By: Anastancio Ariel Macuácua
A Comprehensive summary summary on First Language Acquisition/2016 Acquisition/2016
FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Questions
1. How do children learn their first fi rst Language? 2. What is it that enables them to form meaningful sentences?
Language – it’s a system of communication consisting of specialized sounds that seems to be genetically programmed to develop in humans.
First Language Acquisition occurs when a child has been without a language and now he/she acquires one.
Differences between between Acquiring and Learning a language Acquiring a language is picking it up or to develop abilities in a language by using it in a natural communicative situation. It is a subconscious process and not planned.
According to Krashen (1991) Learning is knowing the rules, or having a conscious knowledge about the grammar.It grammar.It is a conscious process and carefully planned. Acquiring a language is more successful and long-lasting then learning it because in acquisition people are not afraid of making mistakes, they are d riven by a communicative need, there’s more time availability, there’s a variety of input.
First language acquisition can be monolingual or bilingual
First language acquisition is monolingual – when a child is exposed to only one language from birth until 6 years. First language acquisition is bilingual – when a child is exposed to more than one languages and acquires both languages before the age of 6.
The universal stages of development
Language acquisition is associated with cognitive, social and l inguistic development.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Pre-linguistic stage – (0 – 2 months, crying, 2 - 6 months cooing, 6 – 12 months babbling) Holophrastic stage (Single word communication by 12 months) Two-word Two-word stage (by 12 months) Telegraphic stage (by 28 months) (Word inflections, and negatives) Intermediate Intermediate development stage (before 5 years) (Word inflections and negatives) Adult stage (by 5 years) (Complex constructions) 1 | Send your comments to:
[email protected]
By: Anastancio Ariel Macuácua
A Comprehensive summary on First Language Acquisition/2016
Age Birth 6 weeks 6 months 8 months 1 year 18 months 2 years 2 years and three months 5 years
Stage of Language Development Crying Cooing babbling Intonation patterns One-word utterances Two-word utterances Word inflections Questions and negatives Complex constructions
Theories of first language acquisition 1. Behaviourism 1. Inatism 1. Interactionism 1. Behaviourism
According to the behaviourists, all learning takes place through the process of stimulus-responsereinforcement (feedback). They view language learning as a matter of imitation and habit formation. So, children imitate the sounds and patterns they hear around them and receive positive reinforcement.
Children also receive linguistic input from speakers in the environment, and positive reinforcement for their correct repetitions and imitations. As a result, habits are formed. (Skinner 1957).
The weakness of the behaviourist theory
a) The behaviourist fail to realize that the input children are exposed to is too little and impoverish for them to acquire language successfully, (Chomsky) b) The behaviourist theory does not account for children’s grammatical ability (Crystal) c) They do not seem to realize that children are able to say things they’ve never heard from anyone. d) The language children are exposed to is full of confusing information (incomplete sentences, false starts, slips of tongue
Innatism
Chomsky claims that children are biologically programmed for language and that language develops in the same way that other biological f unctions develop. 2 | Send your comments to:
[email protected]
A Comprehensive summary on First Language Acquisition/2016 By: Anastancio Ariel Macuácua He suggested that the child must begin the acquisition process with some innate linguistic knowledge. Chomsky also argued that human beings have a LAD (a Language Acquisition Device) that allows them to acquire any language they are exposed to. This device enables human beings to produce an infinite number of sentences on the basis oftheir creativity. LAD is now referred to as Universal Grammar (UG) which is believed to consist of a set of principles which are common to all languages.
3 | Send your comments to:
[email protected]
