Practicals made during the course.

1. Teachers: Estela Braun, Vanesa Cabral and Joana Herrán.
Students: Ana Paula Martínez and Paola Nieto.
Practical N° 7.
Young children acquiring/learning languages.
1. The quality of a teacher is defined in terms of how much learning he/she can
help learners construct. Hence, teaching has to start from learning, from
focusing on how children learn. A foreing teacher needs to be acquainted
with theories that account for language acquisition, both L1 and L2 wether
second or foreign. Once teachers understand how learning develops on a
child, and how a child acquires language, they are in a position to make
informed desicions concerning what they need to do as regards teaching so
as to facilitate learning in children. The teacher’s role is key to laning since
teachers are the ones who can create the opportunity in class for children to
learn.This does not mean the teacher is placed at the centre. He/she is seen
as the profesional responsable for creating learning opportunities which
each child in each context needs for learning to take place. Teaching
English to develop the communicative competence in leaners means that it
has an instrumental value; it allows learners to enjoy themselves. Thus,
language is used as a tool to construct and understand meanings. This
instrumental aspects is crucial for learning and teaching English, but it is
important to highlight that we as teachers have to help children grow into
active participants in society. English should not be seen as an isolated
subject within the curriculum, but as forming part of an educational Project.
Moreover, in order to créate awareness of how English Works, teachers
need to provide plenty of opportunities for children to acquire the language.
They mediate according to what is meaningfull to their learners, they provide
what Bruner referred to as “scaffolding” which means a variety of
instructional techniques used to move students progressively towards strong
understanding, and greater Independence in the process of learning.
Teachers should provide levels of support that help students to reach higher
levels of comprehension and skill acquisition that they would not be able to
achieve otherwise. Scaffolding is an essential element of effective teaching,
and it is often used to bridge certain learning gaps. For example: if students
are not at the reding level required to undrstand a text taught is class, the

2. theacher may use scaffolding to incrementally improve thei Reading ability
unil they can read that text withouth assistance. By doing this, we as
teachers reduce the negative emotions such as frustration, and
discouragement when attempting a difficult task without assistance. Finally,
teachers generate their personal thories learning in five ways: through
planning, teaching, resources and time available, and reflection. The more
experience the teacher gains, the more the behaviour will be refined so as
to modify his/her behaviour.
What is more, as children are excellent observers and have a natural ability
to grasp meaning in their L1, teachers can help learners to contextualize
language with visual support wherever posible. As children learning their L1
repeat words and phrases until they get it, teachers may be guided by
children’s reactions to know when they have to stop doing it. Children love
talking, and even if they do not know the language, they use intonation
patterns, teachers should provide opportunities for meaningful
communication activities wherever posible. They need to creat a balance in
the classrooms. If the language work is over-guided it becomes too easy,
and children may feel demotivated.
All in all, all these suggestions are the first way to ensure we do not
underestimate pupil’s capabilities, and that we focus on a learning-centred
language curriculum.
2. The Critical Period Hypothesis (Chomsky) is a long-standing debate in
linguistics and language acquisition over the extent to which the ability to
acquire language is biologically linked to age. It says that there is a period of
growth in which full native competence is posible when acquiring a
language. There is an ideal time window to acquire language in a
linguistically rich environment, after which further language acquisition
becomes much more difficult and effortful. This period is from early
chidhood to adolescence. The first five years of life are crucial in which an
individual can acquire a first language if it is presented with an adequate
stimuli. It is the theory in which animals, including humans, are genetically
programmed to acquire certain kinds of knowledge and skill at specific times
in life. Without language input, children will never acquire the full command
of language, especially gramatical systems.
3. The telegraphic speech: by the end of their first year, most babies
understand quite a few repeated words. They wave when someone says
“bye bye”, they clap when someone says “pat-a-cake”. At 1 year old, mot
babies will have begun to produce a word or two that everyone recognizes.
By the age of two, most children reliably produce at least fifty different words
into simple sentences as “mommy juice”. These sentences are called
telegraphic because they leave out such things as articles, prepositions, and

