Age and Acquisition

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As the research in language acquisition grew up by the half of 20^th century, many people are attracted not only linguists but also language teachers. It was important for them as those findings can help them improve their understanding of teaching language.

But what may be a quite confusing is how language teachers should interpret the findings which are sometimes conflicting each other.

A.     Dispelling Myth

Here are some recommended and common arguments about the relationship between first and second language which then should be thrown away for dispelling myth.

§  Practicing language over and over again

§  Learning by imitation

§  Practicing from a small part of language to a bigger one

§  Understanding precedes speaking

§  Listening comes first, then speaking, reading and writing

§  No translating in language

§  Not to learn grammatical rules

B.     Comparison and Contrast

Child                Adult

C1		A1
C2		A2

L1

                                         

L2

L1        : First language

L2        : Second language

C          : Child

A          : Adult

           

The frame above leaves us three possible comparisons:

1.      First and second language acquisition in children (C1-C2), holding age constant.

2.      Second language acquisition n children and adults (C2-A2), holding second language acquisition constant.

3.      First acquisition in children and second language acquisition in adults (C1-A2).

C.      Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)

What is CPH? It is a biologically determined period of life when language can be acquired more easily and beyond which time language is increasingly difficult to acquire.

Is there a critical period for language acquisition? CPH claims that there is such a biological timetable. At the very beginning, CPH is only dealing with first language acquisition, but then by the growing research, it may also be applicable to the second language acquisition.

D.     Neurological Consideration

One of the most promising areas of inquiry in age and acquisition is the study of the brain in the process of acquisition.

1.      Hemispheric Lateralization

Hemispheric lateralization means that certain functions are assigned or “lateralized” to the hemisphere of brain (left and right). Intellectual, logical and analytic functions appear in the left hemisphere, while right hemisphere controls functions related to emotional and social needs.

Language functions appear to be controlled by left hemisphere of the brain, although there is a great deal of conflicting evidence.

2.      Biological Timetables

One of the most compelling arguments for an accent-related critical period came from Thomas Scovel (1988). He came up with the facts found in baboons and birds which show stability in accents.

Another finding found by Walsh and Driller shows us that we have had support for a neurologically based critical period.

3.      Right-Hemispheric Participation

Obler noted that in second language learning, there is significant right hemisphere participation and that “this participation is particularly active during early stages of learning the second language”.

Ganeese concluded that “there may be greater right hemisphere involvement in language processing in bilinguals who acquire their second language late relative to their first language and in bilinguals who learn it in formal contexts”.

4.      Anthropological Evidence

An anthropologist, Jane Hill provided an intriguing response to Scovel’s by citing anthropological research on non-Western societies that yielded evidence  that adult can acquire second language perfectly. 

5. The Significance of Accent

     Implicit in the comments of the preceding section is the assumption that the emergence of what we commonly call ”foreign accent” is of some importance in our arguments about age and acquisition. We can appreciate the fact that given the existence several hundred muscles (throat, larynx, mouth, lips, tongue, and others) that are used in the articulation of  human speech, a tremendous degree of  muscular control is required to achieve the fluency of a native speaker of a language. At birth the speech muscles are developed only to the extent that the larynx can control sustained cries. These speech muscles gradually develop, and control of some complex sounds in certain languages ( in English the r and l are typical) is sometimes not achieved until after age five, although complete phonemic control is present in virtually all children before puberty.

6. Cognitive Considerations

     Jean Piaget(1972; Piaget & Inhelder 1969) outlined the course of intellectual development in a child through various stages:

·         Sensorimotor stage (birth to two)

·         Preoperational stage (ages two to seven)

·         Operational stage (ages seven to sixteen)

o   Concrete operational stage (ages seven to eleven)

o   Formal operational stage ( ages eleven to sixteen)

Ausubel (1964) hinted at the relevance of such a connection when he noted that adults learning a second language could profit from certain grammatical explanations and deductive thinking that obviously would be pointless for a child.

You may be tempted to answer that question affirmatively (it is possible that a language learner who is too consciously aware of what he or she is doing will have difficulty in learning a second language), but there is both logical and anecdotal counterevidence. Logically, a superior intellect should facilitate what is in one sense highly complex intellectual activity. Anecdotal evidence shows that some adults who have been successful language learners have been very much aware of the process they were going through, even to the point of utilizing self-made paradigms and other fabricated linguistic devices to facilitate the learning process.

     The lateralization hypothesis may provide another key to cognitive differences between child and adult language acquisition. As the child matures into adulthood, the left hemisphere (which controls the analytical and intellectual functions) becomes more dominant than the right hemisphere (which controls the emotional functions).

     Another construct that should be considered in examining the cognitive domain is the Piaget notion of equilibration. Equilibration is defined as “progressive interior organization of knowledge in a stepwise fashion” (Sullivan 1967: 12) and is related to the concept of equilibrium. That is, cognition develops as a process of moving from states of doubt and uncertainty (disequilibrium) to stages of resolution and certainty equilibrium) and then back to further doubt that is, in time, also resolved. It is for all cognitive development up through age fourteen or fifteen.

G.     Affective Consideration

     The affective domain includes many factors: empathy, self-esteem, extroversion, inhibition, imitation, anxiety, attitudes. Some of these may seem at first rather far removed from language learning, but when we consider the pervasive nature of language, any affective factor can conceivably be relevant to second language learning.

     As children grow older they become more aware of themselves, more self-conscious as they seek both to define and to understand their self-identity. At puberty these inhibitions are heightened in the trauma of undergoing critical physical, cognitive, and emotional changes. Adolescents must acquire a totally new physical, cognitive, and emotional identity. Their ego are affected not only in how they understand themselves but also in how they reach out beyond themselves, how they relate to others socially, and how they use the communicative process to bring on affective equilibrium.

     Another affectively related variable deserves mention here even though it will be given fuller consideration in chapter 6: the role of attitudes in language learning. From the growing body of literature on attitudes, it seems clear that negative attitudes can affect success in learning a language. Very young children, who are not developed enough cognitively to posses “attitudes” toward races, cultures, ethnic groups, classes of people, and languages, may be less affected than adults.

     Finally, peer pressure is a particularly important variable in considering child-adult comparisons. The peer pressure children encounter in language learning is quite unlike what the adult experiences. They are told in words, thoughts, and actions that they had better “be like the rest of the kids.” Such peer pressure extends to language. Adults tend to tolerate linguistic differences more than children, and therefore errors in speech are more easily excused. If adult can understand a second language speaker.

Linguistic Considerations

We have to so far look at learners themselves and considered number of different issues in age and acquisition. Now we turn to some issues that center on the subject matter itself: language. What are some of the LINGUISTIC considerations in age-related question about SLA? A growing number of research studies are now available to shed some light on the linguistic processes of second language learning and how those processes differ between children and adults.

Bilingualism

It is clear that children learning two language simultaneously acquire them by the use of similar strategies. They are, in essence, learning two first languages, and the key to success is in distinguishing separate contexts for the two languages. People who learn a second language in such separate context can often be described as coordinate bilinguals; they have two meaning systems, as opposed to compound bilinguals who have one meaning system from which both languages operate.

Interference between First and Second Languages

A good deal of the research on non simultaneous second language acquisition, in both children and adults, has focused on the interfering effects of the first and second language. For the most part, research confirms that the linguistic and cognitive processes of second language learning in young children are in general similar to first language processes.

Interference in Adults

Adult second language linguistic processes are more vulnerable to the affect of the first language on the second, especially the farther apart the two event are. Whether adults learn a foreign language in classroom or out in the “arena,” they approach the second language—either focally or peripherally—systematically, and they attempt to formulate linguistic rules on the basis of whatever linguistic information is available to them: information from the native language, the second language, teacher, classmates, and peers.

