Language acquisition research paper
Acquisition research report is a compilation of papers presented at the language acquisition forum held in 2003. The papers were written and presented by educationalists who have had wide experience in both research and teaching in the field of language acquisition and bilingual development. The report will provide the ministry of education with possible strategies to support schools and teachers who offer bilingual and immersion education, and the children and whanau who participate in these (s): research division, ministry of reports are available as downloads (please refer to the 'downloads' inset box). Please consider the environment before ykia ora, ni sa bula, talofa lava, kia orana, malo e lelei,Fakaalofa lahi atu, taloha ni, greetingsthe language acquisition project originated from a cross-ministry team called the bilingual and immersion theme team. The team was established to consider medium to long-term research needs in bilingual and immersion education across languages and mediums. After a series of discussions, the fied language acquisition to be one of the key areas in need of further comprehensive research - particularly research which is evidence-based and grounded in the context of aotearoa/new purpose of the forum was to draw on new zealand academic expertise and experience in the field of language acquisition and bilingual development to inform ministry of education policy and to share knowledge of māori and pasifika immersion and bilingual forum was held on the 9-10 october 2003 at the brentwood hotel, wellington. Over the two days of the forum, researchers and academics presented papers that provided evidence-based knowledge around the following topics:relationships between language acquisition and cognitive development;evidence of the existing language experiences of learners;the interaction of language and culture;teacher expectations - what successful outcomes for students look like;models of effective practice for quality teaching and learning; andsuccess factors in bilingual and immersion audience included ministry of education staff, presenters of papers, and other academics involved in the area of language acquisition in bilingual and immersion education. In addition, representatives from other organisations associated with education and language development were in forum's key objective was to promote discussion about theories, models of practice and evidence of success in bilingual and immersion education, and to help identify priorities for future research. This allowed researchers, academics, ministry of education staff, and staff from other organisations to explore options, possible directions and strategies to support schools and teachers who offer bilingual and immersion education, and en and whānau who participate in these report is a compilation of papers presented at the language acquisition report (pdf, 1. More information about this publication please email the:Communication » language and linguistics » language english as a second language (esl). By using our website, you agree to the use of cookies as described in our privacy ication » language and linguistics » language english as a second language (esl). Information ► copyright and license information ►copyright © 2000, the national academy of sciencesthis article has been cited by other articles in ctat the forefront of debates on language are new data s' early acquisition of information about their native data show that infants perceptually “map” critical aspects t language in the first year of life before they can tical properties of speech are picked up through exposure t language. A new theoretical position has emerged, and six postulates position are last half of the y has produced a revolution in our understanding of language acquisition. Studies of infants across languages and cultures ed valuable information about the initial state of the ying language, and more recently, have revealed infants'. The results lead to a new view of language acquisition, accounts for both the initial state of linguistic knowledge s and infants' extraordinary ability to learn simply ing to ambient language. The new view reinterprets the for language and helps explain certain paradoxes—why infants,For example, with their immature cognitive systems, far surpass acquiring a new language. The goal of this paper is to recent work and offer six principles that shape the ical theoretical positionsin the last half of the 20th century, debate on the origins ge was ignited by a highly publicized exchange between a st and a strong learning theorist. Skinner proposed a learning view in his behavior, arguing that language, like all or, was an “operant” that developed in children as on of external reinforcement and shaping (1). By skinner't, infants learn language as a rat learns to press a bar— monitoring and management of reward chomsky, in a review of verbal behavior, took a ent theoretical position (2, 3). He posited a “language faculty” that ly specified constraints on the possible forms human take. Two approaches took strikingly different positions on all of al components of a theory of language acquisition: (i). Initial state of knowledge, (ii) the sible for developmental change, and (iii) the by ambient language input. On skinner's view, no ation was necessary, developmental change was brought h reward contingencies, and language input did not cause emerge. On chomsky's view, infants' innate knowledge of a core tenet, development constituted “growth” or the language module, and language input triggered (or set ters for) a particular