How Languages are Learned

Fourth Edition: How Languages Are Learned

Details

Patsy M. Lightbown & Nina Spada are the authors.
It is part of the Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers.
Published by Oxford University Press.
First published in 2013.
This edition includes 'Questions for reflection' and new 'Activities'.
A companion website is available at www.oup.com/elt/teacher/hlal.
A new series of books for teachers, the Oxford Key Concepts for the Language Classroom, is being developed.

Introduction

New language teaching methods are often presented as based on the latest research.
Teachers need to evaluate the potential effectiveness of different instructional practices.
Experience and understanding of students' needs are crucial.
Ideas from second language acquisition research can aid in evaluating teaching methods.
The book aims to help teachers evaluate and adapt textbooks based on language acquisition research.
It starts with language learning in early childhood, as it influences second language research and teaching.
Chapter 2 compares second language learners' knowledge and ability to use it with L1 learning.
Chapter 3 focuses on how individual learner characteristics may affect success.
Chapter 4 presents and discusses several theories explaining second language learning.
Chapter 5 compares natural and instructional environments and examines teaching practices.
Chapter 6 examines six proposals for second language teaching with research examples.
Chapter 7 summarizes the book by addressing popular opinions about language learning.
A Glossary defines technical terms.
Annotated suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter.
The Bibliography provides full reference information.
The information is presented assuming no prior familiarity with research methods.
Examples and case studies illustrate research ideas, often from classrooms.
Activities are included for observation and analysis practice.
'Questions for reflection' help readers consolidate understanding.

Activity: Give Your Opinion

The activity involves indicating agreement or disagreement with statements about language learning and teaching.

Chapter 1: Language Learning in Early Childhood

This chapter provides a brief overview of language development in young children and explores theories explaining language learning.

First Language Acquisition

Language acquisition is a remarkable feat.
It involves learning words and combining them into meaningful sentences.
Children develop complex grammatical language even when simple communication is successful.
Child language development is similar worldwide.
Bilingual children acquire more than one language.

The First Three Years: Milestones and Developmental Sequences

Early language development shows a high degree of similarity across children worldwide.
Researchers have described developmental sequences for various aspects of first language acquisition.
Earliest vocalizations include involuntary crying.
Babies soon produce cooing and gurgling sounds.
Infants can hear subtle differences between sounds of human languages from an early age.
They distinguish their mother's voice and recognize the language spoken around their mother before birth.
Infants can discriminate between similar sounds like 'pa' and 'ba'.
Infants stop making distinctions between non-phonemic sounds in their environment by one year old.
Babies need to interact with a human speaker to learn or retain sound distinctions.
By the end of their first year, most babies understand frequently repeated words.
Around 12 months, babies start producing recognizable words.
By age two, most children produce at least 50 different words and begin combining words into simple sentences.
These sentences are often "telegraphic," omitting articles, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs.
Word order reflects the language they are hearing, making the combined words meaningful.
Children creatively combine words and show evidence of going beyond imperfect imitation.
Temporal adverbs are not used until children understand time.
Developmental sequences reflect the gradual acquisition of linguistic elements.
Singular and plural distinctions are understood before plural endings are reliably used.

Grammatical Morphemes

Researchers in the 1960s focused on how children acquire grammatical morphemes in English.
Roger Brown and colleagues found a similar sequence of acquisition for 14 grammatical morphemes.
Examples of morphemes studied included:
- Present progressive -ing (Mommy running)
- Plural -s (two books)
- Irregular past forms (Baby went)
- Possessive -s (Daddy's hat)
- Copula (Mommy is happy)
- Articles the and a
- Regular past -ed (she walked)
- Third person singular simple present -s (she runs)
- Auxiliary be (he is coming)
Children mastered morphemes at the bottom of the list after mastering those at the top.
Children acquired the morphemes at different ages but in a similar order.
No simple explanation exists for the sequence; it is determined by an interaction of various factors.

Negation

Children learn the functions of negation early.
Expressing negation in sentences with appropriate words and word order takes time.
Stages in the development of negation in English:
- Stage 1: 'No' is used alone or as the first word.
- Stage 2: Negative word appears before the verb; 'don't' is used for rejection or prohibition.
- Stage 3: Negative element is inserted into more complex sentences, using forms like 'can't' and 'don't'.
- Stage 4: Negative element attaches to correct auxiliary verbs, but difficulty with other features related to negatives may persist.

Questions

Children learn to form questions through developmental stages.
There is a predictable order in which the 'wh- words' emerge.
'What' is generally the first wh- question word to be used.
'Where' and 'who' emerge soon after.
'Why' emerges around the end of the second year.
'How' and 'when' emerge later when the child has a better understanding of manner and time.
The ability to use question words is partly tied to cognitive development.
The linguistic complexity of questions with different wh- words also plays a role.

Stages in the Acquisition of Questions

Stage 1: Single words or simple two- or three-word sentences with rising intonation (e.g., Cookie?)
Stage 2: Declarative word order with rising intonation (e.g., You like this?)
Stage 3: Gradual noticing that the structure of questions is different, producing questions with fronting (e.g., Is the teddy is tired?)..
Stage 4: Questions formed by subject-auxiliary inversion, with more variety in auxiliary verbs.
Stage 5: Both wh- and yes/no questions are formed correctly, but negative questions may still be difficult.
Stage 6: Correct formation of all question types, including negative and complex embedded questions.
Children may fall back on old patterns in new situations or when using new language elements.
The pre-school years
By age four, children can ask questions, give commands, report events, and create stories with correct word order and grammatical markers.
Vocabulary is learned at a rate of several words a day.
Children acquire less frequent and more complex linguistic structures.
The ability to use language in social environments widens.
Children develop metalinguistic awareness.

The School Years

Language ability expands and grows to understand others and to express their own meanings.
Reading gives a major boost to metalinguistic awareness.
Metalinguistic awareness includes the discovery of such things as ambiguity.
Vocabulary grows to thousands of new words based on assignments and pleasure reading.
The range of vocabulary in narrative texts is different from that in non-fiction.
The growth of vocabulary depends on how much and how widely children read.
Children acquire different language registers.
Some children will have to learn another variety, often referred to as the standard variety, is required for successful academic work.

Explaining First Language Acquisition

Several theoretical positions have been advanced to explain language development: behaviourist, innatist, and interactional/developmental perspectives.

The Behaviourist Perspective

Behaviourism is a theory of learning influential in the 1940s and 1950s.
B. F. Skinner was a key proponent.
Children imitate language, receiving positive reinforcement for correct attempts.
Their enviroment shapes the child's language behavior

Analyzing Children’s Speech: Definitions and Examples

Imitation: word-for-word repetition of someone else's utterance.
Practice: repetitive manipulation of form.
Children selectively imitate, focusing on new elements they are starting to understand.
Not all children imitate and practice as much.

Patterns in Language

The new sentences are usually comprehensible and often correct.
Children appear to pick out patterns and generalize them to new contexts.
Classical behaviorism is not a satisfactory explanation for complex grammar.

The Innatist Perspective

Noam Chomsky is a key figure in linguistics.
His ideas revolutionized aspects of linguistics and psychology.
The innatist perspective relates to Chomsky's hypothesis that all human languages are based on some innate universal principles.

Universal Grammar (UG)

Children are biologically programmed for language.
Language develops like other biological functions.
The environment provides basic input, and the child's biological endowment does the rest.
Children are born with the innate ability to discover underlying language system rules.
This innate endowment is seen as a sort of template, containing the principles that are universal to all human languages.
*. The innate mechanism is used exclusively for language acquisition.

The Critical Period Hypothesis

The innatist perspective is often linked to the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH).
Humans are genetically programmed to acquire knowledge and skills at specific times in life.
Outside the "critical periods", it is difficult or impossible to acquire abilities.
Children not given access to language in infancy and early childhood will never acquire it if deprivations go on for too long.
Natural experiments such as Victor and Genie suggest critical period effects, though other factors may contribute.
A more controlled CPH test involves profoundly deaf children of hearing parents, showing the impact of late ASL acquisiiton.
Studies of international adoptees indicate persistence subtle differences after a language exposure at early age.
*Neurological studies of infants' speech perception show the shape brain exposed to language.
The innatist perspective is partly based on evidence that there is a critical period for language acquisition.

Interactionist Developmental Perspectives

Focus on the interplay between innate learning ability and the environment.
Innatists place too much emphasis on competence of adult native speakers and not enough on development.
Language acquisition is one example of learning from experience.
They attribute more importance to the environment recognizing powerful power

Piaget and Vygotsky

Jean Piaget viewed children's language as built on their cognitive development.
Language can represent acquired knowledge through physical interaction.
Lev Vygotsky concluded that language develops primarily from social interaction.
Children advance to higher knowledge levels in a supportive interactive environment.
Vygotsky referred to the zone of proximal development (ZPD).
Conversations provide scaffolding, helping children maximize knowledge and acquire new knowledge.
Piaget saw language as a symbol system expressing knowledge through interaction.
Vygotsky saw thought as internalized speech from social interaction.
*There cross-cultural research Child-rearing patters. Modification in speech for infants but there is another one, however children community every is situation with language meaningful.
*They interact the interlocutor the learning from the case. Jacqueline Sachs and the colleagues to study the language develop childs.The television isn't sufficient
*There is another way of environment is usage-based. Track to each words between experience to create association the frequency is tracked. Focus on languge use
*The other remarklable is learing to .percept to do feat
*Language orders and delaays is the one which the childrendon't develop the language or delay to ask encouragement from professionals
*Child hood and and bilingualsim and maintain to have many and also open economic
*Some people that have too difficult. However learning of child had opportinities can or can not been a probel. and in fact a lot learn the language that is better and cognitive that is can have possitives benefits and that meaned depend on the circuimstance but not for a lot can't learn one the language. The codeswitch in the convesation does not has a lot proofing on the codeswich , make to much choice of expressions and flexibility also has a contribuion in the congitive. As and needs has the more learn varietiy and school of learning need to learn the both varieties the BICS AND CALP there more and more have charateristics a that most take time between the two language the way so there most have years and long to can have know language or contet or knowledge to do be to easy for then or and that why childs more for so they learn language in the early but that language in them as as learn there is more learnign benfits and take more times from teacher to do that all. and to so them that they in the best approch what that why they are gettign. and they also maintain relation connection like the family that is a good support . they are also more development if their or multigunal that they have opportunities for other communication and also have economics with the poeple and students what know so they so get patient of there more get effort they know that . in the summary the is focus on early language all the children of language and the the theory of explainting in chapler will what is a focus so you can study it.