Topic 10:

Language Acquisition

NGUYEN KIM HA
SRI LANKA
CONTENTS

 Language Acquisition and Language Learning

 Main Features of Child Language Acquisition
 Strategies for Child Language Learning
 Second Language Learning
1. Language Acquisition vs. Language Learning

Language Acquisition Language Learning

Meaning Picking up a language Studying a language

Focus Practical Knowledge Theoretical Knowledge

Method Unconscious, implicit Conscious, explicit

Situations Informal situations Formal situations

Grammar Does not use grammatical rules Uses grammatical rules

Dependency Depends on attitude Depends on aptitude

Order of learning Stable order of learning Simple to complex order of learning

2. Main Features of Child Language Acquisition

Developmental Psycholinguistics is to understand

how children are able to acquire :

- An extensive vocabulary
- A complex phonological and grammatical
system
- An complex set of rules for using their language
appropriately in social settings

Links : Teds Talk :

https://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies#t-595289
First Language Acquisition – Noam Chomsky

 Noam Chomsky believes that children are born with an inherited ability to learn any human
language. He claims that certain linguistic structures which children use so accurately must
be already imprinted on the child’s mind. Chomsky believes that every child has a ‘language
acquisition device’ or LAD which encodes the major principles of a language and its
grammatical structures into the child’s brain. Children have then only to learn new
vocabulary and apply the syntactic structures from the LAD to form sentences.

 Chomsky points out that a child could not possibly learn a language through imitation alone
because the language spoken around them is highly irregular – adult’s speech is often
broken up and even sometimes ungrammatical. Chomsky’s theory applies to all languages
as they all contain nouns, verbs, consonants and vowels and children appear to be ‘hard-
wired’ to acquire the grammar. Every language is extremely complex, often with subtle
distinctions which even native speakers are unaware of. However, all children, regardless of
their intellectual ability, become fluent in their native language within five or six years.
 First Language Acquisition – Noam Chomsky

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cgpfw4z8cw
 The Critical Period Hypothesis

 There is an ideal period for acquiring languages

 Link language acquisition to age
 Best time to learn a language : the first few year of a person’s
life
 Challenges : Accents, Pronunciation, Syntax
Five stages of Child Learning Acquisition -
David Crystal’s Theory
Stages in a child’s language development
Perceiving Speech
-infants can hear before they are born
-infants can make distinctions between
speech sounds
Producing Speech
Crying – Cooing – Babbling – Intonation –
One word Utterance – Two word Utterance –
Words
- Question/ negatives – Complex Structures-
Mature Speech
 Child Language Acquisitions
Caretaker Speech

 Adults do not interact with kids in the same way as with other others . They
use Baby talk /Motherese/ Child directed speech /Caretaker speech
 Characteristics :
1. A slow rate of delivery
2. Exaggerated intonation
3. High pitch
4. Simple syntax, short utterances
5. Simple lexical items
 Child Language Acquisition

Acquisition
Acquisition
of Phonetics Acquisition Acquisition Acquisition
of
and of Lexicon of Semantics of Syntax
Morphology
Phonology
Child Language Acquisition
3. Development stages
in second language learning

L2 Learning of Phonetics &

Phonology

L2 Learning of Morphology

L2 Learning of Syntax
Factors affecting SLA

1) Cognitive Factors
2) Affective Factors
3) The Critical Period Hypothesis and SLA
Cognitive Factors
 Cognitive Factors

Intelligence and aptitude

Brown (1994: 93) states that in the past it was conceived that “the greatest barrier to second
language learning seemed to boil down to a matter of memory”

Gardner (1993) emphasizes that language is not grammar specific, but it is influenced by other factors
that are intelligence-based.

Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory (MIT) (1983, 1999) is an important contribution to
cognitive science and constitutes a learner-based philosophy which is “an increasingly popular
approach to characterizing the ways in which learners are unique and to developing instruction to
respond to this uniqueness”
 Cognitive Factors

 Cognitive Styles
 Field independence/dependence;
 Ambiguity tolerance;
 Left- and right-brain functioning;
 Reflectivity and impulsivity; and
 Visual and auditory styles.
Cognitive Factors

Learning Strategies
Learning strategies can be divided into :
 Metacognitive;
 Cognitive; and
 Socio-affective strategies.
Affective Factors