pattern from among those ed. Ng view argues that the kind of learning taking place in ge acquisition cannot be accounted for by rcement. On the other hand, the idea that language es a selectionist process wherein language input operates ly specified options also is not supported. Perception parses speech correctly and is universal, domain specific or species specificany theory of language acquisition has to specify how the auditory world to make the critical units of ble. The phenomenon was language-specific; , for example, failed to show a peak in discrimination at ic boundary of an american english/ra-la/series (as in. Perception provided an opportunity to test whether parse the basic units of language, and discrimination med that they did. In tests of discrimination, peaks in sensitivity that coincided with the phonetic by languages (20–22) (fig. Second, in ion of language, acoustic differences detected by the tual processing mechanism strongly influenced the selection ic units used in language. This ran counter to two prevailing principles time: (i) the view that phonetic units were infants, and (ii) the view that language evolved without continuity with lower rical perception also was demonstrated with nonspeech mimicked speech features without being perceived as speech, adults (28, 29) and infants (30). Detectors stimulated by ambient maintained, whereas those not stimulated by language pmental studies were initially seen as providing support for ionist view. Adult performance on non-native contrasts could be increased by of factors: (i) the use of techniques that effects of memory (33, 34), (ii) extensive training (35,36), and (iii) the use of contrasts, such as zulu clicks,That are not related to native-language categories (37, 38). The fact that listeners do not completely lose the ability minate non-native contrasts does not alter the basic tenet of ionist view, which is that the role of language experience is in or decrease the activity of innately specified ors. To refute the selectionist position, studies trate that infants listening to ambient language are engaged other kind of learning process, a process that is entally subtractive in nature.
New studies on learning s' learning strategies “map” language inputlearning theory as a mechanism for language acquisition had sed by early theorists because of the failure of ng models, such as skinner's, to explain the facts of pment (2). Eries of the last two decades, demonstrating that by ing to language infants acquire sophisticated information properties, have created new views of important examples of a new kind of learning have emerged. No speaker of any language perceives acoustic reality; case, perception is altered in the service of s abstract patterns. A major requirement of language processing is the detection rities, or patterns, in language input, a stumbling block er speech recognition (7). Infants have been shown to prefer the language spoken by s during pregnancy, as opposed to another language (49–51). Requires infant learning of the stress and intonation teristic of the language (the pitch information shown in fig. 6 and 9 months, infants exploit prosodic patterns related stress or emphasis typical of words in their native language. American infants tested at 6 no listening preference for words with the strong/weak d to the weak/strong pattern, but by 9 months they exhibit preference for the pattern typical of their native language. At 4 months of age, infants listen to polish and english speech samples that have pauses inserted boundaries as opposed to within clauses, but by 6 months,Infants listen preferentially to pauses inserted at the ries appropriate only to their native language (41, 56). 9 months of age, infants detect patterns related to the orderings es that are legal for their language. At this age, infants do ize the words themselves, but recognize the perceptual l of words in their language. They develop a “” in which words fit; a description of word candidates in identifying potential words in running s exploit statistical properties of language input. New research shows s detect and exploit the statistical properties of the hear to find word candidates in running speech before they meanings of words. Indicate that native-language phonetic prototypes evoke ses when compared with tested with a phonetic prototype as opposed to a nonprototype same category, infants show greater ability to generalize to ry members (63, 64). Adults, the distortion of perception caused by language well illustrated by a study on the perception of american english. The results suggest that ence produces mental maps for speech that differ speakers of different languages (40, 69, 79). 12–16), as well as asymmetries in perception seen in infancy (80,81), produce a contouring of the perceptual space that is universal contouring soon gives way to a language-specific distorts perception, completely revising the perceptual ying speech processing (65). Model reflecting this developmental sequence from tion to language-specific perception, called the native model, proposes that infants' mapping of ambient language acoustic dimensions underlying speech, producing a complex network,Or filter, through which language is perceived (39, 40, 82). Ge-specific filter alters the dimensions of speech we attend to,Stretching and shrinking acoustic space to highlight the n language categories. Once formed, language-specific learning a second language much more difficult because the riate for one's primary language is completely different required by other languages. Studies of adult bilinguals, who d