Learning the First & a Second Language at Home & at School

1. Learning the First & a Second Language at Home & at School

2. Language acquisition • We are not born speaking! • Language must be acquired.

3. :Terms Native Language (L1)= 1st Language, mother tongue, heart language . Second Language (L2)= Target Language or Learner Language. Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Research investigates how people get proficiency in a language which is not their mother tongue. English as a second language(ESL)Refers to teaching English as L2 to learners in an English-speaking context. English as a foreign Language (EFL)Refers to the use or study of English by speakers with a different native language.

4. Language Development In Children

5. Activity : 1 • Describe how a child can start learning the first language from birth until he/she enters primary school.

15. Bilingualism

16. Early Bilingualism • The term bilingual refers toindividuals who can function in more than one language. • Bilingualism is a feature not just of individuals, but also of societies (how?) societies in which two languages are used regularly, or in which more than one language has official status can be called bilingual. For example, Canada is a bilingual country because French and English are both official languages.

17. Bilingualism is often the product of second language (L2) learning after the first language (L1) has been acquired–either through no tutored exposure or through instruction. • Individuals can become bilingual at any age, • In some cases, though, bilingualism is a characteristic of a child's earliest language system.

18. Children growing up in bilingual households–where both parents speak two languages regularly, or where each parent speaks a different language–are typically bilingual from the very beginning of language acquisition. • Children growing up with parents who speak a minority language may also be natively bilingual, if visitors, neighbors, television, regular caretakers, and other sources make the majority language available.

19. When is the earliest possible chance to learn two languages? to start at birth. • Learning a second language in early childhood or learning two languages simultaneously is not difficult process • It becomes difficult after the age of 10 or 12. • Children do sometimes "mix" languages, for example saying an Arabic word for milk and an English word for cup.

20. The effect of age Critical period hypothesis

21. Activity :2 • Do you think there is a golden age for learning a foreign language ? why ?

22. The critical period hypothesis • It is the subject of a long-standing debate in linguistics and language acquisition over the extent to which the ability to acquire language is biologically linked to age. The hypothesis claims that first language acquisition must occur before intellectual lateralization is complete (about the age of puberty). • Meaning, Second language acquisition will be fast, successful, and qualitatively similar to first language only if it occurs before the age of puberty.

23. The most famous cases of children who did not acquire language normally are Genie and Victor of Aveyron. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXeJ6qnsdD4

24. Is younger better? • Theories assert that language acquisition occurs primarily, possibly exclusively, during childhood as the brain loses flexibility after a certain age. • It then becomes rigid and fixed, and loses the ability for adaptation and reorganization, rendering language (re-) learning difficult.

25. Learning a second languagein the playground Formal and informal contexts

26. Children’s advantages as language learners are most obvious in informal contexts such as in the playground. • They tend to pick up language in everyday situations from other children in their environment relatively quickly because they want to play and make friends. • Familiar routines and games offer opportunities for hearing the same language again and again and learning to take part in simple conversations.

27. To master the language that is needed for schoolis quite a different matter. Jim Cummins (2000) makes a basic difference between home language use and school language use. His research shows thatit takes much longer to learn the academic language skills necessary for successful participation in school discourse than with informal conversations. • So, It may take as long as five or seven years before children reach academic levels comparable to those of native speakers of the language.

28. Language Universals There are certain basic language features present in all human languages All languages have: • A grammar • Basic word order (in terms of SVO or VSO) • Nouns and verbs • Subjects and objects • Consonants and vowels

29. Universal Grammar Universal grammar (UG) is a theory in linguistics, credited to Noam Chomsky, It consists of a set of principles, which are universal and constant in all languages. • Word order, syntactic rule preferences. • Phonetic and phonological constraints. • Lexicon. • Semantic interpretations. • Pragmatic ways to converse.

30. Next Week Teaching Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing