SUMMARY First Language acquisition by Brown D. Ch 2

Competence and Perfomance:

Competence is our underlying knowledge of the system of language, rules of grammar, vocabulary, and pieces of language and how those pieces fit together.   

Performance is actual production (speaking, writing) or the comprehension (listening, reading) of linguistic events. 

Performance reflects in some way our linguistic competence. Competence increases by being exposed to different linguistic contexts, by interacting with others, by using the language. It cannot decrease, what seems to decrease is performance.

1.       The Nativist Approach. 

They mainly propose that language is innately predetermined, that we are endowed with a genetic capacity that predisposes us to acquire a language. 

Comprehension and Production:

A willful Act in Sausseran terms, refers to the notion that comprehension is equated to performance.

In Child language, one has to acknowledge the prominence of comprehension over production

we can surely state the comprehension competence runs ahead production competence.

For example: 

A girl told the man her name was Litha, when he said oh, Litha, she replied saying, No, Litha, then he said ah! Lisa, and she replied then Yes, Litha. It shows she was able to understand her name well, and even identify a mistake, but she wasn’t able to produce it.

Brown's chapter says that Language is systematic.

Children make hypotheses permanently, based on the input they have received, and they also test these hypotheses by using them. These hypotheses are changed, reshaped, revised and abandoned.

Sistematicity and Variability:

The process of language acquisition denotes remarkable stages that exhibit children anilities to identify regualrities of the language system. However, there is a great deal of variability in the process of acquisition.

In some cases children are not able to notice commonalities of the system, such as categories of verbs to describe past tense.

The relationship between Language and Thought:

Language affects thought in such a way that it imposes a particular worldview on the speaker. In other words, we see the world in a specific way depending on the language we speak.

SUMMARY First Language acquisition by Yule

Basic requeriments: a child growing up in the first two or three years interaction with other-languge –user in order to bring the language faculty into operation with a particular language, such as English.

Genre case: a child that does not hear,or is not allowed to use language will learn no language.

Cultural transmition:Tha language a child learns is not genetically inherited but is acquired in a particular language-using enviroment. “ The child must also be physically capable of sending and receiving sound signals in a language” By itself, however, hearing language sounds is not enough.Thecnicial requeriment appears to be the opportunity to interact with other via language.

The acquisition calendar:

The biological calendar,it depends very much to the motivation of the infant’s brain and the lateralization process. If there is some general biological program underlying language acquisition. It is certainly depend on an interplay with social factors in the child enviroment.

Caretaker speech: ( motherese) there are frequent questions, often using exagerated intonation. In theseearly stages, this type of  speech also incorporates a lot of forms associated with “ baby talk”

Also, It is characterized by simple sentences structures and lot of repetion.

Pre-languages stages: the period from about 3-10 months is usually characterized by three stages of sound production in the infant’s developing repertoire.

3 months: the first recognizable sounds are descrbed as cooing with  velar sounds [k] ; [g]

6 months : the sound production at this stage is described as babbling and may contain syllable types sound such as mu-da

9 months: there are recognizable intonation patterns to the consonant and vowel combination being produced.

The one – word holophrastic stage ( 12-15 months) children begin to produce a variety of recognizable single unit utterances this period is called the one-word stage is characterized by speech in which single terms are uttered for everyday objects such as : milk,cat,cup.

The term holophrastic ( a single form functioning as a phrase or sentences)

The two word stage: the child intences to communicate with expressions. By the stage of 2 wether the child is producing 200-400 distinctics words, he or she will be capable of understanding five times as many, and will typically be treated as an entertaining conversational partner by the principal carataker.

Telegraphic speech: 2 and 3 years old, the children will begin producing a large number of utterances which could be classified as multiple-word utterances.  An particular interest is the sequence of inflectional morphemes which ocurrs.

This is characterized by strings of lexical morphemes in phrases such as andrew want ball, cat drink milk.

By the age of two and a half, vocabulary is expanding rapidly and the child is initiating more talk.

By three, the vocabulary has grown to hundreds of words and pronunciation has become closer to the form of the adult language.

The acquisition process:

The child’s linguistic production, is mostly a matter of trying out constructions and testing whether they work or not.

