SLAT2001 INTRODUCTION TO SL LEARNING AND TEACHING

WEEK 2 CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

TUTORIAL
Group - go to the group you signed up Go to the same tute every week.

ASSESSMENT #1 (REFLECTIVE ESSAY 25%)

Task

Give an account of your personal experience of learning a language other than your first language. Try to describe how you were encouraged to learn it and how successful or otherwise this was. There is a list of suggestions which you might like to use in your account in the guideline. DO NOT try to cover all the items mentioned but use them as a guide for your ideas. Note this is an account of how you DID learn, not how one SHOULD learn.
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OUTLINE
1. Quiz and Brainstorm 2. Childrens language acquisition development 3. Theories of first language acquisition Behaviourist Innatist Interactionist 4. Cross cultural research
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QUIZ - CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

1. Do children learn their first language by imitating adults speech? Why?

a. Yes b. No 2. Approximately how many words do 5 year old children learn per day?
a. 5 b. 10 c. 20
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(CONTD)
3. What is the most commonly uttered first Word? What is your justification for your choice of the word?
a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. Dada Daddy Mama Dad Mummy Mum Cat No Dog
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4. Can a child develop his/her language if he/she is left alone in the forest for first 5 years his/her life? a. Yes b. No 5. The child whose parents are not native speakers of English learns to speak with accent of their parents mother tongue. a. Agree b. Disagree
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BRAINSTORMING
1. How do children develop their first language?

2. What are the factors which may impact on childrens language development?

RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE- FIRST 12 MONTHS

1. 0-3 months Loud noise wake babies, and they cry if there is unexpected noise. Recognise familiar voice turning face to you 2. 4-6 months Start responding to word no. Responsive to changes of tone of voice and sounds other than speech (toy, music etc) 3. 7-12 months Recognises the names of familiar objects and people and begins to respond to request.
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BEFORE SCHOOL (1-5 YEARS OLD)

1. 1-2 years
Point to the pictures in a book, a few body parts Follow simple commands and understand simple questions. Listen to and understand simple stories.

2. 2-3 years
Understand and respond two stage commands (Get your socks and put them in the basket). Respond to telephone or doorbell ringing.

3. 3-4 years
Understand simple Wh questions.

4. 4-5 years
Understand nearly everything that is said to them at home, or other familiar surroundings. 10

PRODUCTIVE LANGUAGE- SUMMARY

Stage Babbling One-word stage (better one-morpheme or one-unit) or holophrastic stage Two-word stage Telegraphic stage or early multiword stage (better multi-morpheme) Later multiword stage Typical age 6-8 months Description Repetitive

9-18 months

Single open-class words or word stems

18-24 months 24-30 months

"mini-sentences" with simple semantic relations "Telegraphic" sentence structures of lexical rather than functional or grammatical morphemes Grammatical or functional structures emerge

30+ months

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1. Before 6 months Cooing cries accompanied by producing some sounds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obqiv1ch2FM 2. 6-8 months

Babbling http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kuOt4kZUn0
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3. 9-18 months one word, the pholophrastic stage Linked with a childs own action or desire for action Bye bye Used to convey emotions no Naming functions doggy 4. 18-24 months - Two word utterances Lack of morphological and syntactic markers Word order mummy sock where ball? 5. 24-30 months - Telegraphic stage
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"Car going? Pig say oink

CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILD LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

High degree of similarity in the early language of children all over the world The stages of language development are related to childrens cognitive development. Temporal adverbs (e.g., yesterday) will not emerge until children understand time.

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GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES
Morpheme = the smallest unit of linguistic meaning (ing, .s, ed) Browns (1973) longitudinal study & J. And P. de Villiers (1973) cross-sectional study

Longitudinal observation of a few children over time

Cross-sectional observe a larger number of children at one time and compare them according to the variables such as age, gender, family background etc.
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SPECIFIC ORDER OF MORPHEME ACQUISITION

present progressive -ing (running) plural s (two books) irregular past forms (baby went) possessive s (Daddys hat)

copula (Annie is happy)

articles (the and a) regular past ed (She walked) third person singular simples present (She runs)
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auxiliary be (He is coming)

The Wug Test Jean Berko-Gleason (1958)

This is a wug.

