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First language vs. Second language learning

First language vs. Second language learning . Language series for French 101 Spring 2006 Professor Virginia Scott. What’s the connection?. The first presentation ended with a question about where you think you are on the BILINGUAL CONTINUUM ----x---------------------------------------x--

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First language vs. Second language learning

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  1. First language vs.Second language learning Language series for French 101 Spring 2006 Professor Virginia Scott

  2. What’s the connection? • The first presentation ended with a question about where you think you are on the BILINGUAL CONTINUUM ----x---------------------------------------x-- incipient balanced • This presentation is designed to make you think about how first and second language acquisition are (not) similar.

  3. Questions about L1 acquisition … • Do children have to be “taught” how to speak? • Do children generate creative utterances? • How long does it take a child to become “fluent” in her native language? • What does it mean when a child says “I seed the dog” or “Daddy eated his supper” ?

  4. Three theories: Environmentalist Nativist Interactionist

  5. Environmentalist theories • Environment shapes learning and behavior • Children react to their surroundings • Children learn language from • Input • Trial and error • Error correction

  6. Nativist theories • Children do not need any kind of formal teaching to learn to speak. • Children are born with a natural capacity to learn language. • The brain contains systems for recognizing patterns of sound.

  7. Noam Chomsky’s L-A-D Chomsky’s theory of the LAD (Language Acquisition Device) states that every human is born with innate principles of language. Children learn language spontaneously and speak creatively. The “poverty of the stimulus theory” states that what children hear is incomplete and often ungrammatical, and cannot account for the creativity of their utterances.

  8. Critical period hypothesis: • There is a critical period for language learning. • There is no agreement about how long this sensitive period lasts. • Genie – the American wild child – provided evidence that language cannot be learned after puberty.

  9. Genie … In the fall of 1970, social workers took custody of a 13-year-old child who had spent much of her life chained to a potty chair in her bedroom. She could not speak, walk, or respond to other people. She was called "Genie." Her case attracted psychologists who were interested in finding out whether she could still learn to speak. At the time, some linguists, led by MIT's Noam Chomsky, believed that human speech is a genetically programmed ability. Eric Lenneberg, a neuropsychologist, agreed with Chomsky and added further that if a person did not learn to speak by adolescence, then the natural ability to learn language might be lost forever. This theory was the so-called "critical period hypothesis." Although Genie's situation was one that scientists would never create intentionally to test their theories, her unfortunate circumstances made her a prime candidate for experimentation. Genie was past puberty. If she could still learn language, it would cast doubt on the critical period hypothesis. Ultimately, Genie's caretakers were criticized for combining their research with her treatment.

  10. Genie … Genie's vocabulary grew by leaps and bounds, but she was still not able to string words together into meaningful sentences. Normal children begin by learning to say simple sentences, like "No have toy." Soon they are able to say "I not have toy." Eventually they will learn to say, "I do not have the toy.' Later they will refine the sentence to say, "I don't have the toy." Genie seemed to be stuck at the first stage. We do learn many words from experience, from seeing, hearing, reading, and asking. But some scientists think that learning how to speak in sentences and sensing how words get put together in logical order also depends on something that is built into our brains from birth. Was Genie's brain missing something which was necessary for learning language?

  11. Genie … Over the next couple of years, some scientists concluded that Genie was not mentally retarded, even though she was still unable to master language. She was brilliant at nonverbal communication. Sometimes she would be so frustrated at not being able to say what she wanted that she would grab a pencil and paper and in a few strokes, illustrate fairly complex ideas and even feelings. She scored the highest recorded score ever on tests that measure a person's ability to make sense out of chaos and to see patterns. Her abilities to understand and to think logically were also strong. She had a perfect score on an adult-level test that measured spatial abilities. One test required that she use a set of colored sticks to recreate a complicated structure from memory. She was not only able to build the structure perfectly, she built it with sticks of the exact same color as the first structure! Despite all this, Genie remained unable to master the basics of language. http://www.feralchildren.com/en/showchild.php?ch=genie

  12. Interactionist theories: • Children require interaction with a care-giver to develop language. • Children follow the attention of the care-giver and learn to direct the attention of the care-giver; these activities involve intention reading and pattern finding skills. • Communication is 3-way: child, adult, object. • Language structure emerges from language use.

  13. Questions about L2 acquisition … • Does an adult learn a second language the way a child learns a first language? • If not, what happened to the LAD? • Is there a critical period for L2 acquisition? • Which is better … classroom learning or immersion experience? • Is the order of acquisition at all parallel in L1 and L2? • presence /absence = pronouns • linear time = tenses • hypothesizing = conditional

  14. L1/L2 -- similar or different processes? Some theorists argue that L2 learners have access to the innate universal grammar that is activated by the LAD. Some theorists argue that there is a fundamental difference between L1 and L2 acquisition. Reasons include: • lack of guaranteed success • variability in degree of attainment • adults benefit from formal instruction • role of goals, attitude, motivation, aptitude in final attainment • intuition about L2 grammaticality is not reliable

  15. L1A / L2A connections? uno, dos, tres … Un, deux, trois … Does she use L1 to acquire L2? Do you?

  16. Adult L2 learning relies on… • general problem-solving systems • general understanding about the nature of human interaction • intentional / purposeful motivation • L1 competence

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