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1. LANGUAGE ACQUISITION :
Fisrt Language Acquisition;Age
and Acquisition
Source: Principles of Language Learning and Teaching by H. Douglas Brown
By : Silvia Nanda Putri Erito

2. THEORIES OF FIRST
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Historical
Behaviorism Theory
Nativism Theory
Functional Approaches

3. Fact about language acquisition
• There is no genetic predisposition for acquiring
particular language
• All human languages are equally easy to acquire as
first language
• Children can acquire two or more first languages
(bilingualism)

4. Stage of language acquisition
• Crying
• Cooing (2 months)
• Babbling (from around 6-8)
• One word-Stage (from around 1 year)
• Two-Word stage (from around 18/20-24 months)
• Beyond two word

5. Behaviorist Theory
According this view language behavior is
the production of correct responses to
stimuli through reinforcement
environtment
B.F Skinner

6. Nativist Theory
Noam Chomsky
“ It’s All in your mind “
Chomsky claims that language is greatly
dependent upon a linguistic faculty which
he terms Language Acquisition Device (
LAD) or Black Box an innate mechanism
or process that allows children to develop
language skills or Universal Grammar
(UG), arround which all languages are bulit

7. Functional Approach
Functional Approach
Cognition and Language
Development
Bloom (1976:37) “ an
explanation of language
development depends upon
an explanation of the
cognitive underpinnings of
language”
Social Interaction and
Language Development
The function language in
discourse
2 Major pacesetter
language development:
a. Functional level
b. Formal level

8. Issue in FLA
Comprehension
& Production
Nature/ Nurture
Universal
Systematicity &
Variability
Language and
Thought
Imitation
Practice and
Frequency
Input
Competence &
Performance
ISSUES IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

9. Competence
Refers to one’s underlying knowledge of the system of
a language. It is nonobservable ability to do something,
to preform something. Its rules of grammar,
vocabulary and all the piece of a language.
Performance
The overtly observable and concrete manifestation
or realization of competence . It’s actual doing
something. Perfomance is actual production
(speaking, writing)/ the comprehension (listening,
reading) of linguistic events.
Competence and Performance

10. Nature / Nurture
Universal
Nativists contend that a child is born with an innate knowledge
property is universal in all human beings.
Language is a set of habits that can be acquired by a process
of conditioning of a phenomena as complex as language.
Language is universally acquired in the same manner, and
moreover that the deep structure of language at its deepest
level may be commont to all languages.
Example : Word order, Agreement, Verb etc.

11. SECOND ISSUES IN FIRST LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION
Comprehension It is much more performance
(listening and reading)
Production It is directly observable
(speaking and writing)

12. Universals
Maratos (1988) enumerated some of the universal linguistic categories under
investigation by a number of different researchers. These categories are
dealing with word order, morphological, agreement, reduced reference, verbs
and verb classes, prediction, negation and questions formation
Systematicity and Variability
Child language is the systematically of the process of acquisition and
variability in the process of learning

13. Language and Thought
Schinke-Liano 1993 mentioned thought and language were seen as two
distinct cognitive operations that grow together
Vygotsky (1978:86) claimed that ZPD is the distance between child’s actual
cognitive capacity and the level of potential development

14. Imitation
Brown 1970 mentioned that children are excellent imitators
Surface structure is repeating surface strings, attending to a phonological
code rather than a semantic code
Deep-structure imitation of language can literally block their attention to the
surface so that they become, on the face of it, poor imitators.

15. Practice
Children “practice” language constanly, especially in the early stages of
single-word and tw0-word utterances

16. Input
The speech that young children hear is primarily the speech heard in the
home, and much of that speech is parental speech or speech of older
siblings.
Hladik and Edwards 1984: Moerk 1985 studied parents’ speech in the home,
confirmed that earlier evidence demonstrating the selectivity of parental
linguistic input to their children

17. Discourse
Berko-Gleason (1982:20) described the perspective: in order for successful
first language acquisition to take place, interaction, rather than exposure, is
required; children do not learn language from overhearing the conversations
of others or from listening to the radio, and must, instead, acquire it in the
context of being spoken to.

