A. Language Acquisition
Language
acquisition is one of the central topics in cognitive science
1.Basic requirement : The child must also be physically capable of sending
and receiving sound signals in a language. It’s mean that a child must
be able to hear that language being used. The most important
requirement seems to be the opportunity to interact with others via
language
2. The Acquisition Schedule: In this view,
the child is seen as actively acquiring the language by working out the
regularities in what is heard and then applying those regularities in what he
or she says.
3.Caretaker Speech : Caretaker speech is a simple way of
speaking that is used when talking to a child or other person who is learning
to speak a language. [1]
1. Stages in Language Acquisition
a.
Pre-language stage
Pre-language stage is the period
from 3 to 10 month and characterized by three stage:
(1). Cooing Stage.
Cooing velar consonants such as [k] and [g] or vowels such as [I] and [u] can
be heard by time the child is 3 month old.
(2). Babbling Stage. By 6 month, child is usually
able to sit up and can produce a number of different vowels and consonants,
such as mu and da.
(3). Late-babbling Stage. It is characterized by a
lot of ‘sound-play’ and attempted imitations. At around 9 month, there are
recognizable intonation pattern to the consonants and vowel combination being
produced. The tenth and eleventh months, they are capable of using their vocalization
to express emotion and emphasis.
b. The One-word or Holophrastic Stage
This stage is period between 12 and
18 month in which the children begin to produce a variety of recognizable
single unit utterances. For example, cookie, cat and cup.
c.The
Two-word Stage
Begin around 18-20 months. A variety
of combinations such as baby chair, mommy cat, cat bad, will be
appearing and he or she will have a vocabulary of more than 50 words. The child
will be treated as an entertaining conversational partner by the principle
caretaker.
d. Telegraphic Speech
Telegraphic speech is characterized
by using string of lexical morphemes in phrases such as Andrew want ball,
cat drink milk and shoe all wet. The child has clearly developed
some sentence-building capacity, and can order the form correctly. Also’
grammatical inflections begin to appear in some of the words.
2. The Acquisition Process
One factor that seems to be crucial
in the child’s acquisition process is the actual use of sound and word
combinations, either in interaction with others or in word-play alone. The
practice of this type seems to be an important factor in the development of the
child’s linguistic repertoire.
a.
Morphology
As the child is 3 years old , he pr she is incorporating
some of the inflection morphemes which indicate the grammatical functions of
the nouns and the verbs used. Individual children may produce ‘good’ forms one day and
‘odd’ forms the next such as goed and foots. For the child, the
use of such forms is simply a means of trying to say what he or she means
during a particular stage of development.
b.
Syntax
Two features which seem to be
acquired in a regular way are the formation of question and the use of negatives.
(1) Stage 1 occurs between 18-26 months
(2) Stage 2 occurs between 22-30 months
(3) Stage 3 occurs between 24-40 months.
c.
Semantic
Process of determining meaning in
children language acquisition is overextension: the child overextend the
meaning of a word on the basis of similarities of shapes, sound and size,
movement and texture. Example:
Bow-bow is used to refer to a dog, a fur
piece with glass eyes, a set of cufflinks and even a bath thermometer. Thus, bow-bow
is object with shiny bits.
B.
Language Learning :Language learning, refers to the "concious knowledge of a second
language, knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about
them." Thus language learning can be compared to learning about a
language.
a.
Acquisition Barrier
Reasons for problems experienced in L2 acquisition are:
Ö Most people learn another language
during their teenage or adult years, in a few hours each week of school time,
with a lot of occupations, and with an already known language available for
most of their daily communicative requirement.
Ö
Adults tongue get stiff from pronouncing one type of
language and just cannot cope with the sounds of another language
2.
Acquisition Aids
a. Grammar Translation Method :Grammar Translation
Method is an approach which treats second or foreign language learning on par
with any other academic subject
b.
Direct Method :Direct
Methode is an approach that suggests recreating the exposure which young
children have in language acquisition
c. Audiolingual Method: Auditolingual
Methode is the direct method which devises more structured material for the
student
. d. Communicative Approach: This approach is
characterized by lessons organized around concepts such as “asking for things”
in different social contaxts
3. Acquisition processes
Error is an indication of the actual acquisition
process in action, not something which hinders student’s progress. We might
expect that L2 learners produce overgeneralization
at certain stages.
For example: a spanish say womens might be seen as a
type of creative construction used by the learners.
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