ACQUISITION AND LEARNINGJon Henry Bello Ordoñez

REFERENCES

H.D.Brown, Principles of Language Teaching and Learning

S. Krashen, Secondary Language Acquisition and Learning

WHAT TO EXPECT?

Acquisition vs. Learning

Three Positions of 1st Language Acquisition

Issues in 1st Language Acquisition

2nd Language Acquisition (Krashen)

ACQUISITION VS. LEARNING

ACQUISITION

 the product of a subconscious process very similar to the process children undergo when they acquire their first language. It requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in which speakers are concentrated not in the form of their utterances, but in the communicative act.

LEARNING

 is the product of formal instruction and it comprises a conscious process which results in conscious knowledge 'about' the language, for example knowledge of grammar rules. 

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 'LEARNING' IS LESS IMPORTANT THAN 'ACQUISITION'.

Stephen Krashen

It is clear that as teachers, we want to maximize our student's opportunities to acquire language. Consequently, if we accept the hypothesis then we need to spend more time using real language with our students as opposed to teaching them explicit grammar rules.

THREE POSITIONS OF 1ST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

BEHAVIORISTIC POSITION

Individuals are born without built-in mental content and their knowledge comes from experience and perception(tabula rasa).

Assumes a learner is essentially passive, responding to environmental stimuli.

Behavior is shaped through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement.

Consider effective language behavior to be the production of correct responses to stimuli. If a particular response is reinforced, it then becomes habitual, or conditioned.

BEHAVIORIST LEARNING THEORY

is a process of forming habits; the teacher controls the learning environment and learners are empty vessels into which the teacher pours knowledge.

NATIVIST

We have an innate predisposition to learn language, and learning is in our genetics.

According to Chomsky, this innate knowledge is embodied in a ¨little black box¨ of sorts, a language acquisition device (LAD).

All human beings are genetically equipped with the ability that enables them to acquire language. (a system of universal linguistic rules or Universal Grammar)

COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY

emphasized the learner´s cognitive ability, involving reasoning and mental processes rather than habit formation.

FUNCTIONAL APPROACHES

Two emphases emerged

1. Researchers began to realize that language was a cognitive and affective ability to communicate with all the things including the self.

2. They dealt with the forms of language, not the deeper functional levels.

FUNCTIONAL APPROACHES

Cognition and Language Development

Bloom found three possible underlying relationships: agent-action, agent-object, and possessor-possessed.

In addition, he concluded that children learn underlying structures, not superficial word order.

Piaget insisted that what children learn about language is determined by what they already know about the world.

Dan Slobin demonstrated that semantic learning depends on cognitive development.

FUNCTIONAL APPROACHES

Social Interaction and Language Development

Social constructivist emphasized on the function of language in discourse.

Discourse has a special meaning in that language is used for interactive communication.

FUNCTIONAL APPROACHES

The functional context approach to learning stresses the importance of making learning relevant to the

experience of learners and their work context. The learning of new information is facilitated by making it

possible for the learner to relate it to knowledge already possessed and transform old knowledge into new knowledge.

By using materials that the learner will use after training, transfer of learning from the classroom to the "real world" will be enhanced.

ISSUES IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE

Competence: Refers to one´s underlying knowledge of a system, event, or

fact. It is the non-observable ability to do something, to perform

something. Competence & Language: it is one´s knowldege of the system

of a language (rules of grammar, vocabulary)-all the pieces of language and how they fit together.

COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE

Performance

It is the overtly observable and concrete manifestation or realization of competence.

It is the actual production (speaking, writing) or the comprehension (listening, reading) of linguistic events.

COMPREHENSION AND PRODUCTION

They are both aspects of competence and performance.

Children seem to understand more than they actually produce like adults do. 

NATURE OR NURTURE?

Even if Nativists insist that a child is born with an innate knowledge toward language, there are a number of problems.

The innateness is important, but we should not ignore the environmental factors.

Language is both acquired and learned

UNIVERSALS

Children go through similar Universal Language Acquisition stages regardless of cultural and social circumstances.

Language is universally acquired in the same manner, and the deep structure of language at its deepest level may be common to all languages.