18. Age and Acquisition
Dispelling Myths
The first step in investigating age and acquisition might be to dispel some
myths about the relationship between FLA and SLA.
H.H Stern (1970:57-58) claimed that there are some procedures on the basis
of FLA.

19. Types of Comparison and Contrast
The first step in investigating age and acquisition might be to dispel some
myths about the relationship between FLA and SLA.
H.H Stern (1970:57-58) claimed that there are some procedures on the basis
of FLA.

20. TYPES OF COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
is illogical to compare the first language acquisition of a child with the
second language acquisition of an adult (Schachter 1988, Scovel 1999)
CHILD ADULT
L1
L2 C1 A1
C2 A2

21. THE CRITICAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS
(CPH)
• Is a biologically determined period of life when language
can be acquired more easily and beyond which time
language is increasingly difficult to acquire.
• Bialystok 1997; Singleton & Lengyel 1995; Scovel
1988,1999 argue that a critical point for second language
acquisition occurs around puberty.

22. NEUROLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
• Is the function of the brain in the process of
acquisition (see Schumann 1998, Jacobs &
Schumann 1992, and Scovel 1988 for synopses)
• It has four aspect : (Hemispheric Lateralization,
Biological Timetables, Right – Hemispheric
Participation, Anthropological Evidence)

23. • Hemispheric Lateralization: Intellectual, logical, and analytic functions appear to be
largely located in the left hemisphere, while the right hemisphere controls functions
related to emotional and social needs.
• Biological Timetables: Scovel (1988; 80) said that an accent emerging after puberty is
the price we pay for our preordained ability to be articulate apes.
• Right – Hemispheric Participation: Obler (1981: 58) noted that in second language
learning, there is significant right hemisphere participation and that “this participation is
particularly active during the early stages of learning the second language”.
• Anthropological evidence: Anthropologist Jane Hill (1970) provided an intriguing
response to Scovel’s (1969) study by citing anthropological research on non – Western
societies that yielded evidence that adults can, in the normal course of their lives,
acquire second languages perfectly.

24. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ACCENT
• Age (neuromuscular plasticity, cerebral development, socio-
biological programs, and the environment of socio-cultural
influences) is the based factor of it.
• Scovel (1988) said that it is clear that the chances of any one
individual commencing a second language after puberty and
achieving a scientifically verifiable authentic native accent are
infinitesimal.

25. COGNITIVE CONSIDERATIONS
• Jean Piaget (1972; Piaget & Inhelder 1969) outlined the course of intellectual
development in a child through various stage:
- Sensorimotor stage (ages 0-2)
- Preoperational stage (ages 2-7)
- Operational stage (ages 7 - 16)
a. Concrete operational stage (ages 7-11)
b. Formal operational stage (ages 11-16)

26. AFFECTIVE CONSIDERATIONS
• The affective factors are : empathy, self – esteem,
extroversion, inhibition, imitation, anxiety, attitudes.
• Guiora et al. (1972); also Ehrman (1993) proposed
about language ego. It accounts for the identity a
person develops in reference to the language he or
she speaks.

27. LINGUISTIC CONSIDERATION
• There are some issues: Bilingualism, Interference Between First and second
Languages, Interference in Adults, Order of Acquisition

28. • Bilingualism: Lambert (1972) contention that bilingual children
are more facile at concept formation and have greater mental
flexibility.
• Interference Between First and second Languages: Children
learning English reflected normal development characteristics.
That is intralingual strategies, not interference errors from the first
language
• Interference in Adults: Adult second language linguistic
processes are more vulnerable to the effect of the first language.

29. • Order of Acquisition: Children learning a second language use a creative
construction process, just as they do in their first language.
• Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt said that “transfer of first language syntactic patterns
rarely occurs” in child second language acquisition (1976: 72).