Language Acquisition Guide 2

1. Byron Benitez
Language Acquisition

2.  Learning a second language is a long and complex undertaking.
 We ask ourselves the why, how, who, what, when,where we will be learning the second
language.
 Teaching cannot be defined apart from learning. Teaching is guiding and facilitating
learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the conditions for learning.
First Language Adquisition
 There are theories about the acquisition of a first language , they give us several
approaches: behavioristic, nativist, functional.
 For centuries scientist and philosophers operated with the basic distinction between
competence and performance.
 Imitation is something that children always do in order to acquire a first language.
 The role of input in the child’s acquisition of language is crucial.

3.  The first step in investigating age and acquisition might be to dispel some myths about
the relationship between the first and second language acquisition.
 The comparators and contrast of these two topics have been studied for several authors
and for years.
 Neurological considerations are taken into account and how it affect the second
language access.
Human Learning
 We focus on how psychologist have defined LERNING, there are two theories from a
behavioristic point of view Pavlov and Skinner, one is rational and the other one is
cognitive.
 Another theory is AUSUBEL’S one, also Rogers and Vygostky who share son views in
common in their highlighting of the social and interactive nature of learning.

4.  THEORIES OF LEARNING
Behavouristic Cognitive Constructivist
Classical Operant
Pavlov Skinner Ausubel Rogers
Respondent
conditioning
Governened by
sequences
Meaninful = powerful Fully functioning
person
Elicited response Emitted response Rote = weak Learn how to learn
S - R R – S (reward) Subsution
Association
Community of
learners
No punishment Systematic forgetting Empowerment
Programment
instruction
Cognitive pruning

5.  Types of learnig
Signal learning, stimulus-respinse learning, chaining, verbal association, multiple
descrimination, concept learning, principle learning, problem solving.
Inductive reasoning , one stores a number of specific instances, and induces a general rule .
Deductive is a movement from a generalization to specific instances.
Styles and Strategies
Process is the most general of the three concepts, human beings universally engage in
association, transfer, generalization, and attrition.
Style is a term that refers to consistent and rather enduring tendencies or preferences within
an individual.
Strategies are specific methods of approaching a problem or task, modes of operation for
achieving a particular end, planned designs for controlling and manipulating certain
information.

6.  Affect refers to emotion or feeling, the levels of affective domain are: receiving,
responding and valuing, organization and understanding oneself.
 Myeres- Brigss character types: extroversion – introversion, sensing – intuition, thinking –
feeling, judging – perceiving.

8.  The stereotype may be accurate in
depicting the typical member of a
culture , but it is inaccurate for
describing a particular individual, simply
because every person is unique.
 Stereotyping usually implies some type of
attitude toward the culture or language I
question.
 Second language learning, involves the
acquisition of a second identity. This
creation of a second identity is at the
heart of a second learning, or what
some might call ACCULTURATION.

9.  It is common to describe culture shock as the second
of four successive stages of culture acquisition: STAGE 1
is a period of excitement and euphoria over the
newness of surroundings. STAGE 2 cultural shock
emerges as individuals feels the intrusion of more and
more cultural differences into their own images. STAGE 3
is one of gradual, and at the first tentative and
vacillating recovery. STAGE 4 represents near or full
recovery, either assimilation or adaptation,
acceptance of the new culture and self confidence in
the new person that has developed in this culture.

11.  The stockpile of comparative and contrastive data on a multitude of pairs of languages yielded what
commonly came to be known as the contrastive analysis hypothesis .
 Stockwell also constructed a hierarchy of difficulty for grammatical structures of two languages in contrast. Their
grammatical hierarchy included sixteen levels of difficulty.
 Transfer
 Coalescence
 Underdifferetiation
 Reinterpretation
 Overdifferentation
 Split

12. The so called weak version of CAH is
what remains today under the label
CROSS LINGUISTIC LANGUAGE,
suggesting that we all recognize the
significant role that prior experience
plays in any learning act, and that
the influence of the native
language as prior experience must
not be overlooked.
A mistake refers to a performance
error that is either a random guess or
a slip, in that it is a failure to use a
known system correctly. Errors can
be analyzed, observed, and
classified.

13.  Is the aspect of our competence that enables us to convey and interpret messages and
to negociate meanings interpersonally within specific context.
 Language Functions: Are the purposes that we accomplish with language, e.g, stating,
requesting, responding, greeting, parting, etc. Functions cannot be accomplished
without the forms of language: morphemes, words, grammar rules, discourse rules and
other organizational competences. While forms are the outward manifestation of
language , functions are the realization of those forms.

14.  Hypothesys and claims : A theory of SLA is an interrelated set of hypotheses/claims
about how people become proficient in a second language.
 Chaos / complexity theory : SLA is as much as dynamic , complex , nonlinear, system as
are physics, biology, and other sciences.
 An innatist model: Krashen’s input hypothsis: The acquisition learning hypothesis, the
monitor hypothesis, the natural order hypothesis, the input hypothesis, the affective filter
hypothesis,

15. INNATIST COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTIVIST
KRASHEN MCLAUGHING/B
IALYSTOK
LONG
Subconscious
acquisition superior
to learning and
monitoring
Controlled-
authomatic
processing
Interaction
hypothesis
Comprehensible
input
Focal/peripheral
attention
Intake through social
interaction
Low affective filter restructuring Output hypothesis
Natural order of
acquisition
Implicit vs explicit HIGs
Zero option for grammar
instruction
Unanalyzed vs analyzed
knowledge
Authenticity
Form-focused instruction Task-based instruction