Here is another one. Now there are two of them. There are two ______.

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(CONTD)
Here is the man who knows how to bod. Yesterday he did the same thing.

He ---------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWEiqVGfPmA
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NEGATION
1. Add no
no heavy no singing song no want milk

2. Add no/dont/cant inside sentence

He no bite you I no taste them
He dont want it

Gradually increasing in complexity

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QUESTIONS
Developmental order
what? where? and who? why?

how? And when?

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(CONTD)
Stage 1 and 2 Intonation milk? (Stage 1) I ride train? (Stage 2), sit chair? + chunks (whats that?) (Stage 1)

Stage 3
Tack on a question word at front of sentence = fronting what he wants?, what he can ride in? Is the teddy is tired?
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Stage 4

changing word order Are you going to play with me?

add Aux - Do dogs like icecream? Stage 5 and 6 Increased variety in auxilliary use be, have, do, must

Embedded questions
Ask him why cant he go out.

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AROUND THE PRESCHOOL YEARS (3-5 YRS OLD)

Increased vocabulary learning (5-7 words/day) Words are undergeneralised dog = family pet only and not all dogs Words are overgeneralised daddy = all men Language is used in a widening environment Metalinguistic awareness drink the chair cake the eat
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AROUND THE SCHOOL YEARS

1. Reading 2. Vocabulary increases and becomes more abstract 3. Children learn to use different registers

Difference between written and spoken languages

Appropriateness of the language according to the context (e.g., playground, strangers)

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4. Language varieties/ Standard Australian English (SAE)

THEORIES OF FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

1. Behaviourist
2. Innatist 3. Interactionist

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BEHAVIOURIST (B.F.SKINNER 1950S)

Imitation (Stimulus)
Response Positive reinforcement (praise, or successful communication) Continued practice Language Acquisition Environmental Factors
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MAIN POINTS
Language learning habit formation Quality and quantity of the language the child are exposed and the consistency of the reinforcement in the environment are the decisive factor of childrens language development. Imitation and practice primary processes in language development

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UNDERLINED PRINCIPLES:
Behavior that is positively reinforced will reoccur; intermittent reinforcement is particularly effective Information should be presented in small amounts so that responses can be reinforced ("shaping")

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EXAMPLES
Imitation: word for word repetition of all or part of someones utterance Mother: Lucy: Mother: Shall we play with dolls? Play with dolls Great. Which doll shall we play with?

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QUESTIONS
Do children imitate adults speech and develop their language? Is childrens brain blank before they are exposed to any input? Can you think about second language teaching methodology based on behaviourist view of language learning?

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IMMITATION
Child: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them. Adult: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits? Child: Yes. Adult: What did you say she did?

Child: She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.

Adult: Did you say she held them tightly? Child: No, she holded them loosely.
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Cazden, C. Child language and Evaluation

PROBLEMS WITH BEHAVIOURIST THEORY

Children do not produce more grammatically correct sentences even when modeled. Children produce more creative sentences than they would hear cat stand up table

Parents expose children to conflicting and irregular reinforcement her curl my hair
Parents rarely correct childrens grammatical mistakes.
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(CONTD)
Imitation cannot account for non-random mistakes the boys goed home, the mouses runned Can children learn only what they hear? adult speech is full of false starts, repetitions, slips of the tongue. Behaviourist theory assumes that childrens mind is blank. Children are able to produce sophisticated language regardless of the language they are exposed to. The logical problem of language acquisition
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INNATIST THEORY NOAM CHOMSKY (1950S 1970S)

Children are born with a specific innate ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules of a language system (Universal Grammar) on the basis of the samples of a language they are exposed.

http://www.chomsky.info/

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THREE MAIN POINTS

1. Poverty-of-the-stimulus Logical problem of language acquisition

Ungrammatical and incomplete input Grammatically acceptable output

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(CONTD)
Children hear only a finite number of sentences. Abstract the rules and principle of the language. Produce infinite number of sentences.

