PROBLEMATICAS DE LA

ADQUISICIN DE SEGUNDAS
LENGUAS
Practical Work #2
Childhood Books
I compared some books for kids at
different ages and I noticed different
facts. Those ones aimed at kids under
the age of six have short simple
sentences and dialogues of one or two
words with images that make them more
attractive and easier to understand. The
sentences are short and with few
adjectives. They increase in complexity
when they are focused to children who
are learning to read.
Once children have started to read,
the books addressed to them have
longer complex sentences. They
use abstract nouns more frequently,
conjunctions, more than one
adjective at a time and past tenses.
Reading as a habit, not only to fulfil
school tasks, increases vocabulary,
comprehension and also helps
children to develop writing ability.



English language learners entering school
at this age have to deal with two
challenges: learn the correct spelling of
words and understand the relation
between symbols (letters) and sounds of
their own language and the L2 they are
learning.

METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS
This term refers to the ability to treat
language as an object separate from the
meaning it conveys. When a child develops
this skill is able to define a word, or to say
what sounds make up that word, for
example.


Metalinguistic awareness can be divided
into four categories:

Phonological

Word

Syntactic

Pragmatic awareness
Phonological and word awareness refer
to the ability to think about and use
phonemes and words.
Syntactic awareness is the ability to think
about the structure of language.
The final category, pragmatic awareness,
involves the purposes for which we use
language.
Children develop this skill in the pre-school
years by cognitive development as their
social environment widens.
Apart from understanding what a word or
phrase mean, they can also know if it is in
the right order. They understand language
and use it to express themselves. In the
school years these abilities expand and
grow. Learning to read reinforces the
understanding that a word is separate
from the thing it represents.
Developing this ability enables readers to
monitor their comprehension processes
and helps children acquire useful word
recognition skills other than sound symbol
correspondence.

Role of Practice
Behaviourist perspective
According to this perspective, students
learn a language through imitation, being
the practice a continuous repetition of
certain patterns or chunks. This is
important to memorise them by heart. In
this way, by means of reinforcement,
students form a habit. The practice
includes mimicry and memorization of
word and phrases.
Role of Practice
Cognitive perspective
Through practice learners incorporate
some information that later, they will use
automatically. Knowledge needs a
cognitive effort on the part of the learners
to be processed. Once they do this, they
start to pay attention to other aspects of
the language. Thus, declarative
knowledge is processed and becomes
procedural knowledge.

As example of incorporating language
through repetition, I can mention an
exercise I used to do after watching a
video. Once a short scene of English in
use is shown (e.g. someone buying some
clothes or doing the check-in at the
airport), the scene is played again with
pause after important phrases. The
practice consist of repeating them to
memorise.
Another example of practice, but this time
under the cognitive perspective was when
I learnt the present simple tense. First I
recognized the most common verbs
matching them with pictures. Then I had to
use them to fill in blanks only with 1
st
and
2
nd
person. I used them in different
exercises. After that, the 3
rd
person
singular was presented. Once I
incorporated this tense, the same
progressive incorporation took place with
present continuous tense and finally I was
ready to contrast the two tenses.

The Competition Model
I will analyse the following sentences
according to the perspective of this
hypothesis.
a) The boy eats the apple.
b) The apple eats the boy.
c) The dog sees the ball.
d) The ball chases the dog.
e) The ball is chased by the dog.


All of them follow the pattern of English grammar. In the
first four sentences this pattern is the typical SVO where
the agent is the subject. Regarding to the last one, the
agent is introduced by the by phrase and the pattern is
SVA, being the adverbial phrase the agent of the
sentence.
Different cues signal which noun is the agent.
Sometimes, more than one can be present in the same
sentence. In a) The boy eats the apple, word order
indicates the agent, being it in preverbal position. The
agent can also be noticed by the animacy cue (i.e.
meaning a boy can eat an apple but not the other way
round). The same case is c) The dog sees the ball.
In b) The apple eats the boy, if we considered the word
order, the sentence has no sense. Taking into account the
meaning, the agent would be the boy. The same case is in
d) The ball chases the dog.
For Sentence e) The ball is chased by the dog, the
grammatical marker by, which introduces a noun phrase
equivalent to the subject of the corresponding active clause,
is the cue that signals the agent.
In a general overview, the sentence e) contains almost the
same words and in the same order as d) except for the
presence of the verb to be and the preposition by. These
elements, necessary for the passive voice, confer it the
correct meaning.
Speakers of other more flexible word order
languages might think that these sentences
are correct. They will need to focus on the
meaning of the nouns of all of them and also
in the grammatical markers of the last one to
check the correctness the sentences.
The Monitor Model
Although the validity of Krashens
hypothesis has been questioned, it
continues being used up to present times.
It could be due to the fact that, though this
model can not be supported by empirical
studies, its postulates can be verifiable in
practice. Teachers and also learners
themselves can experience Krashens
claims.

Another reason could be that, despite
many other theories try to explain the
acquisition of a L2, none of them has
proved to be decisive.
In my opinion all his theories are
convincing. I can experience them on my
own or with my students.
Bibliography
Snow, Burns, &Griffin, 1998
Tunmer et al., 1988; Roth, Speece, Cooper, De La
Paz, 1996.
A Comprehensive Grammar of the English
Language. Quirk, Greenbaurm, Leech and
Startvik, 1985.
How languages are learned, Lightbown and
Spada, 2011.