The child can be heard to repeat versions of what adults say and is in the process of adopting a lot of vocabulary from their speech.

Nor does adult correction seem to be as very effective determiner of how the child speaks.

Even when the correction is attempted in a more subtle manner, the child will continue to use a personally construted form.

One factor which seems to be crucial in the child’s acquisition process is the actual use of sound and word combinations, either in interaction with others or in word – play, alone.

Morphology

By the age of 3, the child is going to beyond telegraphic speech forms and incorporating aome of the inflectional morphemes which indicate the grammatical function of the nouns and verbs uses. The first to appear is usually the – ing form in expressions such as cat sitting and mommy reading book. The acquisition of this form is often accompanied by a process of overgenaralization.

Syntax:

Similar evidence against imitation as the basis f child’s speech production has been found in studies of the syntactic structures used by children.

In the formation of questions ans the use of negatives, there appear to be three identifiable stages:Stage 1 ocurrs between 18 and 26 months, stage 2 between 22 and 30 months, and stage 3 between 24 and 40 months.

Questions:

In forming questions,the first stage has two procedures. Symple add a wh-form ( where, who) to the beginning of the expression or utter the expression with a rise in intonation towards the end.

In the second stage, more complex expressions can be formed intonation strategy continues to be used.

In the third stage, the required inversion of subject and verb in English questions has appeared, but the wh- forms do not always undergo the required inversion.

Negatives:

In the case of negatives stage 1 seem to have  simple strategy which says that no or not should be stuck on the beginning of any expression.

In the second stage, the additional negative forms don’t and can’t are used and with no and not, begin to be placed in front of he verb rather than at the beginning of the sentence.

The third stage sees the incorporation of other auxiliary forms such as didn’t and won’t, and the disappearance of the stage 1 forms.

Semantics:

It seems that during the holophrastic stage many children use their limited vocabulary to refer to a large number of unrelated objects.

For example a child used bow-wow to refer to a dog and then to a fur piece with glass eyes,  a set cufflinks and even a bath thermometer. But other child often extend bow-wow to refer to cats, horses, and cows. This process is called overextension and the most common pattern is for the child to overextend the meaning of word on the basis of similarities of shape, sound and size.

Despite the fact that the child is still acquiring aspects of his or her native language through the later years of childhood, it is normally assumed that, by the age of five, the child has completed the greater part of the basic language acquisition process. According to some, the child is then in a good position to start learning a second ( or foreign) language.

First Language acquisition

Chapter 16. By Yule

1. Which are two important features of the caretaker speech?
The Two importan features of caretaker speech are simple sentence structure and a lot of repetition.
It simplified speech style adopted by someone who spends a lot of time interacting woth young children. This simplified style of speech has to do with frecuent questions,using exaggerated intonation and a simple sentence structure and repetition.
2.What is the term used to describe the process where a child uses one word like “Ball” to refer to an apple, an egg and a ball?
This process is called The one-word or holophrastic stage ( 12 to 18 months): Children begin to produce a variety of recognizablesingle unit utterances.

3.What is the role of feedback in children learning?
The role of feedback is usually confirms that the utterance "worked", because the child not only produces speech, also the adult allows this interaction and the communication takes place.

Language,Learning and Teaching. Chapter 1: H.D.Brown

Questionnaire:

1. What is a permanent struggle in teaching/learning?

It is to reach beyond the confines of your first language into a new language, a new culture, a new way of thinking, feeling and acting.

2. Are we equiped with a do – it-yourself-kit to acquire languages?

Language learning is not a set of easy stpes that can be programmed in a quick do-it-yourself kit.

3. Why do people learn or fail to learn a language?

It depend on variables to affect in the process, a current issues in Second language acquisition.

4. Name the issues to consider in second language acquisition.

Curren issues in SLA mat be initially approached as a multitude of questions that are being asked about this complex process:

WHO, WHAT, HOW, WHEN, WHERE, and WHY.

5. What are the motivations to learn a language? 
   The motivation to learn a language is understand the system and functioning of the second language, speak and understand a language, its phonemes and morphemes, words and sentences and discourse structures.
6. 6. What is a PARADIGM?   
   Paradigm is an interlocking design, in this case is a theory of second language.