3. auxiliary verbs. We reognize them as sentences because even though
FUNCTION WORDS and GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES are missing, the
Word order reflects the Word order of the language they are hearing and
because the combined words have a meaning relationship that makes them
more than just a list of words. The name telegraphic derives from the fact
that someone sending a telegram was generally charged by the Word. SO,
in order to save money, people typically wrote their telegrams in a very
compressed style, without conjunctions or articles. As children develop
language, they speak similarly, for example: “daddy here” it is understood
that the child means “daddy is here”, omitting the copula.
4. In the 1960s, several researchers focused on how children acquire
grammatical morphemes in English. In a longitudinal study, Roger Brown
found that 14 grmmatical morphemes were acquired in a similar sequence.
Present progressive-ing (mommy running)
Plural-s (two books)
Irregular past forms (baby went)
Possessive ‘s (Daddy’s hat)
Copula (Annie is happy)
Articles the an a
Regular past –ed (She walked)
Third person singular simple present-s (He is coming)
Brown found that a child who had mastered the gramatical morphemes at
the bottom of the list was sure to have mastered those at the top, but the
reverse was not true. So, this is a developmental sequence or order of
acquisition. However, the children did not acquire the morhemes at the
same age or rate. Brown’s longitudinal work was confirme dina cross-
sectional study of twenty children, the children mastered the morphemes at
different ages. The order of morphemes is determined by an interaction
among a number of different factors.
5. Negation: children learn the functions of negation very early. That is, they
learn to comment on the disappearance of objects, to refuse a suggestion,
or reject an assertion, even at the single word stage.
Stage 1: negation expressed by the Word “no”, either all alone or as the first
Word in the utterance. “No. No cookie. No comb hair”.

4. Stage 2: the negative Word appears just before the verb. Sentences
expressing rejection or prohibition often use “don´t”. “Daddy no comb hair”.
“Don´t touch that”!.
Stage 3: the negative element is inserted into a more complex sentence.
Children may add forms of the negative other than “no”, including words like
“can´t”, and “don´t”. For example: “I can´t do it”.
Stage 4: children begin to attach the negative element to the correct form of
auxiliary verbs such as “do” and “be”.
Questions: there is a predictable order in which children learn questions.
Wh-words emerge as part of a chunk (“whassat”?), and it is some time
before the child learns that there are variations of the form, such as “What is
that?”.
Where and who emerge very soon. Adults tend to ask children this type of
questions: “Where is Mommy?”, or “Who’s that?”.
Why emerges around the end of the second year and becomes a favourite
for the next year or two. “Why that lady has blue hair?”. Finally, when the
child has a better understanding of manner and time, “how” and “when”
emerge. “When can we go outside”. The ability to use these question words
is at least partly tied to children’s cognitive development.
When wh- words appear in subordinate clauses or embedded questions,
children overgeneralize the inverted form that would be correct for simple
questions and produce sentences such as: "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.
6. Restructuring language takes place when children say a sentence wrongly
and their parents expand or recast the sentence into a grammatically correct
sentence instead of saying that they have made a mistake. Listening to
parents’ inputs, then children will improve.
7. When children say a sentence wrongly, their parents expand or recast the
sentence into a grammatically correct sentence instead of saying that they
have made a mistake. So, recasting allows children to imitate word-for-word
all or part of someone else’s utterance.
8. A mother talking to her Little child of 16 months.
Mother: Now we’re nearly dressed… OK now over your head… good boy…
put in you other hand…now shoes. Where are your shoes?
Child: Sus…

5. Mother: Yes. Your shoes. Where are they? (Both look around for the shoes).
Mother: Oh There. Look…your shoes…on the chair.
Child: Sus…sus.
Mother: Yes shoes.
This kind of talk is called caretaker talk, parents as cares talk to help the
development of their child’s language. Teachers in school can do the same
with children learning English as a second language. Thus, young children
only acquire the language they hear around them. They look on you as you
are their teacher, listen to you and try to make sense of what you say.
The features of caretaker talk help learners acquire new language naturally.
9) The pictures from “Baby Blues” show that the little girl made a mistake
when she said “drewed” instead of “drew”. The mother instead of explaining
that she had made a mistake, she recasted what her daughter said in the
correct way. The mother said “You drew this picture for me” and the girl
answered: “I know that! I’m the one that drawed it”, in this case the girl is
more interested in who was the doer of the action rather than in the verbal
mistake.
The second example is: allgone sock
bye bye boat
more wet
Katherine sock
hi Mommy
allgone sticky
it ball
dirty sock
The third one is: The experimenter would then say to the child, pointing to the
picture, “This is a wug”.
The fourth one is: Phase 1: broke, brought; Phase 2: breaked, bringed, and Phase
3: broke, brought are typical errors of overgeneralization which is the application of
a grammatical rule in cases where it does not apply. In this case, as many regular
verbs have -ed some children tend to confuse them as they add -ed to every single
past tense.
The last one: Cat stand up table. ----> The definite article “the”, the third person in
“stand”, the preposition “on” and another article “the” are missing. The right way of
saying it is: The cat stands up on the table.
What that?---> the verb to be (in this case “is”) is missing
He play little tune.----> the action is done by a third person so the
correct form of the verb “play” is “plays”

6. Andrew want that.---> the action is done by a third person so the
correct form of the verb “want” is “wants”.
Cathy build house.--->the indefinite article “a” is missing
No sit there.---> the auxiliary verb is missing (Do not sit there)
Ride truck.---> the definite article “the” is missing
Show Mommy that.---> in this case, the child probably confused the
word order as she/he is actually trying to ask her/his mom to show her/him
something. The correct word order would be: “Mommy show me that”.