positions are seen as important in creating balanced descriptions of

human linguistic behavior.

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NATIVIST Noam Chomsky is perhaps the best known and

the most influential linguist of the second half of

the Twentieth Century.

He has made a number of strong claims about

language : in particular, he suggests that

language is an innate faculty - that is to say

that we are born with a set of rules about

language in our heads which he refers to as the

'Universal Grammar'.

The universal grammar is the basis upon which

all human languages build.

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If a Martian linguist were to visit Earth, he would

deduce from the evidence that there was only

one language, with a number of local variants.

Chomsky gives a number of reasons why this

should be so. Among the most important of these

reasons is the ease with which children acquire

their mother tongue

l h ld b l l h f l f h ld

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•He claims that it would be little short of a miracle if childrenlearnt their language in the same way that they learnmathematics or how to ride a bicycle. This, he says, isbecause :

•Children are exposed to very little correctly formedlanguage. When people speak, they constantly interruptthemselves, change their minds, make slips of the tongueand so on. Yet children manage to learn their language allthe same.

•Children do not simply copy the language that they heararound them. They deduce rules from it, which they canthen use to produce sentences that they have never heardbefore. They do not learn a repertoire of phrases andsayings, as the behaviourists believe, but a grammar thatgenerates an infinity of new sentences.

1 2 Child b th ith th U i l G i d i t th i

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• 1. 2. Children are born, then, with the Universal Grammar wired into theirbrains. This grammar offers a certain limited number of possibilities - forexample, over the word order of a typical sentence.

• Some languages have a basic SVO structure

• The teacher/ gave / a lecture

S V O

Wh th hild b i t li t t hi t h ill

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•When the child begins to listen to his parents, he willunconsciously recognise which kind of a language he isdealing with - and he will set his grammar to the correct one- this is known as 'setting the parameters'.

• It is as if the child were offered at birth a certain number of hypotheses, which he or she then matches with what ishappening around him. He knows intuitively that there aresome words that behave like verbs, and others like nouns,and that there is a limited set of possibilities as to theirordering within the phrase. This is not information that he istaught directly by the adults that surround him, butinformation that is given. It is as if the traveller wereprovided at the beginning of his journey with a compass and

an astrolabe.•This set of language learning tools, provided at birth, is

referred to by Chomsky as the Language Acquisition Device .

H did l t k ti l ? N ti thi h ld 't b h

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• How did you learn to speak your native language? Notice, this shouldn't be sucha puzzling question. We often ask questions such as, do you remember when didyou learned to tie your shoes, ride a bike, and eat with a fork. Sometimes we canremember because a parent helped us learn how to do these things. Now, sincewe always speak the language of our parents, they must have helped us learn to

speak our first language. But do you remember when your mother taught youthe past tense? When your father laid down the rules for passive sentences? Wedon't remember these important moments of our childhood because they neveroccurred.

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• Our parents didn't teach us how to walk and they didn't teach us how to talk.Yet we learned from them. How can this be? Certainly there must have been asubtle, perhaps intuitive teaching process that neither our parents nor we wereaware of. We begin by imitating what we hear our parents say as best we can,repeating random phrases. Our parents in subtle ways punish us for the childishspeech errors we make (by not responding, correcting the error, etc.) andreward correct phrases (by responding positively). As our speech improves, ourparents respond more positively and less negatively. No?

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•Children never resist L1 acquisition, any more than theyresist learning to walk.

•Given even minimal 'input' during critical pre-pubescent

development, all humans acquire the L1 of the society orsocial group they are born into as a natural and essentialpart of their lives. Even brain-damaged and/or retardedchildren usually acquire the full grammatical code of the

language of their society or social group.• In short, L1 acquisition is an essential, biologically –driven

process. It is part of every individual's evolutionary historyand development in the most critical stage of that

individual's acquisition of essential life-skills.

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