First Language Acquisition

1. First Language Acquisition • Lecture # 29

2. Review of lecture # 28 Any process in which a learner uses a computer and as a result improve his or her language. It is closely related to many other disciplines and the computers. CALL is an important element of teaching and learning. CALL has become integrated into research on and the practice of the general skills. RS,SS, WS and LS. CALL is popular both in and out of the classroom. Principles of teaching CALL: • Evaluate the appropriateness of the software program or computer based resources (e.g. game or web site)

3. Review cont….. • Authenticity Does the program make use of authentic materials and situations? Do these materials relate to the experiences of the learners? Feedback: How does the program offer feedback? Role of the learner/teacher What is expected of the learner? What is expected of the teacher? Self Study/Classroom: Is the program intended for self study or classroom use? Technological appropriateness: Does the program require extra hardware or software to make it work efficiently

4. Today’s lecture • Lets start…….

5. 11.1 First Language Acquisition It is no wonder that parents take such joy in observing their children’s first step in the acquisition of language. Consider the following sequence between a mother and her 3-month-old daughter: • Ann :( smiles) • Mom: Oh, what a nice little smile! Yes, isn’t that nice? There. There’s a nice little smile. • Ann :( burps) • Mom: What a nice wind as well! Yes, that’s better, isn’t it? Yes. • Ann :( vocalizes) • Mom: Yes! There’s a nice noise.

6. First language acquisition(L1 acquisition) is the term most commonly used to describe the process whereby children become speakers of their native language and languages . • L1 acquisition is remarkable for the speed with which it takes place. The speed of acquisition has led to the belief that there is some “innate” proposition in the human infant to acquire language. This is usually called the “language faculty” with which each newborn child is endowed. • There are basically two approaches to the question of first language acquisition: ①The behaviorist approach ②The innateness approach

7. 11.1.1 The behaviorist approach • Let’s see the following example: • Suppose a baby is hungry, she babbles; she does not pronounce the right sound [milk] for the milk she wants; she gets corrected, she imitates the correct sound and gets understood; she gets the milk she wants. All the time the baby is observing and imitating the speech sound [milk]; she gets punished ( in the sense that she does not get the milk she wants) when she falls to produce the right sound [milk] and is rewarded when she hits on the correct sound. say milk correctly

8. The child imitates the speech around it, using a process of trial and error. It is reinforced in these imitations, or discouraged from them, by the degree of success it achieves in communicating. This is a standard “stimulus-response-imitation-reinforcement” approach. • The important thing is that they all believe that all the internal linguistic knowledge of the individual is the direct result of combining the linguistic event that the individual has observed.

9. 11.1.2 The innateness approach • The behaviorist hypothesis of first language acquisition has been strongly challenged from the 1960s onwards, especially under the influence of Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theories and cognitive psychology.

10. For example: • Children become competent speakers of a language at a comparatively early age before they are ready for other cognitively complex tasks such as learning mathematics, physics or chemistry. It has also been observed that children all over the world go through the same stages in language acquisition regardless of their linguistic environment. Children do not choose their first language; they can learn any language equally well as long as they are in the right linguistic environment. A Chinese child will pick up English as his first language if he is born in an English-speaking country. This probably shows that all human language share certain universal properties ( such as they all have nouns, verbs, and so on) and that human children are born with knowledge of these universal properties.

11. 11.1.3 Stages of Acquiring the First Language • A good deal of research on the acquisition of first language focuses on children’s early utterances. The establishment of stage of acquisition is probably the best-known outcome of research on children’s language. • Several stages have been identified: • Pre-language stage(3~10 months) • The one-word or holophrastic stage(12~18 months) • The two-word stage(18~20 months) • Telegraphic speech(2~3years old)

12. Summary • It is no wonder that parents take such joy in observing their children’s first step in the acquisition of language. Consider the following sequence between a mother and her 3-month-old daughter. • First language acquisition(L1 acquisition) is the term most commonly used to describe the process whereby children become speakers of their native language and languages . • L1 acquisition is remarkable for the speed with which it takes place. The speed of acquisition has led to the belief that there is some “innate” proposition in the human infant to acquire language. This is usually called the “language faculty” with which each newborn child is endowed. • There are basically two approaches to the question of first language acquisition: ①The behaviorist approach ②The innateness approach

13. Summary cont…. • A good deal of research on the acquisition of first language focuses on children’s early utterances. The establishment of stage of acquisition is probably the best-known outcome of research on children’s language. • Several stages have been identified: • Pre-language stage(3~10 months) • The one-word or holophrastic stage(12~18 months) • The two-word stage(18~20 months) • Telegraphic speech(2~3years old)