First Language

Acquisition
Facultad de Lenguas
y Educación
First and Second Language Acquisition

Following Yule, “First language acquisition is remarkable for the speed with
which it takes place. (…) In addition to the speed of acquisition, the fact that
it generally occurs, without overt instruction, for all children, regardless of
great differences in their circumstances, provides strong support for the
idea that there is an innate predisposition in the human infant to acquire
language. We can think of this as a special capacity for language with which
each new-born child is endowed. By itself, however, this inborn language
capacity is not enough” (Yule, 2010, 170)
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First and Second Language Acquisition 2

Acquisition

• The process of language acquisition has some basic requirements. During

the first two or three years of development, a child requires interaction with
other language-users in order to bring the general language capacity into
contact with a particular language such as English.
• a child who does not hear or is not allowed to use language will learn no
language.
• the particular language a child learns is not genetically inherited, but is
acquired in a particular language-using environment. The child must also
be physically capable of sending and receiving sounds language.

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• All infants make “cooing” and “babbling” noises during their first year, but
congenitally deaf infants stop after about six months. So, in order to speak
a language, a child must be able to hear that language being used.
• with deaf parents who gave their normal-hearing son ample exposure to
television and radio programs, the boy did not acquire an ability to speak or
understand English. What he did learn very effectively, by the age of three,
was the use of American Sign Language, that is, the language he used to
interact with his parents. A crucial requirement appears to be the
opportunity to interact with others via language

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Input
• human infants are certainly helped in their language acquisition by the typical
behavior of older children and adults in the home environment who provide
language samples, or input, for the child. Adults such as mom, dad and the
grandparents tend not to address the little creature before them as if they are
involved in normal adult-to-adult conversation.
• There is not much of this: Well, John Junior, shall we invest in blue chip
industrials, or would grain futures offer better short term prospects? However,
there does seem to be a lot of this: Oh, goody, now Daddy push choo-choo? The
characteristically simplified speech style adopted by someone who spends a lot
of time interacting with a young child is called caregiver speech. Salient
features of this type of speech (also called “motherese” or “child-directed
speech”) are the frequent use of questions, often using exaggerated intonation,
extra loudness and as lower tempo with longer pauses.

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• In the early stages, this type of speech also incorporates a lot of forms
associated with “babytalk.” These are either simplified words (tummy,
nana) or alternative forms, with repeated simple sounds and syllables, for
things in the child’s environment (choo-choo, poo-poo, pee-pee, wa-wa).

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• MOTHER: Look!

• CHILD: (touches pictures)

• MOTHER: What are those?

• CHILD: (vocalizes a babble string and smiles)

• MOTHER: Yes, there are rabbits.

• CHILD: (vocalizes, smiles, looks up at mother)

• MOTHER: (laughs) Yes, rabbit.

• CHILD: (vocalizes, smiles)

• MOTHER: Yes. (laughs)

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• Caregiver speech is also characterized by simple sentence structures and a
lot of repetition. If the child is indeed in the process of working out a
system of putting sounds and words together, then these simplified models
produced by the interacting adult may serve as good clues to the basic
structural organization involved.

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The acquisition schedule

• the language acquisition schedule has the same basis as the biologically
determined development of motor skills
• is tied very much to the maturation of the infant’s brain
• Long before children begin to talk, they have been actively processing what
they hear.
• During the first three months, the child develops a range of crying styles,
with different patterns for different needs, produces big smiles in response
to a speaking face, and starts to create distinct vocalizations

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Cooing and babbling

• During the first few months of life, the child gradually becomes capable of
producing sequences of vowel-like sounds, particularly high vowels similar
to [i] and [u]. By four months of age, the developing ability to bring the back
of the tongue into regular contact with the back of the palate allows the
infant to create sounds similar to the velar consonants [k] and [ɡ], hence
the common description as “cooing” or “gooing”
• Between six and eight months, the child is sitting up and producing a
number of different vowels and consonants, as well as combinations such
as ba-ba-ba and ga-gaga. babbling

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The one-word stage

• Between twelve and eighteen months, children begin to produce a variety

of recognizable single-unit utterances.
• speech in which single terms are uttered for everyday objects such as
“milk,” “cookie,” “cat,” “cup” and “spoon”

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The two-word stage

• the two-word stage can begin around eighteen to twenty months, as the
child’s vocabulary moves beyond fifty words
• By the time the child is two years old, a variety of combinations, similar to
baby chair, mommy eat, cat bad
• Moreover, by the age of two, whether the child is producing 200 or 300
distinct “words,” he or she will be capable of understanding five times as
many, and will typically be treated as an entertaining conversational
partner by the principal caregiver

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Telegraphic speech

• Between two and two-and-a-half years old, the child begins producing a
large number of utterances that could be classified as “multiple-word”
speech
• strings of words (lexical morphemes) in phrases or sentences such as this
shoe all wet, cat drink milk and daddy go bye-bye

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The acquisition process

• the children actively constructing, from what is said to them, possible ways
of using the language
• The child’s linguistic production appears to be mostly a matter of trying out
constructions and testing whether they work or not

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Developing morphology

• By the time a child is two-and-a-half years old, he or she is going beyond

telegraphic speech forms and incorporating some of the inflectional
morphemes that indicate the grammatical function of the nouns and verbs
used. The first to appear is usually the -ing form in expressions such as cat
sitting and mommy reading book
• The next morphological development is typically the marking of regular
plurals with the -s form, as in boys and cats. The acquisition of the plural
marker is often accompanied by a process of overgeneralization. The child
overgeneralizes the apparent rule of adding -s to form plurals and will talk
about foots and mans.

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Developing syntax

• Similar evidence against “imitation” as the basis of the child’s speech

production has been found in studies of the syntactic structures used by
young children. One child, specifically asked to repeat what she heard,
would listen to an adult say forms such as the owl who eats candy runs
fast and then repeat them in the form owl eat candy and he run fast. It is
clear that the child understands what the adult is saying. She just has her
own way of expressing it.

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Forming questions and negatives

• In forming questions, the child’s first stage has two procedures. Simply add
a Wh-form (Where, Who) to the beginning of the expression or utter the
expression with a rise in intonation towards the end, as in these examples:

• Where kitty? Doggie? Where horse go? Sit chair?

• no mitten not a teddy bear no fall no sit there

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geI7JS1HZEc

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Second language learning

• “foreign language” setting (learning a language that is not generally spoken

in the surrounding community) and a “second language” setting (learning a
language that is spoken in the surrounding community). That is, Japanese
students in an English class in Japan are learning English as a foreign
language (EFL) and, if those same students were in an English class in the
USA, they would be learning English as a second language (ESL)

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Acquisition and learning

• Children acquire language through a subconscious process during which

they are unaware of grammatical rules. This is similar to the way they
acquire their first language.
• These are the obvious reasons for the problems experienced in second
language acquisition, and most of them are related that people attempt to
learn another language during their teenage or adult years, in a few hours
each week of school time, and they have a lot of other things to take care
of, instead a child learns via the constant interaction that he or she
experiences, and has not many things else to do. Besides the adult or
teenage people have an already known language available for most of their
daily communicative requirements.

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• The term acquisition refers to the gradual development of ability in a
language by using it naturally in communicative situations. Instead the
term learning applies to the conscious process of accumulating knowledge
of the vocabulary and grammar of a language.
• Activities related with learning have traditionally been used in language
teaching in schools, and if they are successful tend to result in knowledge
about the language studied. Activities related with acquisition are those
experienced by the young child and by those who pick up another language
from long periods spent in social interaction, the language used daily, in
another country.

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• very few adults seem to reach native like proficiency in using a
second language. There are suggestions that some features, for
example vocabulary or grammar, of a second language are easier
to acquire than other, for example phonology. Sometimes this is
taken as evidence that after the critical period has passed, around
puberty, it becomes very difficult to acquire another language fully.
It has been demonstrated that students in their early teens are
quicker and more effective second language learners than, for
example 7 year old. It may be, of course, that the acquisition of a
second language requires a combination of factors. The optimum
age may be during the years 11-16 when the flexibility of the
language acquisition faculty has not been completely lost, and the
maturation of cognitive skills allows more effective working out of
the regular features of the second language encountered.

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• Teenagers are typically much more self-conscious than young children. If
there is a strong element of unwillingness or embarrassment in attempting
to produce the different sounds of other languages, then it may override
whatever physical and cognitive abilities there are. If this self-
consciousness is combined with a lack of empathy with the foreign culture,
then the subtle effects of not wanting to sound like a Russian or an
American may strongly inhibit the acquisition process

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Focus on method

• The term second language refers to a language developed in addition to

one’s first language. Some children acquire a second language in much the
same way as a first language, for example, if they move to another country
at a young age or if their caregiver speaks a different language. But in most
cases a second language is learned, rather than acquired. That is, the
second language is developed with a conscious effort rather than by
actually using the language naturally.
• It is generally true that it is easier to acquire a first language than it is to
learn a second language. But the reasons for this difference are for the
most part based on the difference between acquisition and learning.

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• Another common myth is that children simply learn language easier than
adults. Children do indeed seem to develop better pronunciation skills than
do adults who learn language later in life. In fact, it is nearly impossible for
adults to develop completely native-like pronunciation. However, adults are
just as capable of learning language as are children. The reasons it seems
easier for children has less to do with age than with other factors that go
along with age.
• Most significantly, a child is in a very special privileged position in society.
Errors which seem cute when made by a child are odd or weird when made
by an adult. We are happy to smile and talk “baby-talk” with a child, but
reluctant to do this for adults.

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THE AFFECTIVE FILTER

• All learners in the process of acquiring a second language have an invisible

filter inside of them that has the potential to result in anxiety, stress, and
lack of self-confidence. This invisible filter is theoretically called the
affective filter, and it has an important role in the learning (or not) of
another language
• Some people have a naturally low affective filter and are relatively
confident about learning a second language. However, not everyone is so
lucky. Many other people have experienced anxiety and inability to
effectively comprehend or communicate well in another language. They
sweat, stammer, and butcher the language.

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The Grammar Translation Method

• Translation interprets the words and phrases of the foreign languages in

the best possible manner.
• The phraseology and the idiom of the target language can best be
assimilated in the process of interpretation.
• The structures of the foreign languages are best learned when compared
and contrast with those of mother tongue.
• while teaching the text book the teacher translates every word and phrase
from English into the learner’s mother tongue. Further, students are
required to translate sentences from their mother tongue into English

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The audio-lingual method

• It is based on behaviorist theory, which professes that certain traits of

living things, and in this case humans, could be trained through a system of
reinforcement—correct use of a trait would receive positive feedback while
incorrect use of that trait would receive negative feedback.
• advised that students be taught a language directly, without using the
students’ native language to explain new words or grammar in the target
language. However, unlike the direct method, the audio-lingual method
didn’t focus on teaching vocabulary. Rather, the teacher drilled students in
the use of grammar.

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• that the instructor would present the correct model of a sentence and the
students would have to repeat it. The teacher would then continue by
presenting new words for the students to sample in the same structure. In
audio-lingualism, there is no explicit grammar instruction—everything is
simply memorize

• Inflection : Teacher : I ate the sandwich. Student : I ate the sandwiches.

• Replacement : Teacher : He bought the car for half-price.

• Student : He bought it for half-price.

• Restatement : Teacher : Tell me not to smoke so often.

• Student : Don’t smoke so often!

• d in form

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The Communicative Approach

They are partially a reaction against the artificiality of “pattern practice” and
also against the belief that consciously learning the grammar rules of a
language will necessarily result in an ability to use the language. Although
there are many different versions of how to create communicative experiences
for L2 learners, they are all based on a belief that the functions of language
(what it is used for) should be emphasized rather than the forms of the
language (correct grammatical or phonological structures). Classroom
lessons are likely to be organized around concepts such as “asking for things”
in different social settings, rather than “the forms of the past tense” in
different sentences. These changes have coincided with attempts to provide
more appropriate materials for L2 learning that has a specific purpose, as in
“English for medical personnel” or “Japanese for business people.

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• GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION METHOD

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUBUMTrA28

• MODERN APPROACHES

• 1. DIRECT METHOD

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk6HS8RlD98

• Ex : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiQvG-fvzLM

• 2. THE ORAL APPROACH or SITUATIONAL LANGUAGE METHOD

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ1L5S6P9kI

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUhc1GSVix8

• 3. AUDIO LINGUAL METHOD

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqeKMwQb1UA

• Ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5JsiJ99sho

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• CURRENT APPROACHES

• THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH or COMMUNICATE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLL)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFKKkLkBcn0

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XFQZZL7eXQ

• HUMANISTIC APPROACHES

• TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE (TPR)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMRhZRoQsOA

• Ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkMQXFOqyQA

• 2. NATURAL APPROACH

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTVbdstastI

• 3. THE SILENT WAY

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy881qcPrTY

• Ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUPPGrnrJv4

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• 4. COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING (CLT)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olo-r9rikys

• 5. SUGGESTOPEDIA

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oynbCOe200

• THE LEARNER-CENTRED APPROACH

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P09PvuX6xQo

• TASK-BASED LEARNING (TBL)

• http://hubpages.com/education/How-to-Create-a-Task-Based-Learning-Lesson-Plan-for-ESL

• SUMMARY ALL METHODS

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2JaADcWegA

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afBngJdISug

• GAME

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohk-2GaS69Q
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