Learning a First Language

  Learning a First Language

  Coos (dengkuran) Babble ‘ba-ba-ba’ (ocehan) Utters Bye-bye (ucapan)

  Children all over the world have the high degree of similarities

Milestones & Patterns in L1 Acquisition Development

  Spontaneous crying when babies are hungry or uncomfortable Cooing and gurgling sounds of

  Earliest comfortable babies looking at bright vocalization shapes and colour.

  (early weeks and months of Being able to hear very subtle differences life) between the sounds of human language (‘pa’ and ‘ba’) At 12 Beginning to produce a word or two that months everyone is familiar with.

  Between 12 months to 2 Understanding and producing words grow years old rapidly.

  By the age Producing at least 50 different words and even of 2 more.

  Creatively combining words into simple sentences by leaving out articles, prepositions, auxiliaries verbs, etc (e.g. ‘more outside’ for ‘I want to go outside again’) By the Mastering (knowing and being able to apply) the Age of 4 basic structures of the language (s) which have been spoken to them in these early years.

  (Pre- school Wug test : here is a wug. Now there are two of years) them. Baby: There are two …….

  Having the ability to understand and to use language which is developed rapidly.

  Metalinguistic awareness (the ability to treat language as an object, separate from the meaning it conveys) develops more slowly(know that ‘drink the chair’ is wrong but don’t

  5 years old Metalinguistic awareness develops. It includes the discovery of such things as ambiguity

  (knowing that drink the chair’ is silly in a different way from ‘cake the eat’)

  

Early childhood Bilingualism

   Simultaneous bilinguals:

  Children hearing more than one language practically from birth.

   Sequential bilinguals: Children beginning to learn a second language later.

Early childhood Bilingualism

  Myth Learning more than one language in early childhood slows down the child’s linguistic or cognitive development.

  Research evidence Simultaneous bilinguals who are in contact with both

languages in a variety of settings, will progress in their

  development of both languages at a rate and in a

  manner which are not different from those of monolingual children.

Early childhood Bilingualism

   Subtractive bilingualism

  Children who are practically cut off from their family language because they are ‘submerged/sunk’ in a second language for long periods in early schooling or day care (losing the family language before an age-appropriate mastery of the new language has developed).

Subtractive bilingualism

  Some cases: Children are trapped between 2 languages: not having mastered the second language not having continued to develop the first Solution often suggested by some educators: Stop speaking the family language at home & concentrate on speaking the majority language with their children.

  Subtractive bilingualism

  Evidence:

  

  It is more effective that parents, who themselves are learners of the majority language, should continue to use the language which is most comfortable for them.

  

  The children may prefer to answer in the majority language.

  

  No evidence that a child’s brain has a limited capacity for languages (their knowledge of one language must shrink if their knowledge of the other grows).

Developmental Sequences

  Developmental sequence/ stages: Predictable patterns in the coming out and development of many features of the language children are learning.

  Developmental sequence

Which of the following grammatical morpheme that comes first, next,

and last?

  Articles ‘the’ and ‘a’ Present Progressive –ing (Mommy running) Irregular past forms (Baby went) Plural –s (two books) Possessive ‘s (Daddy’s hat) Copula (Annie is a nice girl) Auxiliary ‘be’ (He is coming)

Developmental Sequences

Children’s Sequences in developing Grammatical Morphemes in English as their first language

  Researcher: Roger Brown Time of research: 1960s Respondents: Adam, Eve, and Sarah Respondent’s First language: English Research objective: to find out how the children acquired 14 grammatical morphemes over time

Developmental Sequences

  List of grammatical morphemes studied by Roger in order of their acquisition by Adam, Eve, and Sarah: Present Progressive –ing (Mommy running) Plural –s (two books) Irregular past forms (Baby went) Possessive ‘s (Daddy’s hat) Copula (Annie is a nice girl)

Developmental Sequences

Children’s Sequences in developing Grammatical Morphemes in English as their first language

  Mastering the grammatical morphemes at the bottom is surely having mastered the grammatical morphemes at the top. However, the reverse is not true.

  The children did not master the morphemes at the same rate.

  Eve: nearly masters all before 2.5 years old Sarah & Adam: still works on them when were 3.5 or 4.

Developmental Sequences

  Researcher: Lois Bloom Respondents: Kathryn, Gia, and Eric Respondent’s First language: English Research objective: to analyze the development of negation very early.

  Developmental Sequence in negation

   Stage ….. 

  Daddy no comb hair 

  Stage ……  No go. No cookies. 

  No comb hair  Stage …..  You didn’t have supper. She doesn’t want it.  Stage ….. 

Developmental Sequences Stages in the development of negation

  Stage 1 No go. No cookies.

  No comb hair The child’s negatives are usually expressed by the word ‘no’

  Stage 2 Daddy no comb hair The negative usually appears just before the verb and the subject is included.

  Stage 3 I can’t do it. He don’t want it.

  The negative element is inserted into a more complex sentence. Negative forms other than no is used.

Developmental Sequences Stages in the development of Question

  There is a surprising consistency as well in the way children learn to form questions in English. The consistency appears in the acquisition of word order in Question

  Developmental Sequence in question 

  Stage 

  Can I go? Is that mine? 