7. Give 3 definitions for LANGUAGE

1)      Language is a complex,specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously,without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently.

2)      Language is a system of arbitraty conventionalized vocal, written, or gestural symbols that enable members of a given community to communicate intelligibly with one another.

3)      Language is acquired by all people inmuch the same way: language and language learning both have universal characteristics.

8. What is the relation between language and cognition?

-Explicit and formal accounts of the system of language on several possible levels (most commonly phonological, syntactic, and semantic)

-The symbolic nature of language; the relationship between language and reality; the philosophy of language; the history of language.

-Phonetics, phonology; writing systems; kinesics, proxemics, and other “paralinguistic” features of language.

-Semantics; language and cognition; psycolinguistics.

-Communication systems; speaker-hearer interaction; sentence processing.

-Dialectology; sociolinguistics; language and culture; bilingualism and second language acquisition.

-Human language and nonhuman communication; the physiology of language.

-Language universals; first language acquisition

9. Which are some LEARNING definitions?

Learning is acquisition or getting of knowledge of a subject or a skill by study, experience, or intruction.

Learning is retention of information or skill.

Learning involves active,conscious focus on and acting upon events outside or inside the organism.

Learning is relatively permanent but subject to forgetting.

Learning is a change to behavior.

Learninf involves some form of practice, perhaps reinforced practice.

10. Can we define TEACHING apart from learning?

Teaching can not be defined apart fromlearning. Teachins is guiding and faciliting learning,enabling the learner to learn, setting the conditions for learning.

11. What is the importance of our PEDAGOGIAL PHILOSOPHY?

The importance of our PEDAGOGICAL PHILOSPHY is influenced and determined your teaching style,your approach,methods and classroom techiniques.

Your understanding of how the learner learns will determine your Philosophy of education.

12. Refer to the 3 schools of thought in SLA?

Behaviorism  or structuralism: Describes human languages and identififies the structural characteristicsof those languages. An important axiom of structural linguistics was that “languages can differ from each other without limit”.

Behavioristic paradigm: is focused on publicly observable responses –those that can be objectively perciveid,recorded, and measured.

Typical themes: Description, observable performance, scientific method,empiricism,surface structure, conditioning,reinforcement.

Rationalism and cognitive Psychology:

 Chomsky was trying to show that human laguage cannot be scrutinized simply in terms of observable stimuli and responses or the volumes or raw data gathered by field linguists. The generative linguist was interesed not only in discribing language( descriptive),but also in arriving at an explanatory level of adequacy in the study of language, that is a "principled basis,independent of any particular language, for the selection of the descriptively adequate grammar of each language.

Cognitive psychologists,like genartive linguists, sought to discover underlying motivations and deeper structures of human behavior by using a rational approach. That is, They freed themselves from the strictly empirical study typical of behaviorists and employed the tools of logic,reason, extrapolation,and inference in order to derive explanations for human behavior.

Typical themes: generative linguistics, acquisition,innatenes,interlanguage systematicity,universal grammar,competence,deep structure.

 

Constructivism: constructivists, not unlike some cognitive psychologists,aregue that all human beings construct their own version of reality,and therefore multiple constrasting ways of knowing and describing are equally legitimate this perspective might be described as:

An emphasis on active processes of construction (of meaning) attention to texts as a means of gaining insights into those processes,and an interest in the nature of knowledge and its variations,including the nature of knowledge associated with membership in a particular group.(Spivey)

Typical themes: interactive discourse, sociacultural variables,cooperative group learning, interlanguage variability,interactionist hypotheses.

13. Describe GTM

Grammar translation method is a language teaching methodology and has a list characteristcs:

1. classes are taught in the mother tongue, with little active use of the target language.

2. Much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words.

3. Long elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given.

4. Grammar provides the rules for putting words together,and instruction often focuses on the form and inflection of words.

5. Reading of difficult classical texts is begun early.

6. Little attention is paid to the content of texts,which are treated as exercises in grammatical analysis.

7. Often the only skills are exercises in translating disconected sentences fromthe target language into the mother tongue.

8. Littlle or no attentionis given to pronunciation.