This practice paper is about the aqcuisition of the second language in young and old learners. Made by Manuela Blanco & Agustina Sarmiento.

1. Blanco,Manuela
Sarmiento,Agustina
TP 7 - PRACTICE II
1) Principles of SLA (second language acquisition) are really helpful for teachers as they
are an important guide for them in teaching English as a second language. While
considerable SLA research has been devoted to language learning in a natural setting, there
have also been efforts made to investigate second-language acquisition in the classroom.
This kind of research has a significant overlap with language education, and it is mainly
concerned with the effect that instruction has on the learner. It also explores what teachers
do, the classroom context, the dynamics of classroom communication.
2) The Critical Age Period Hypothesis suggested that there is a specific limited time for
language acquisition, children who are not given access to language in infancy an early
childhood will never acquire language in these deprivations go on for too long. Some
researchers found that there are many important factors to consider aside from age, such as
motivation and learning conditions.
AGREGAR LO DEL FORO
3) By the age of two, children begin to combine words into simple sentences, such as
“Daddy milk”. These kind of sentences are called telegraphic speech, as they leave out the
articles, prepositions and auxiliary verbs.
4) Roger Brown found that in a longitudinal study of the language development of three
children, he found that fourteen grammatical morphemes were acquired in a remarkably
similar sequence:
 Present progressive –ing (Daddy sleeping).
 Plurals: -s (my toys)
 Irregular past forms (Daddy went)
 Possessive ‘s (Mommy’s dress)
 Copula (I am happy)
 Articles the/ a (an apple)
 Regular past –ed (Daddy shouted)
 Third person singular simple present (He runs)
 Auxiliary BE (I am listening).
Once a child has acquired the the grammatical morphemes that are at the bottom of the list,
it is sure that he/she has already learnt the previous ones. It wouldn’t happen on the other
way around. It is an evidence of an order of acquisition, which is better known as
“developmental sequence”.

2. Blanco,Manuela
Sarmiento,Agustina
5) Children learn the functions of negation in early childhood, using not only words but
also gestures. It takes some time before they can express them in sentences, using the
appropriate words and word order. We can recognize four stages of negation:
 STAGE 1: Negation is usually expressed by the word “no”. For example: No. No
sleep. No hungry.
 STAGE 2: The negation word appears just before the verb, and sentences
expressing rejection or prohibition often use “don’t”, like “Don´t go away”.
 STAGE 3: The negative element is inserted into a more complex sentence. Children
may add forms of the negative order than “no”, including words like “can’t”,
“don’t”. Example: “I can´t sleep. I don’t want cookies”.
 STAGE 4: Children begin to attach the negative element to the correct form of
auxiliary verb. “You don’t help me”. However, they may still have difficulty with
some other features related to negatives, such as “She doesn´t have no car”.
On the other hand, the stages of the questions are formed by:
STAGE 1: Questions are composed by single words or simple two- or three- word
sentences with rising tone intonation, like “Candies?”. Also, they may produce some
correct questions that they have been learned as chunks, such as “Where’s the dog?”.
STAGE 2: Children use the word order of declarative sentence, with rising intonation;
“You want this?”
STAGE 3: Children begin to produce questions such as: “Can you help me?” “Are you
happy?” We call this stage “fronting” because the child’s rule seems to be that questions
are formed by putting something, like a verb form or question word, at the front of a
sentence, leaving rest of the sentence in its statement form, like “Do I can play?”.
STAGE 4: In this stage, some questions are formed by subject-auxiliary inversion, like
“Are you going to play with me?” There is more variety in the auxiliaries that appear before
the subject. Also, they can even add “do” in questions in which there would be no auxiliary
in the declarative version of the sentence, such as “Do they go out?”
STAGE 5: Both wh- and yes/no questions are formed correctly, like “Are these your
boots?” However, negative questions may still be a bit too difficult, “Why I can´t go
outside?” There are some problems with inversion with wh questions.
STAGE 6: Children are able to correctly form all question types, including negative and
complex embedded questions. “Do you have another apple?”

3. Blanco,Manuela
Sarmiento,Agustina
6) The mental processes that underlie second-language acquisition can be broken down into
micro-processes and macro-processes. Micro-processes include attention; working
memory; integration and restructuring. Restructuring is the process by which learners
change their interlanguage systems. Macro-processes include the distinction between
intentional learning and incidental learning; and also the distinction between explicit and
implicit learning
7) A recast is a technique used in language teaching to correct learners' errors in such a
way that communication is not obstructed. To recast an error, an adult will repeat the error
back to the learner in a corrected form. Recasts are used both by teachers in formal
educational settings, and by parents in language acquisition.
8) The importance of motherese or caretaker speech is to help the development of child’s
language. Teachers in school can do the same with their learners. When young children are
learning English as a second language, they will only acquire the language they hear around
them, they will need to hear a lot of English, look on the teacher as their new carer, listen to
the teacher and try to make sense of what he/she says. These features of caretaker talk can
help learners acquire new language naturally. This motherese is characterized by a slower
rate of delivery, higher pitch, more varied intonation, shorter and simpler sentence patterns,
key words stressing, frequent repetition and paraphrasing.
9) In the cartoon “Baby Blues”, what the mother’s baby is doing is recasting the sentence.
Her baby made a mistake, a grammatical error, instead of saying drew he said drawed, so
she expanded his sentence into a grammatically correct way, to create a clearly
communication. The boy has overgeneralized the use of “ed” participles so he would need
lot of imputs and maturation. As regards the theory, it can be related with behaviourism as
he has created his own word, he has never heard it. Also, in relation with innatism, the boy
formed his own rules.