A practice paper about young children acquiring/ learning languages.

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Practical n.º 7.
Young Children acquiring/ learning languages.
Read chapter 1, BY Lightbown & Spada (2009), chapter 2, Brewster, Ellis & Girard
(2007) and examples from Slattery & Willis (2007) and explain in detail.
1- First language acquisition helps teachers because children already have
experience of language, life and other natural abilities acquired before learning a second
language.
As teachers, we should help children to acquire the second language easily by
contextualizing the materials in order to facilitate the learning.
We can help children by using English in class as the main language for communication,
we should use gestures, actions and pictures to help pupils understand topics. Also, it is
very important to answer children in English as much as possible.
2- The Critical Period Hypothesis is related to the comparison of the second
language with the first one. Chomsky´s idea is that animals and humans are genetically
programmed to acquire humans are genetically programmed to acquire certain kinds of
knowledge add skills at specific times in life. If there is no exposure in infancy or early
childhood, it is very difficult to acquire the first language.
3- Telegraphic speech is a way of communication through sentences made up of
content words such as nouns, verbs and adjectives. All function words as articles,
prepositions, pronouns and auxiliary verbs are left out. We can recognize them as
sentences because they follow syntactic rules and they present semantic connections.
For example: “mommy juice”, “baby fall down”
4-Each individual acquires the grammatical morphemes at a different pace, but the
order of acquisition is similar. The order of acquisition of morphemes is determined by an
interaction among a number of different factors. The following list shows some of the
morphemes that researches studied:
*present progressive -ing
*plural -s
*irregular past forms
*possessive ´s
*copula
*articles the and a
*regular past -ed
*third person singular simple present -s
*auxiliary be
5- Negation: Children learn the functions of negation, learning to comment on the
disappearance of objects, to refuse a suggestion, or reject an assertion, using the
appropriate words and word order.
Stage 1: expressed by the word NO. Example: No. No cookie.

2. Corral Lucrecia, Viñati Camila
Stage 2: longer sentences that include the subject expressing rejection or prohibition. Use
of DON´T. Example: Don´t touch that!
Stage 3: the negation is inserted into a more complex sentences. In this stage children
may add forms of the negative CAN´T and DON´T. However, children do not yet vary these
forms for different persons or tenses:
Example: I can´t do it. He don´t want it.
Stage 4: children can produce the different morphological forms of do and be.
Example: She doesn´t want it. You didn´t have supper.
Questions: “What” is the first wh-question word to be used and it is learnt as part of
a chunk.
“Where” and “Who” emerge very soon and are used to identify and locate people and
objects.
“Why” emerges around the end of the second year and it is useful for children to engage in
conversation.
Finally, “How” and “When” emerge for a better understanding of manner and time.
Stage 1: single words or two or three word sentences said with a rising intonation.
Example: Mummy book?
They may produce correct questions that may have learnt as chunks. Example: What’s
that?
Stage 2: declarative sentences with rising intonation. Example: I have some?
Stage 3: children notice that the structure of questions is different and begin to produce
questions such as: Can I go?
To describe this, we need to see the pattern from the child´s perspective. We call this
stage ‘fronting’ because the child´s rule seems to be that questions are formed by putting
something, a verb form or question word, at the ‘front’ of the sentence.
Example: Is the teddy is tired?
Stage 4: the questions resemble those on stage 3 but with some improvement in the
number and use of auxiliaries.
Example: Are you going to dance with me?
Stage 5: wh- and yes/no questions are framed correctly.
Example: Why din´t you come? Do you have to?
Negative questions might still be too difficult.
Example: Why the teddy bear can´t go outside?
Problems with wh- embedded/subordinate clauses; overgeneralization of inverted forms.
Example: Ask him why can´t he go out.
Stage 6:at this stage children are able to correctly form all question types, including
negative and complex embedded questions.

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6-Restructuring language is the process in which an adult helps a child acquire
language through expansion, recasting, paraphrasing, correction or repetition. As adults
and children interact, adults will have to repeat or paraphrase so that children understand
messages. At the same time, through interaction, children find out whether they are
making themselves understood or not.
7- Recasting is a process by which adults enlarge in the correct way what the child
has said. It allows children to realize the mistakes they make. This is only achieved
through exposure, interaction, imitation and someone´s recasting or guidance.
8- Motherese or caretaker speech is essential to help learners acquire a new
language naturally. They provide a secure and supportive environment which gives the
children confidence to try out language during childhood. When it comes to ELT, teachers
have to remember and put into practice the features of this kind of speech in order to help
learners acquire the language.
9- In the first cartoon image, overgeneralization is reflected in the sense that the
child is more interested in the meaning he wants to convey rather than in the verb tense
(drawed- drew). Furthermore, the process of recasting is shown because the mother
repeats the whole utterance recasting the child´s mistake. Another process involved in this
cartoon is restructuring language where an adult (the mother) helps her son to acquire the
correct phrase by repeating or paraphrasing it.
In the second cartoon, the processes involved are:
Telegraphic speech: In this case, most of the sentences are made up of content words,
leaving out pronouns, articles, prepositions and auxiliary verbs.
Order of acquisition of morphemes: The child uses present simple structures in a wrong
way (uses of plurals: “He play little tune” instead of He plays little tune.) This is a case of
innate grammar rules.
Stages for negation and question: In this case, the child uses the first stage of negation
(“No sit there”). He also uses wrongly the wh-question word “What” which is the first one
that children learn (“What that?”).