According to Maratsos (1988), universal linguistic categories such as word order, morphological marking tone, agreement, reduced reference of nouns and noun clauses, verbs and verb classes, predication, negation and question formation are common to all languages.

There are principles and parameters which specify some limited possibilities of variation.

Parameters determines ways in which languages can vary.

SYSTEMATICITY AND VARIABILITY

Systematicity means that children show a remarkable ability to infer the phonological, structural, lexical and semantic system of language.

However, in the midst of all this systematicity, there is an equal amount of variability in the process of learning.

This means that something children once learned may easily be changed or forgotten due to the perception of new language systems.

LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

Piaget claimed that cognitive development affects language.

On the other hand, others claimed that language has an effect on thought.

The truth is that language and thought are closely related.

IMITATION

One of the most important strategies a child uses in language learning is imitation.

Behaviorists assume one type of imitation, but a deeper level of imitation is much more important in the process of language acquisition.

When children imitate the surface structure of the language, they are not able to understand what they are imitating.

PRACTICE

A behavioristic model of first language acquisition would claim that practice - repetition and association – is the key to the formation of habits by operant conditioning.

Practice is usually regarded as referring to speaking only. But we can also think about comprehension practice.

The child learns not only how to initiate a conversation but how to respond to another’s initiating utterance and recognize the function of the discourse.

INPUT

The role of input in the child’s acquisition of language is very important.

Children can speak what they hear. Adult and peer input to the child is far more crucial that

nativists earlier thought. Adult input shapes the child’s acquisition and the interaction

patterns between child and parent change according to the increasing language skill of the child.

DISCOURSE

Berko-Gleason mentioned that interaction, rather than exposure, is required in order for successful first language acquisition to take place and children learn language in the context of being spoken to.

Sinclair and Coulthard proposed that conversations should be examined in terms of initiations and responses.

2ND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORY

KRASHEN'S THEORY OF SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION CONSISTS OF FIVE MAIN HYPOTHESES

Acquisition-Learning hypothesis,

Monitor hypothesis,

Input hypothesis,

Natural Order hypothesis,

Affective Filter hypothesis.

ACQUISITION-LEARNING HYPOTHESIS

The Acquisition-Learning distinction is the most important of all the hypotheses in Krashen's theory and the most widely known and influential among linguists and language practitioners.

According to Krashen there are two independent systems of second language performance: 'the acquired system' and 'the learned system'. The 'acquired system' or 'acquisition'  is the product of a subconscious process very similar to the process children undergo when they acquire their first language.

The 'learned system' or 'learning' is the product of formal instruction and it comprises a conscious process which results in conscious knowledge 'about' the language, for example knowledge of grammar rules. 

THE MONITOR HYPOTHESIS

the acquisition system is the utterance initiator, while the learning system performs the role of the 'monitor' or 'editor.' The monitor helps a person polish their speech or writing and may be over-used (ex, heavy concern about mistakes). Usually extroverts are under-users of the monitor, while introverts and perfectionists are over-users.

NATURAL ORDER HYPOTHESIS,

For any given language, some grammatical structures tend to be acquired early while others late. This does not mean teachers should delay introducing those language structures because students will not reliably reproduce them until later (perhaps much later). Students need more repeated exposure to natural-sounding language input over a longer time to acquire these elements of the target language. 

INPUT HYPOTHESIS

The learner progresses along the 'natural order' as he/she receives second language 'input' that is one step beyond his/her current linguistic competence. If a learner already has acquired language competence ‘i,’ they will acquire more language through exposure to comprehensible input ‘i + 1.’ Krashen believes natural communicative input will provide all learners with ‘i + 1’ regardless of each learner’s current level of competence.

AFFECTIVE FILTER HYPOTHESIS

Krashen claims that learners with low motivation, low self-esteem, and/or debilitating anxiety can 'raise' the affective filter and form a 'mental block’ to their progress. Teachers will want to plan lessons that reduce these hindrances by providing interesting, even compelling, content (from the learners’ perspective, not the teacher’s) and by not shaming learners for errors or over-using correction techniques that cause anxiety.