1. WEEK 2
24-28th
June 2013
Language acquisition and learning –
key concepts and issues:
• Language Learner
• Acquisition versus learning

2. Language Learner
(taken from Lightbown & Spada)
1st
and 2nd
language learners pass through many
similar sequences of development. Among the
sequences are:
1.The use of grammatical morphemes such as –
ing, past tense, possessive ‘s’, etc.
2.The acquisition of negation in English. Learners
from different 1st
language backgrounds behave
differently in the stages:
Stage 1: the negative element ‘no’ or ‘not’ is
typically placed before the verb e.g. No bicycle. I
not like it.

3. Stage 2: ‘no’ and ‘not’, ‘can’ and ‘should’ may
alternate with ‘don’t’. E.g.
He don’t like it. I don’t can sing.
Stage 3: Learners begin to place the negative
element after auxiliary verbs like ‘are’, ‘is’ and
‘can’. The ‘don’t form is still not fully
analysed. E.g. You can not go there. He was
not happy. She don’t like rice.

4. Stage 4: ‘Do’ is marked for tense, person and
number and most inter-language sentences
appear just like those of the target language.
E.g. It doesn’t work. We didn’t have supper.
For some time, however, learners may
continue to mark tense, person and number
on both the auxiliary and the verb. E.g.
I didn’t went there.
She doesn’t wants to go.

5. 3.Developmental stages for formation of
questions:
Stage 1: single words, formulae or fragments
e.g. ‘a dog?’, ‘four children?’.
Stage 2: declarative word order: no inversion,
no fronting e.g. ‘The boys threw the shoes?’
Stage 3: Fronting: wh-fronting, no inversion e.g.
‘What the dog are playing?’, do-fronting e.g.
‘Do you have a shoes on the picture?’, other-
fronting e.g. ‘Is the picture has two planets on
top?’

6. Stage 4: Inversion in wh-+copula (a linking verb)
and ‘yes/no’ questions.
wh-+copula e.g. ‘Where is the sun?’
auxiliary other than ‘do’ in ‘yes/no’ questions e.g.
‘Is there a fish in the water?’
Stage 5: Inversion in wh-questions.
Inverted wh-questions with ‘do’ e.g. ‘How do you
say [proche]?
Inverted wh-questions with auxiliaries other than
‘do’ e.g. ‘What’s the boy doing?’

7. Stage 6: Complex questions
question tag: e.g. ‘It’s better, isnt it?’
negative questions: ‘Why cant you go?’
embedded questions: ‘Can you tell me what
the date is today?’

8. 4. Relative clauses: Learners first acquire
relative clauses which refer to nouns in the
subject and direct object positions, later
learn to use them to modify nouns in indirect
object and object in preposition.
Part of Speech Relative clause
Subject The girl who was sick went home.
Direct object The story that I read was long.
Indirect object The man whom I gave the present to
was absent.
Object of preposition I found the book that John was talking
about

9. 5. Reference to the past: the pattern is similar
across learners.
In the beginning, may just mention events in
order, time and place to show the event
occurred. E.g. My son came. He work in
restaurant. December. Its very cold.
Later, learners start to attach grammatical
morpheme which shows that the verb is
marked for the past. E.g. The people worked
in the field. Even then, learners may still
make errors by saying ‘She rided her bicycle’.

10. Language Acquisition
• Acquisition of language is
a subconscious process of which the
individual is not aware.
• One is unaware of the process as it is
happening and when the new knowledge
is acquired, the acquirer generally does
not realize that he or she possesses any
new knowledge.

11.  This is the process that children undergo
when learning their native language.
 Acquisition requires meaningful interaction
in the target language, during which the
acquirer is focused on meaning rather
than form.

12. Acquisition Versus Learning
Acquisition –
Children are born with an innate
biological “device” for understanding the
principles and organization common to all
languages.
According to this theory, the brain’s
“language module” gets programmed to
follow the specific grammar of the
language a child is exposed to early in life.

13.  The language rules and grammar children
use in their speech often exceed the input
to which they are exposed.
 What accounts for this discrepancy?
 That is where the theory of universal grammar
comes in.
 This theory posits that all languages have
the same basic structural foundation.

14.  Children are not genetically “hard-wired” to
speak a particular language - universal
grammar lets them learn the rules and
patterns of these languages - including
those they were never explicitly taught.

15. • Some linguists believe that universal
grammar and its interaction with the rest of
the brain is the design mechanism that
allows children to become fluent in any
language during the first few years of life.
• Childhood may be a critical period for the
acquisition of language capabilities.

16. • Some scientists claim that if a person
does not acquire any language before the
teen-aged years, they will never do so in a
functional sense.
• Children may also have a heightened
ability, compared to adults, to learn
second languages--especially in natural
settings. (Adults, however, may have some advantages in the
conscious study of a second language in a classroom setting.)

17.  Some researchers place greater emphasis
on the influence of usage and experience in
language acquisition.
 Adults play an important role in language
acquisition by speaking to children— often
in a slow, grammatical and repetitious
way.

18.  Children acquire language at a very rapid
rate, and most children's speech is
relatively grammatical by age three.
 Normal children are able to hear and
understand reasonably complex syntax,
including rules of inflection and
pluralization, and remember irregular
verbs and nouns without ever having a
direct lesson in grammar or speech.

19.  Complete a graphic organizer to show the
differences between 1st
and 2nd
Language
Acquisition in the different of a person’s
life.
* Present the graphic organizer to the class.

20. • According to Krashen’s acquisition-
learning hypothesis, there are two ways
for adult second language learners to
develop knowledge of second language :
acquisition and learning.
• Acquisition and learning: This theory is at
the core of modern language acquisition
theory, and is perhaps the most
fundamental of Krashen's theories
on Second Language Acquisition.