Chapter three from Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. By George Lasluisa

1. CHAPTER 3:
Age and Acquisition
By George Lasluisa
Brown H. Douglas. (2014). Principles of Language Learning and
Teaching (4th ed.). NewYork, USA: Pearson Education, Inc.

2. Hemispheric Lateralization
• When the human brain matures, it lateralizes
functions to the right and left hemispheres.
• Language functions appear to be controlled by
the left hemisphere.
• When does lateralization take place?
• Eric Lenneberg (1967) from 2 years to puberty.
• Thomas Scovel (1969) plasticity prior puberty
allows to aquire 1st and 2nd language.
• Norman Geschwind (1970) earlier than puberty.
• Stephen Krashen (1973) around age of five.
Left
hemisphere
Right
hemisphere

3. BiologicalTimetables
Early ages:
Lower-order
processes like
pronunciation.
Late maturation:
Higher-order
language
functions like
semantic
relations
• Aspects of a second language are learned optimally at different ages:

4. Right Hemispheric
Participation
• Obler (1981) exposed significant right
hemisphere participation particularly in the
early stages of acquiring a second language.
• Strategies of guessing meanings, use of
formulaic utterances, etc.
• Genesee (1982) right hemisphere is involved in
complex language processing, opposed to
Obler in early language acquisition.
• Obler later found in a study that adults can
also be benefited from the right hemisphere.
• Jane Hill (1970), non-Western societies had
evidence that adults can perfectly acquire a
second language.
• Sorenson (1967), two dozen languages are
spoken in the region of theTukano culture.
Young people speak 2 or 3 languages and
acquire more while getting older.
Atropological
Evidence

5. To consider age on second language acquisition.We must focus on the Operational Stage.When a person is
capable of abstraction, formal thinking.
• Ellen Rosansky (1975), language acquisition takes
place when children are ‘centered’.
• The lack of flexibility improves focus on one
dimension at a time.
• Children acquire language when they are not
aware of societal values and attitudes.
• Logical and anecdotal counterevidence
Logical
Superior
intellect
facilitates
complex
activities.
Anecdotal
Successful adult language
learners were fully aware of
their learning process and
looked for extracurricular
learning tolos.

6. Lateralization
hypothesis
• While becoming adults, the left hemisphere
becomes more dominant.
Left and Right
hemispheres.
Analytical
and
intelectual
functions
Emotional
functions
Rote and Meaningful
Learning
Children
Practice and
imitation are
meaningful
learning.
Adults
Developing
greater
concentration
is a good
ability for rote
learning.

7. Piaget Equilibration
• Cognitively talking, it is continuously moving from estates of doubt to states
of solutions.To look for a way to stay equilibrated.
• Disequilibrium may provide motivation for language acquisition until
reaching equilibrium in adulthood and acquiring the needed language.
• Children are indifferent to contradictions, intellectual growth makes them
aware of these ambiguities.
• At the age of 14 or 15 youngsters are aware and intolerant to contradictions
making overwhelming the acquisition of a new language.

8. • Humans are emotional creatures.
• Very young children are highly egocentric.The world revolves around them.
• When children grow they are more self-conscious and they seek to define
and understand self-identity.
• In preadolescence, develop consciousness means being aware and conceive
insecurity.They develop inhibitions fearing to expose too much.
• At puberty, inhibitions grow to physical, cognitive and emotional changes.
This affects their ego.
• Ego is linked to our mother tongue, a second language does not mean any
threat to ego for children.
Affective domain includes
Empathy Self-esteem Extroversion Inhibition Imitation Anxiety

9. Other affective factors.
• Ego identification, the study of a second language as the acquisition of a
second identity.
• Attitudes in language learning. A young children without notion of culture,
ethnic groups, stratus, language, etc. are better language learners due to
the lack of ideology and stereotypes.
• Peer pressure, if adults can understand a second language speaker, they can
provide positive feedback and encourage them.

10. Billingualism
• Coordinate billinguals, children that learn 2
languages in separated contexts.
• Compound billinguals, they have only one
meaning system for both languages.
• Code-switching, inserting words from one
language to the other one.
• Children learning a second language use a
creative construction process. Just like the
first language.
• The acquisition of morphemes was the same
between English first language learners and
English second language learners. Eleven
morphemes.
• Some argued that eleven morphemes are just
a small part of English syntax.
Order of acquisition

11. Interference
Between first and Second
Language
• Linguistic and cognitive processes of second
language in general are similar to first
language in children.
• Mistakes are made by intralingual strategies
instead of interference errors from the first
language.
In Adults
• Adults learning a second language, manifest
some of the same errors of children in their
first language.
• The first language is used to bridge gaps of the
second language.
• The first language is a facilitating factor
instead of a interfering factor.