to their second language after the age of 6, demonstrate s only for the first language, illustrating the potent effects linguistic experience (66). Months reflects the formation of a language-specific summary, the studies on speech learning, demonstrating that patterns, extract statistical information, and have s that can be altered by experience, cannot be explained se to skinnerian reinforcement learning. Its study will le beyond what it tells us about language the new learning strategies observed for speech /or species-specific? Research on cognitive development confirms that categorization (83), statistical learning (84), and s (85) are not unique to speech. Similarly, animals are sensitive tional probabilities (86), but it is unlikely that an spontaneously exhibit statistical learning after simply language, as human infants have been shown to do. Speakers who learn a second puberty produce it with an “accent” typical of y language, even after long-term instruction (90). Exaggerating speech not only makes discriminable for infants, it highlights critical parameters the native language. Mothers s also increase the variety of exemplars they use, behaving in that makes mothers resemble many different talkers, a feature assist category learning in second-language learners (107). Studies, language-delayed children show substantial measures of speech and language after listening to speech altered er to exaggerate phonetic differences (108, 109). These new data suggest that cations made by adults unconsciously when they speak to a role in helping infants map native-language input. Ents a change in theoretical perspective with regard to the motherese in language critical period for language learning depends on experience,Not just timethere is no doubt that children learn language more naturally ently than adults, a paradox given adults' superior . Acquisition often is cited as an example of a “” in development, a learning process that is constrained , or factors such as hormones, that are outside the s itself. For instance, if es the creation of mental maps for speech, as suggested by language magnet model (65, 82), it likely “commits” ure in some way. Measurements of brain activity, for example,Confirm left-hemisphere effects for native-language sounds in ched negativity (mmn), an event-related potential elicited by in a repetitive sound pattern (72). Interestingly, the features shown to -language learners—exaggerated acoustic cues, multiple many talkers, and mass listening experience—are features ese provides in life, interference effects are minimal and two gs can be acquired, as is the case for infants learning ges. Anecdotal evidence suggests that infants exposed to ges do much better if each parent speaks one of the ges, rather than both parents speaking both languages.
This the case because it is easier to map two different sets of ries (one for each of the two languages) if they can tually separated. A second language learned later in life (y) may require another form of separation between the two avoid interference. Data gathered by using functional mri te that adult bilinguals who acquire both languages early in te overlapping regions of the brain when processing the ges, whereas those who learn the second language later in te two distinct regions of the brain for the two languages (114). Is consistent with the idea that the brain's processing of y language can interfere with the second language. The problem d if both are learned early in sionsthe framework that emerges from this research is very that held historically. Six tenets of a new view of ition are offered: (i) infants' initially parse units of speech allowing them to acquire higher-order d by their combinations; (ii) the s is not a selectionist one in which innately specified selected on the basis of experience; (iii) rather, tual learning process, unrelated to skinnerian learning,Commences with exposure to language, during which infants ns, exploit statistical properties, and are perceptually that experience; (iv) vocal imitation links tion and production early, and auditory, visual, and ation are coregistered for speech categories; (v). Addressing infants unconsciously alter their speech to s' learning strategies, and this is instrumental in s' initial mapping of speech; and (vi) the for language is influenced not only by time, but by the ment that results from together, these principles suggest that what is innate ge is not a universal grammar and phonetics, but innate strategies that place constraints on perception and learning. Language is thus innately discoverable,But not innate in the way that selectionist models suggested. Ng strategies used by infants may themselves have influenced of language, in much the same way that general sing influenced the selection of phonetic units for its evolution. The continued study of language development s promises to reveal the precise nature of the n language and ledgmentsi thank erica stevens and feng-ming tsao for assistance ation of the manuscript and andy meltzoff for comments on discussed. Paper was presented at the national academy of uium “auditory neuroscience: development, transduction, ation,” held may 19–21, 2000, at the arnold and mabel in irvine, nces1. En’s acquisition of language has long been considered one of the uniquely defining characteristics of human today, it is the commonly held belief that children acquire their mother tongue through imitation of the parents, caregivers or the people in their environment. Noam chomsky, propounded his theory that the capacity to acquire language is in fact innate. This