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(CONTD)
2. Constrains and principles cannot be learned. Children are very young when learning L1. Single words appear around age 1. Basic grammar is learned around age 6. At age 6 no one has cognitive ability to understand the principles of grammar as a system. Because of innate capacity, children are able to use it.

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(CONTD)
3. Patterns of development are universal. Children learn various aspects of language in a similar order. If children learned only what they were taught, the order of what they learned would vary in different learning environments. Morpheme acquisition (Brown, 1973)

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(CONTD)
LAD = Language acquisition device Function of the brain that is specially for learning language

Innate = just like learning to walk

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(CONTD)
Universal Grammar (UG)- The form of the human language that can be acquired unconsciously, without instruction, in the early years of life; basic linguistic principles shared by all languages

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EXAMPLES OF GRAMMATICAL KNOWLEDGE

Grammatical knowledge is in place before children learn to read. 1. Making grammatical judgments does not depend on having heard the sentence before: e.g., Enormous crickets in pink socks were dancing at the ball. 2. Nor does it have to be meaningful: e.g., Colourless green ideas sleep furiously
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(CONTD)
3.

Ungrammatical sentences sound funny: *Furiously sleep ideas green colourless. *Milk the crumpled verb a.

4. You may understand ungrammatical sequences even if they are not well formed and the word order is irregular: *The boy quickly in the house the ball found.
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(CONTD)
5. On the other hand they may have no meaning but still follow the rules and be enjoyable:

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe (Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll)

6. Ungrammatical sentences are not amusing:

*Toves slithy the and brillig twas Wabe the in gimble and gyre did Your understanding of UG learnt as a child permits you to make grammatical judgments.

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SUPPORT FOR INNATISTS VIEW

based on the early age at which children show competency in their native grammars, as well as the ways in which they do (and do not) make errors. Infants are born able to distinguish between phonemes in minimal pairs, distinguishing between bah and pah, for example. They do not, however, say things like 'want my' or 'I cookie,' statements that would break the syntactic structure of the principle, a component of universal grammar.
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CRITICAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS (CPH)

The period between early childhood and puberty during which a child can acquire language without instruction.
Wild children of India Amala/Kamala (1920s)

Victor France (1799)

Genie USA. A child confined to a small room with physical restraints. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWzO8DtRds&feature=related
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No language input

MORE SUPPORT FOR INNATISTS THEORY

Deaf population of Nicaragua

Until 1986, no formalised sign language for the deaf in Nicaraga. Deaf children in Nicaragua developed their own sing language with its own rules of sign phonology and syntax. Healthy adults who had never acquired language were not capable of learning language.
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QUESTION
How might innatist theory of language learning apply to second language learning/teaching?

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CRITICISMS OF INNATIST THEORY

Too much emphasis on the final state (i.e., what is presented in adult native speakers competence) Abstract knowledge of language rather than what children produce (focus on what is presented in childrens brain, but not interested in performance.)
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3. Interactionist Theory

Cognitive (innatist)

Interactionist Theory

Environment (behaviourist)

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INTERACTIONIST THEORY
Jean Piaget (1951/1946): childrens cognitive development Lev Vygotsky (1978): social interaction ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development = interaction + 1) week 5

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CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH
Child rearing patterns differ across cultures Child directed speech higher pitch, slower, shorter, repetition, simple syntax (baby talk), childs immediate environment (here and now) Child socialisation differs across cultures

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SUMMARY
Child first language acquisition process Similar processes across languages Morpheme, negations, and questions Along with cognitive development Three theories Behaviourist Innatist Interactionist
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ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ

1. Do children learn their first language by imitating adults speech? 2. Approximately how many words do 5 year old children learn per day? 3. What is the most commonly uttered first Word? What is your justification for your choice of the word? 4. Can a child develop his/her language if he/she is left alone in the forest for first 5 years his/her life? 5. The child whose parents are not native speakers of English learns to speak with accent of their parents mother tongue.
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WEEK 3
Applications to SLA Chapter 2 Explaining Second Language Learning in Lightbown and Spada (2006) Lecturer Shirin Jarmarmani

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