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Language Learning Summary
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Instructed Language Learning Seminar Summary
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Summary Summer Term 2022Seminar - Instructed Language Learning
Session 1: First Language Acquisition (L1)
L1 acquisition
• Shows high degree of similarity in the early language of children all over the
world
• Useful to characterize basic milestones
• Meaningful to study development sequences
Basic L1 acquisition milestones:
First year small babies
• Earliest vocalizations: crying, babbling, …
• Hear subtle phoneme differences (pa vs. ba)
end of first year
• First words
• Good understanding of frequent words
• Begin to imitate words and speech sounds
2 years production of at least 50 words
telegraphic speech
• Baby fall down
• More outside → I want to go outside again (beyond imitation)
comprehension of more sophisticated language
school years developing sophisticated metalinguistic awareness
vocabulary growth at high rate
acquisition of different registers
• Learn the social functions of language
Developmental sequences or stages:
• Predicable patterns in the emergence and development of many language
features (e.g., questions, negations)
o Grammatical morpheme orders:
Dr. Simon Ruiz 1
,Summary Summer Term 2022
1 present progressive -ing (mommy running)
2 plural -s (two books)
3 irregular past forms (baby went)
4 possessive ‘s (daddy’s hat)
5 copula (Annie is happy)
6 articles the and a
7 regular past -ed (she walked)
8 third person singular simple present -s (she runs)
9 auxiliary be (she is coming)
• Acquisition proceeds in this particular sequence, not at a particular age or rate
(Built-in syllabus)
Explaining L1 acquisition
a. Behaviorist perspective
• Behaviorism
• Language acquisition:
o Imitation
o Practice
o Feedback on success
o Habit formation
• Environment is the key factor
b. Innatist perspective
• Universal Grammar, Generative Linguistics
• Language acquisition is innately determined:
o Universal Grammar is part of biological endowment
o Innate grammatical knowledge (The Language Acquisition Device
(LAD))
o Only specific parameter setting for individual language need to be ac-
quired
• Critical Period Hypothesis: “Setting of parameters” (i.e., characteristics of hu-
man languages) must happen in early childhood
• Environment has relatively little impact
Dr. Simon Ruiz 2
,Summary Summer Term 2022
c. Interactionist/Developmental Perspective
• Language acquisition:
o One instance of a child’s ability to learn from experience
o The result of a combination of
§ Biological endowment → powerful general learning mechanism
§ Environment → learning from experience
Summary
• L1 acquisition follows similar developmental paths
• There are three main positions in L1 acquisition:
o Behavioristic
o Innatist
o Developmental
• L1 acquisition theories:
o Proposed to explain L2 acquisition
Session 2: Second Language Acquisition (L2)
L2 acquisition
• Shows high degree of variability among learners
o Different types of learners
o Different learning conditions
• Longlife process
• Nonlinear process
• Involves developing a new language system, or interlanguage
Approaches to SLA
a. Behaviorism
• Language Learning:
o Imitation
o Practice
o Reinforcement (or feedback on success)
o Habit formation
• Inspired audiolingual teaching materials
o Emphasis on pattern drills → memorizing
Dr. Simon Ruiz 3
, Summary Summer Term 2022
• Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH)
o Lexical and grammatical similarities between L1 and L2 → should facili-
tate learning
o Differences → should cause interference
o Counterargument: imitation or interference cannot fully explain all learn-
ers’ errors
b. Innatist Perspective
• Universal Grammar
o Basis of L1 but not for L2 past critical period
• Instruction and feedback
o Only change superficial aspects of language performance
o Little to no effect on systematic knowledge of new language
o L2 learners may need explicit information about what is not grammatical
• Focus on competence underlying performance
Krashen’s Monitor Model
Five Hypotheses
1. Acquisition vs. • Unconscious acquisition
Learning Hypothesis o Via language used for communica-
tion
o No attention to language form
o Results in unconscious knowledge
• Conscious learning
o Via attention to forms and rules
o Results in conscious knowledge
2. Input Hypothesis • Acquisition → via exposure to lan-
guage that is comprehensible and
contains i+1
o i: learner’s current interlanguage
system
o +1: language (words, structures)
one step beyond
Dr. Simon Ruiz 4
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