Language Acquisition: Age and Acquisition

SUMMARY 

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: AGE AND ACQUISITION
Language 

A.  Theories of First Language Acquisition

There are some theories related to First Language Acquisitions:

1.      Behavioristic Approach

                   Language is fundamental part of total human behavior, and behaviorists examined it as such and sought to formulate consistent theories of first language acquisition. The behavioristic approach focused on the immediately perceptible aspects of linguistic behavior – the publicly observable response – and the relationships or associations between those responses and events in the world surrounding them. Things related to behavioristic approach:

a.    tabula rasa

b.    stimuli: linguistic response

c.    conditioning

d.   reinforcement

2.      Nativist Approach

    The term nativist is derived from the fundamental assertion that language acquisition is innately determined, that we are born with genetic capacity that predisposes us to a systemic perception of language around us, resulting in the construction of an internalized system of language. According to Chomsky, there is innate knowledge called language acquisition device (LAD). McNeil (1966) described LAD as consisting of four innate linguistic properties:

a.    The ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in the environment.

b.    The ability to organize linguistic data into various classes that can later be refined.

c.    Knowledge that only certain kind of linguistic system is possible and that other kinds are not.

d.   The ability to engage in constant evaluation of the developing linguistic system so as to construct the simplest possible system out of the available linguistic input.

The process of language acquisition:

a.    Freedom of the restrictions of the so called “scientific method” to explore the unseen, unobservable, underlying, abstract linguistic structure being developed in the child.

b.    Systemic description of the child’s linguistic repertoire as either rule governed or operating out of paralel distributed processing capacities.

c.    The construction of a number potential properties of universal grammar.

3.      Functional Approaches

            Functions are meaningful, interactive purposes, within a social (pragmatic) context             that we accomplish with the form.

a.    Cognition and Language Development, Discourse

b.    Social interaction and Language Development

c.    Constructivist

Issues in first language acquisition:

a.       Competence and performance, Comprehension and production

b.      Nature or Nurture, Universals

c.       Systematicity and variability

d.      Language and thought

e.       Imitation

f.       Practice

g.      Input, Discourse

B.       AGE AND ACQUISITION

     First language acquisition starts in very early childhood but second language acquisition can happen in childhood early or late as well as in adulthood. Some of the parameters for looking at the effects of age and acquisition.

1.      Dispelling Myths

There are some myths about relationship between first and second language acquisition.

a.       In a language teaching, we must practice and practice again and again.

b.      Language learning is a matter of immitation.

c.       First, we practice the separate sounds, then words, then sentences.

d.      Watch a small child’s speech development.

e.       A small child listens and speaks and no one would dream of making him read or write.

f.       You did not have to translate when you you were small.

g.      A small child simply uses language.

2.      Types of Comparison and Contrast

            This involves trying to draw analogies not only between first and second language learning situation but also between chidren and adults. It is much more logical to compare first and second language learning in children or to compare second language learning in children and adults.

3.      The Critical Period Hypothesis

            CPH claims that there is such biological time table. A biologically determined a period of life when language can be acquired more easily and beyond which time language is increasingly difficult to acquire. To examine the issue of CPH we will look at neurological and phonological considerations, cognitive, affective and and linguistic considerations.

a.       Neurological Consideration: the study of the function of the brain in the process of acquisition. First, hemispheric lateralization, there is evidence in neurological research that as the human brain matures, certain functions are assigned or lateralized to the left hemisphere of the brain and certain other function to the right hemisphere. Second, biological time table, Scovel (1988: 80) explained that an accent emerging after puberty is the price we pay for preordined ability to be articulates apes. Third, right hemispheric participation, this participation is particularly active during the early stages of learning the second language. This participation is defined as the strategies acquisition. Fourth, anthropological evidence, adults can acquire second language perfectly in the normal course of their live.

b.      The Significance of Accent: person beyond the age of puberty do not acquire authentic pronounciation  of the second language.

c.       Cognitive Consideration: Jean piaget (1972: Piaget and Inhelder 1969) outlined the course of intellectual development in a child through various stages. There are sensor motor stages (birth to two), preoperational stages (ages two to seven), operational stages (ages seven to sixteen), cocrete operational stages (ages seven to eleven), and formal operational stages (age eleven to sixteen).

d.      Affective Consideration: emphaty, self esteem, extrovertion, inhibition, imitation, anxiety, attitude. Any affective factors can be relevant to second language learning.

e.       Linguistic Consideration. Bilingualism, learning two languages simultanously, acquire them by the use of similar strategies. Interference betweeen first and second languages,  the linguistic and cognitive processes of second language learning in young children are in general similar to first languages processes. Interference in adult, linguistic processes aro more vulnerable to the effect of the first language on the second, especially the farther apart the two events are. Order of acquisition, children learning a second language use a creative construction process, just as they do in their first language.