revolutionized the study of language acquisition, and after a brief period of controversy upon the publication of his book, aspects of the theory of syntax, in 1964, his theories are now generally accepted as largely true. As a consequence, he was responsible for the emergence of a new field during the 1960s, developmental psycholinguistics, which deals with children’s first language acquisition. He was not the first to question our hitherto mute acceptance of a debatable concept – long before, plato wondered how children could possibly acquire so complex a skill as language with so little experience of life. Indeed, language is not a skill such as many others, like learning to drive or perform mathematical operations – it cannot be taught as such in these early stages. Rather, it is the acquisition of language which fascinates linguists today, and how it is possible. Noam chomsky turned the world’s eyes to this enigmatic question at a time when it was assumed to have a deceptively simple r in this term-paper i am going to describe the stages in child language acquistion starting from the very birth of an infant till the onset of are many facts that are intriguing about the to cite this ing theories of language acquisition and language development essay. The aim of this essay is to explore language acquisition and compare and contrast different theories of language acquisition and language development. Language is perceived as the way humans communicate through the use of spoken words, it involves particular system and styles in which we interact with one another (oxford 2009). Possessing this ability to communicate through the use of language is thought to be a quintessential human trait (pinker 2000). Learning a language, know as language acquisition, is something that every child does successfully within a few years. Language acquisition is in itself the development by which humans acquire the ability to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate.... The subtlety of language acquisition has been the most fundamental question in the study of linguistics and human development. From bow-wow theory to yo-he-ho theory, major theories on the origins and learnability of language have emerged in mid-20th century and heavily debated ever since. He introduced and developed the theory from 1950s to 1970s, as he proposed and championed linguistic nativism in language acquisition.... Possessing a language is a quintessentially human trait, yet the acquisition of language in children is not perfectly understood. They are exposed to varying vocabulary, grammar and intonation and depending on where they live in the world, they will acquire the language of their care givers. The world around them is an external factor that carves first language acquisition into a child so young. Introduction nowadays english an international language plays a more and more important role in the world. Language is a set of arbitrary symbols that enables every individual in the community to communicate and interact. Possessing a language is essential in all human; every normal human speaks but nonhuman does not. He has theorized on the subject of second language acquisition for years and has been quite influential in this field of linguistics. He approaches the subject of second language acquisition by presenting his five theories for acquiring a second language. Aida walqui is another expert; however, she approaches the subject from the aspect that contextual factors are involved in second language learning.
Language acquisition principles stephen krashen is one of the experts when it comes to language acquisition. He has theorized on the subject of second language acquisition for years and has been quite influential in the field of linguistics approaching the subject of second language acquisition by presenting his five hypotheses for his theory of acquiring a second language. His approach comes from his view that acquisition is obtained best through contextual conversation, which demonstrates his acquisition-learning hypothesis.... The fact that there exist so many languages and children of all countries are able to acquire them at the same speed. This list can go on and on, and i am sure that the reader can think of many other fascinating features of stated by cognitive researches “language is paramount among the capacities that characterize humans, setting us off from even the most perfectly formed and functioning of the other beasts on earth so. As a matter of species pride – if nothing else – we would hold up language as a marker of our humanity and thus a focus of our scientific interests. Chomsky (1959) argued that language was far too complex to be learned so competently in such a short space of time, by cognitively immature toddlers, merely by reinforcement. This contains a set of rules common to all languages and allows children to learn any language which they are exposed to. The interactionist perspective suggests that a combination of biological and cognitive factors plus the linguistic environment are all necessary for the acquisition of language. For instance, the terms are generally used to separate first language acquisition from second language learning, and implied within this distinction is the gap between children of 0-5 years learning their mother tongue, and those beyond puberty who may begin at this stage to learn a second language, or more. The process is a conscious one in learning whereas it is subconscious in acquisition and in language acquisition the focus is on communication or reception of a message as opposed to syntax and grammar as