Transcript Document

OBJECTIVES
You will understand:
1.
How human beings acquire their first language
You will be able to:
1.
Integrate the knowledge if first language acquisition into your
perspective on your profession and on your students’
language learning challenges
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
Introduction
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Language acquisition is the process by which humans develop
language.
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First language acquisition concerns the language development
in children.
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Nature and nurture have been considered in acquisition,
though there has been debate regarding the extent of each.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
There are two main theories which attempt to describe how children
learn language:
Content Approach / Universal Grammar (Noam Chomsky)
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Assumes that children are wired with innate knowledge about
language, called the Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
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This knowledge is not accessible when children are born – it takes
time to develop
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When the time is right, exposure to language causes this linguistic
knowledge to emerge without much effort from the child.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
There are two main theories which attempt to describe how children
learn language:
Process Approach
• Assumes that children are born equipped with special techniques for
analyzing language.
• Children are not born with linguistic information in their brains,
rather they are born with the ability to analyze and process
linguistic input.
In both theories, children may end up with the same set of linguistic
knowledge; however in the case of the Process Approach, the
knowledge is the result of the inbuilt analytic procedures.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
What are the differences between the Content Approach and
the Process Approach? Use examples to explain.
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How does the historic battle over nature versus nurture apply
to first language acquisition? How does it relate to the
Content and Process Approaches?
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
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Language acquisition begins early, and begins with sounds not
words.
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Babies are able to make phonetic distinctions before they are
able to produce or understand words.
Age
0-2 months
Express discomfort with
crying/fussing sounds
2-4 months
Produce “comfort sounds”
4-7 months
Laughter, squeals, yells, growls
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
Around the age of one, babies begin to understand words and
produce them.
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First words are the same all over the world – food (milk), body
parts (nose), clothing (sock), vehicles (car), toys (doll),
household items (bottle), people (dada)
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Babies can utter action words (up, eat, go), and modifiers
(hot, cold, more)
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Babies may use words pertaining to social interactions (want,
bye-bye)
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At approximately 18 month old, babies’ language changes.
They acquire new vocabulary at the rate of about one word
every two waking hours. This pace continues through to
adolescence.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
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Eventually, babies begin to string two words together (more
cereal, all gone).
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95% of babies’ two-word constructions have correct syntax
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During this stage, their sentences not only get longer, but also
more complex.
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By the age of three, children are able to use a full range of
grammatical forms with more than 90% accuracy.
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Children quickly acquire linguistic systems around them,
regardless of the language.
By the late two’s and mid-three’s, children’s language
increases rapidly, and it seems they are able to converse using
fluent grammar.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
Stages of Language Acquisition in Children
Stage
Typical Age
Description
Babbling
6-8 months
Repetitive CV patterns
One-word stage
9-18 months
Single open-class words or word
stems
Two-word stage
18-24 months
“Mini-sentences” with simple
semantic relationships
Early multi-word
stage or
Telegraphic stage
24-30 months
“Telegraphic” sentence structures
of lexical rather than functional or
grammatical morphemes
Later multi-word
stage
30+ months
Grammatical or functional
structures emerge
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
Look at these two brief samples of a child’s speech. What
stage is each child at in terms of linguistic development?
Approximately what age are these children? Why do you think
this?
CHILD A: Kathryn no like celery.
CHILD B: Daddy go?
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute
•
Choose one question from section 1 of the Task Journal to
respond to. Your response should consist of at least 100 words.
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Task Journals can be submitted via email to
[email protected] (preferred) or printed and handed in.
ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute