Chapter 2 Notes by Jacky Swallia

First Language Acquisition Theories

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Second Language Acquisition Theories

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(p. 60) "Children learn their first language through stimulus, response, and reinforcement"

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Kids learn to associate words with objects and copy the sound an adult made referencing that object. The adult either praises or corrects the kid and the kid learns the word.

Behaviorist Theory (Skinner)

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(p. 61) "Behaviorist theory does not explain how any novel utterance is produced"

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One limitation to this theory is that in most conversational language anything we say is "novel" or new and is not usually learned by repeating something we already heard.

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(p. 61) "Parents typically reinforce their children for the meaning of their utterances, not for grammatical correctness"

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This limitation points out that parents might be reinforcing incorrect grammar even though we know what our kids mean. This may lead to bad grammar habits.

Innatist Theory (Chomsky)

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(p. 61) "He concluded that language acquisition could only be accounted for by an innate, biological language acquisition device (LAD)"

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Chomsky hated everything Skinner theorized and basically said nope, it's not learned, we're born hard wired to learn language.

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(p. 61) "Children construct grammar through a process of hypothesis testing"

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Kids use rules they learn rather than just repeating what they hear to make sense of language.

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(p. 62) "Children acquire grammatical rules...with little help from their parents or caregivers"

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Then where are they getting these rules? From a fever dream? They (especially young children) have to be getting them from somewhere.

Interactionist Theory (Vygotsky)

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(p. 62) "Caregivers play a critical role in adjusting language to facilitate the use of innate capacities for language acquisition"

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This is somehow both a critique and an extension of Chomsky's theory. It acknowledges a predisposition for language but says caregivers DO have an influence on how that language is developed.

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(p. 63) "Conversational scaffolding"

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This is a combination of repetition and correction where the caregiver acknowledges the meaning of the words but corrects the grammar and syntax if needed.

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(p. 62) "interactions do not necessarily lead to immediate understanding"

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Just because a kid can repeat what you say, and they might even get the gist of what the words mean, they might still be missing some deeper meaning.

Behaviorist Perspective

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(p. 65) "Audiolingual method

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This is basically "drill & kill" repetition based learning a language.

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(p. 65) "Students are first taught to listen and speak"

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The behaviorist perspective assumes this is the natural progression of language development, but in schools they are usually taught to read first and then incorporate speaking in the classroom.

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(p. 65) "For behaviorists, the process involved in second language learning consisted of imitation, repetition, reinforcement"

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As noted at the end of this section, this approach rarely works well for most learners.

Innatist Perspective

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(p. 65) "Creative construction theory"

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Kids who already know the rules of one language can make up the rules for a second language by applying what they know from the first.

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(p. 66) "learner errors will generally be predictable from a contrastive analysis of the learner's mother tongue"

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If we know the rules of the first language we can tell what mistakes they will likely make in the second language.

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(p. 66) "When rules of two languages are quite different, contrastive analysis predicts learner difficulty"

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Languages that share Latin and Greek origins like English and Spanish can be easy to compare but Asian languages are so different that it is difficult to compare and predict difficulties.

Interactionist Perspective

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(p. 68) "The idea that comprehensible input is necessary for second language acquisition also forms a basic tenet of the interactionist perspective

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Students need to be actively engaging in a second language to really acquire the language.

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(p. 68) "Negotiation of meaning"

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Students learn new meaning by testing the meaning and then either being reinforced or corrected and adjusting accordingly.

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(p. 69) "Learner output plays an important role in second language acquisition"

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When learners are able to express and repeat in a second language, it can be beneficial to them acquiring the language.

Krashen's Five Hypotheses

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(p. 66) "Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis"

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(p. 66) "Monitor Hypothesis"

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(p. 67) "Natural Order Hypothesis"

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(p. 67) "Input Hypothesis"

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(p. 67) "Affective filter hypothesis"

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Language acquisition is natural and based on conversation. Learning is more academic and usually requires formal instruction.

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Formal language learning will help learners develop rules for grammar and syntax that they come to monitor during interactions.

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Learners acquire through conversation the standard, predictable sequence of grammatical syntax in a language.

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A learners understanding in natural communication situations has a direct impact on how they acquire (not learn) a language.

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The more relaxed an environment is, the more likely a student is to learn a language.