is the case in language learning. Moreover, the context is usually crucial and meaningful in language acquisition, but need not be important to the same extent in language learning. Motivation, too, is a factor that may broaden the gulf between learning and acquisition, but need not be factor that may broaden the gulf between learning and acquisition, as for the latter the language is a matter of urgent necessity. Most importantly, however, the usual outcome of language acquisition is fluency, which is by no means guaranteed in language often ask questions such as, do you remember when you learned to tie your shoes, ride a bike, and eat with a fork. So, since we always speak the language of our parents, they must have helped us learn to speak our first language. Despite the fact that children don’t know when their parents are speaking grammatically and when they are making errors, all children grow up knowing the language stages of language en with normal hearing develop speech and language in predictable stages. The time of language acquisition can be described by the following timeline: shortly before their first birthday, babies begin to understand words, and around that birthday, they start to produce them. It is safe to way that except for constructions that are rare, predominantly used in written language, or mentally taxing even to an adult, all parts of all languages are acquired before the child turns is worth mentioning that continuous tracking of language acquisition is a difficult task: between the late 2s and mid-3s, children’s language blooms into fluent grammatical conversation so rapidly that it overwhelms the researchers who study it; no one has worked out the exact sequence. An interesting task would be to find out if this growth depends on culture or gly, children do not seem to favour any language. They swiftly acquire free word order, rich systems of case and agreement, strings of agglutinated suffixes, ergative case marking, all languages are acquired before the child turns start acquiring communication skills as soon as they are born. Since babies learn to differentiate their cries without any adult intervention, i think many parents assume that their baby will learn language just by hearing other people talk. While, it is true that babies will pick up some language, inflection and other conversational skills from what they hear, and the most effective method to insure that a child will acquire language is to talk directly to them, early and often. Language learning process goes through several stages:· prelinguistic stage (from birthday till around 6 months of age) – crying, cooing, vocal play. One-word utterances (12-15 months) – the child starts to say the words of the parents’ language. The child produces the full range of possible speech sounds – even those which do not occur in speech heard in immediate environment, and which she or he may later find “impossible” to reproduce when learning a foreign language. Thus, this does not occur by imitating the sounds in the parents’ language, since phonemes from other languages occur, and the frequency of phoneme production matches the frequency in the world’s languages rather than in the parents’ language. Because these sounds are relatively visible, parent modelling can play an important role in a child’s acquisition of (1980) found that infants of 12-17 months can understand the meaning of many words before they can use them in their own speech. You introduce language and communication to a young baby in a responsive and caring manner, the baby will reciprocate with sounds, sound combinations and later with word approximations and eventually words. It is for sure that exposing them to language at such an early age is one of the reasons, those teenagers devours books now, loves writing and will talk endlessly on the phone. Not only do books encourage language and communication but they also help to increase baby’s attention span. The words are often pronounced differently (probably because the child’s hearing hasn’t developed fully yet); for example, children tend to delete parts of hard-to-pronounce consonant clusters (such as the “str” in “string”), sometimes producing words with sounds that aren’t part of the parents’ language (such as “sring” - “sr” is not a permitted consonant cluster in english); finally, the errors the child makes often result from under – or overgeneralization (the proverbial case of calling every four-legged creature “doggie”). Milk” spoken by a toddler at this stage of language development, may be used to represent the sentence, 'please may i have some milk'. These two-word sentences already reflect the language being acquired – in ninety five percent of them, the words are properly ordered. These sentences demonstrate that children use syntactically correct word short sentences which children utter at this stage usually omit words such as a, on, and the, gerken et al (1990) suggest that this may be because they see these function words as 'spacers' between the more heavily stressed content this stage the great development of language can be observed, and it is very interesting to record baby’s each word, at what age and how did it language learning proceeds, the pace quickens and by 18-24 months infants may add up to 40 new words a week to their vocabulary, dromi (1987). For example, labov and labov studied their daughter jessie’s acquisition of inversion in wh-question: adults' rule of inversion: what do you want? Waxman & senghas (1992) researches has shown that 2 year olds use strategies to enable them to find out the meaning of new words.