  Is the teddy is tired? Do I can have a cookie? 

  Stage 

  You like this? I have some? Why you catch it? 

  Stage 

  Cookie? Mommy book? 

  Stage 

  Do you like ice cream? 

  Can I eat the cookie? 

  Where I can draw them? 

  Stage 

  I don’t know why can’t he go out 

  Stage 

  Why can he go out?

Developmental Sequences Stages in the development of Question

  Stage 1 Cookie? Mommy book? Earliest questions are single words or simple two- or three-word sentences with rising intonation

  Stage 2 You like this? I have some? Why you catch it?

  Longer question but use the word order of the declarative sentence.

Developmental Sequences Stages in the development of Question

  Stage 4 Begin to use subject-auxiliary inversion Sometimes they can

  Do you like ice cream? . either use inversion or use wh- Can I eat the cookie? word but not both. Therefore, we Where I can draw them? may find inversion in ‘yes/no’ questions but not in wh-question.

  Stage 5 Combine both operation but still hard. Therefore, they may negate

  Why can he go out? the question as well as invert it. Why he can’t go out?

  Theoretical Approaches to explaining first language learning: Behaviorism 

  Language learning is the result of imitation, practice, feedback on success, and habit formation (imitating sounds and patterns, practicing the sounds and patterns, getting feedback, continuing practicing the sounds and patterns until forming ‘habit’ of correct use of language use).

  Theoretical Approaches to explaining first language learning: Behaviorism

  Children imitate new words and sentence structures until they become solidly grounded in his language system, and then they stop imitating these and went on to imitate other new words and structures.

  Theoretical Approaches to explaining first language learning: Behaviorism

  Do you think that children imitate everything that they hear? No

children’s imitation is selective based on

what they are currently learning/ based on

The inadequacy of behaviorism theory

  

  Children sometimes repeat themselves or produce a series of related ‘practice’ sentences but rarely imitate the other speaker. They also elaborate on the speaker’s questions or statements, pick up patterns and then generalize them to new contexts. They create new forms or new uses of words until they finally figure out how the forms are used by adults.

The inadequacy of behaviorism theory

   Chomsky: logical problem of language acquisition.

  Children come to know more about the structure of their language than the basic of the samples of language which they hear. The language the child exposed to in the environment is full of confusing information (incomplete sentence, slip of the tongue) and does not provide all the information which the child needs.

  Parental corrections of language errors are sometimes inconsistent

Theoretical Approaches to explaining first language learning: Innatism

  

  In reaction to what is considered as the inadequacy of the behaviorist theory of learning based on imitation and habit formation, Chomsky (1959) proposed his theory of learning—innatism.

  

  Background: children’s minds are not blank slates to be filled merely by imitating language they hear in the environment.

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  Claim: children are biologically programmed for language

Theoretical Approaches to explaining first language learning: Innatism

  

  Innatist position: The environment makes a basic contribution-in this case, the availability of people who speak to the child. The child or the child’s biological endowment/gift will do the rest. In another word, children are born with a special ability to discover for themselves the fundamental rules of a language system.

  

  The special ability is called LAD (a Language acquisition Device) or Universal Grammar (UG).

  

  LAD, containing a set of principles which are common to

Theoretical Approaches to explaining first language learning: Innatism

  

  For LAD to work, the child needs access only to samples of natural language which serve as a trigger to activate the device. Once it is activated, the child is able to discover the structure of the language to be learned by matching the innate knowledge of basic grammatical

  relationships to the structures of the particular language in the environment.

  

  Lenneberg observed that the LAD works successfully only when it is stimulated at the right time—a time called

  

Theoretical Approaches to explaining first

language learning: Interactionist Interactionist

  : focuses on the role of linguistic environment in interaction with the child’s innate capacities in determining language development.

  Child’s innate capacity

Child’s

environment

  Language

  

Theoretical Approaches to explaining first

language learning: Interactionist 

  Language acquisition is influenced by the acquisition of other kinds of skill and knowledge, not only independent to the child’s experience and cognitive development.

  

Theoretical Approaches to explaining first

language learning: Interactionist

Jean Piaget—an interactionist (in Gisburg and Opper in 1969):

  Observation: infants and children in interaction with adult. Finding: development of children cognitive thinking: things as object solidity, logical inferencing (which materials cause some sticks to sink and which materials cause some sticks to float on water).

  

Theoretical Approaches to explaining first

language learning: Interactionist 

  Lev Vigotsky 

  Famous with his interactionist view, the sociocultural theory of human mental.

   Theory: language develops entirely from social interaction. 

  In a supportive interactive environment, the child is able to advance a higher level of knowledge and performance than he or she would capable of independently.

   Vigotsky refers to what the child could do in interaction with another, but not alone as Zone of Proximal Development (the level of

  

Theoretical Approaches to explaining first

language learning: Interactionist

  Crucial element in the language acquisition in relation to the linguistic environment of the child:

  

Modified interaction:Language which is modified to be

  suitable to the capability of the learner/child directed

  

speech (speech used to make a child understand what we

are saying).

  e.g. A: pintunya sudah di buka. Masuk saja.