Telegraphic speech was thought to be universal to all cultures, but research by de villiers & de villiers (1992) has shown that children from russia and turkey produce grammatical speech from the beginning. This may be because there are less rigid syntactic rules and more stress is put on 'spacers', than in other languages. The need (or benefits) of politeness when making requests is also being incorporated into their language skills. By the time they go to school around 5 years of age, children have learned a lot about spoken language in a very short space of time, and are able to communicate in effective fairly complex sentences. To the idea of ‘language genes’ is the hypotheses of a genetically based developmental schedule determining a critical period for language acquisition. Since lenneberg (1967), the notion that first language acquisition can only be normal if it occurs during a critical period (from age two until the onset of puberty, according to him) has been generally accepted. Often, this critical period has been assumed to be a specific feature of language acquisition, and not one of learning in general. The years from 2-7, when language is mastered, children constantly adjust their grammar until it matches that of the adult speaker population. This critical period between the ages of 2-7 suggests that first language learning, like walking, is an innate capacity of human beings triggered by a level of development more than feedback from the environment. That is, so long as a child hears a language – any language – when they reach this critical period they will learn it perfectly. If this is true, any child not hearing language during this period not only should not learn to speak but also should not be able to learn to speak. For a critical period of language acquisition is abundant and the ethical implications of research on this question are obvious. However, there have been a few tragic non-scientific bits of evidence that supports the innateness + critical period hypothesis and there are cases of ‘feral’ and deprived children, who receive language stimulation only after the onset of puberty and do not acquire language normally. The evidence is not conclusive but all of it suggests that language is an innate capacity of human beings, which is acquired during a critical period between 2-7. After that period, it becomes increasingly more difficult for humans to learn languages, which explains why learning a second language is more difficult than learning a first one (or two or even three). Summary of behaviours to expect of children ly developing speech and language:•laugh and use voice when played with. Relate experiences using 4- to 5-word language acquisition cannot be sped ”talks” long before any actual words emerge and language development may follow a general babies are much slower than this timetable – development is highly lly, a baby’s first words, at around a year, take the longest to learn. From now on, vocabulary increases, sentence structure becomes more complex, and probably by three a child will have acquired enough mastery of language to be asking non-stop questions about everything under the sun. Generally – these tend to be children who have trouble understanding the language of other often though, late language development is nothing to worry about. Most children who talk later usually catch up later, and speak early does not mean the child will be especially bright or good at c variations can account for later language acquisition. It would seem that part of the machinery for learning language is inbuilt into the brain and can be inherited, and some research indicates this may have more to do with matters such as the speed of learning new words, and the ability to understand others language. For example, as broca’s area (broca's area of the brain - a small patch of the cerebral cortex; adjacent to the part of the motor-control strip dedicated to the jaws, lip, and tongue; seems to be implicated in grammatical processing in general) develops, the region in the brain for language production, children develop speech and grammar. Wernicke’s area, the centre of language comprehension, develops a good six months before broca’s area even nment is another major influence, especially in terms of pronunciation, rate of grammatical development. Parents who talk and read more to the child regularly, who share toys and games with the child, and who respond to the child’s words, seem to have children whose language develops s over-anticipate their baby’s needs. These parents have to make their toddler understand that they and the whole family expect that the child will use words to communicate his needs is a vitally important step in helping him actually acquire the language. This is when language progresses most rapidly as maturing takes place in the sensory cortex, the part of the brain that processes messages from the senses. Shift gradually the responsibility for being understood from you to the child as he acquires more spoken language. Provide the child with the opportunity to acquire language by participating in activities which are common in life. Maintain a close relationship with professionals in order to provide the child with the optimal opportunities to develop spoken language communication. Be prepared to be the primary person responsible for the initial development of the child's spoken language. Remember to set aside time to just play with the child without concentrating on language development. Do not begin formal teaching of vowels and consonants until ample time has been spent on the informal learning of spoken language. Optimize the child's contact with his/her hearing peers in order to enhance natural development of his/her spoken language skills. Motivate the child to talk by ensuring that his/her experiences with the acquisition of spoken language are successful. Adopt an alternative communication system only as a last ge acquisition refers to the process where a normally developed child is able to become a proficient language user without having to make seemingly difficult efforts. Acquisition, therefore, is in contrast with ‘learning’ which refers to the processes where deliberate efforts have to be made in order to become proficient with the use of language, for instance, the ability to write and en seem to be able to acquire a language at a speed no adults can match.
From the analysis of the child’s acquisition process of a language, it seems that the child is a ‘linguist’ him/herself in that the child is able to construct his/her ‘grammar’ of the language, hence the ‘little linguist’ theory. At the age of three the child starts to pronouns the full sentences with syntactic structure and the vocabulary has grown to almost one thousand of words including nouns, verbs, pronouns and r, what a child does when she or he learns language: what exactly does a child do? Whatever it is, it is universal – it is acquired regardless of culture, language, class, etc.