Order of Acquisition

One of the first steps toward demonstrating the importance of factors others than the first language interference was taken in series of research studies by Haidi Dulay and Maria Burt (1972, 1974a, 1974b, 1976). They even went so far at one point as to claim that “transfer of LI syntactic patterns rarely occurs” in child second language acquisition (1976: 72). They claimed that children learning a second language use a Creative Contruction process, just as they do in their first language. This conclusion was supported by same massive research data collected on the acquisition order the eleven English morphemes in children English learning as a second language. Dulay and Burt found common order of acquisition among children of several native language background, an order very similar to that found by Roger Browm (1973) using the same morphemes but for children acquiring English as their first language.

Issues in First Language Acquisition Revisited

Having examined the comparison of first and second language acquisition across a number of domains of human behavior, we turn in this final section to a brief consideration of the eight issues in first language acquisition that presented in Chapter 2. In most case the implications of these issues are already clear, from the comments in the previous chapter, from the reader’s logical thinking, or from comments in this chapter. Therefore what follows is a way of highlighting the implications of the issues for the second language learning.

Competence and Performance

It is difficult to “get at” linguistic competence in a second language as at is in first. For children, judgment of grammaticality may elicit second language “pop-go-weasel” effect. You can be a little more direct inferring competence in adult; adult can make choices between two alternative forms, and sometimes they manifest an awareness of grammaticality in a second language.

Comprehension and Production

Whether or not comprehension is derived from a separate level of competence, there is universal distinction between comprehension and production. Learning a second language usually means learning to speak it and comprehend it! When we say “Do you speak English?” or “Parlez-vous francais?” we usually mean “and do you understand it too?” Learning involves both modes (unless you are interested only in, say, learning to read in the second language).So teaching involves attending to both comprehension and production and the full consideration of the gaps and differences the two.

Nature or Nurture?

What happens after puberty to the magic “little black box” called LAD? Does the adult suffer from linguistic “hardening of the arteries?” Does LAD “grow up” somehow? Does lateralization signal the death of LAD? We do not have complete answers to these questions, but there have been some hints in the discussion of physical, cognitive, and affective factors. What we do know is that adult and children alike appear to have the capacity to acquire a second language at any age. The only trick that nature might play on adults is to virtually rule out the acquisition of authentic accent.

Universals

In recent year Universal Grammar has come to the attention of a growing number researcher. The conclusions from the researcher are mixed (Van Boren 1996). Research on child SLA suggests that children’s developing second language grammars are indeed constrained by UG (Lakshmanan 1995). But is not immediately clear whether this knowledge is available directly from a truly universal “source”, or through the mediation of the first language. Yet even in the first language, UG seems to predict certain syntactic domain but not other.

Systematicity and Variability

It is clear that second language acquisition, both child and adult, is characterized by both systematicity  and variability. Second language linguistic development appears in many instances to mirror the first language acquisition process: learners induce rules, generalize across a category, overgeneralize, and proceed in stages of development (more on this in chapter 9). The variability of second language data poses thorny problem that have been addressed by people like Tarone (1987), Ellis (1987, 1989), and Preston (1996). The variability of second language acquisition is exacerbated by a host cognitive, affective, cultural, and contextual variables that are sometimes not applicable to a first language learning situation.

Language and Thought

Another intricately complex issue in both first and second language acquisition is the precise relationship between language and thought. We can see that language helps to shape thinking and that thinking helps to shape language: What happens to this interdependence when a second language is acquired? Does the bilingual person’s memory consist of one storage system (compound bilingualism) or two (coordinate bilingualism)? The second language learner is clearly presented with a tremendous task in sorting out new meanings from old, distinguishing thoughts and concepts in one language that are similar but not quit parallel to second language, perhaps really acquiring a whole new system of conceptualization.

Imitation

While children are good deep-structure imitators (centering on meaning, not surface features), adult can fare much better in imitating surface structure (by rote mechanisms) if they are explicitly directed to do so. Sometimes their ability to center on surface distinctions is a distracting factor; at other times it is helpful.

The implication is that meaningful context for language learning are necessary; second language learners ought not to becomes too preoccupied with form lest they lose sight of function and purpose of language.

Practice

Too many language classes are filled with rote practice that centers on surface forms. Most cognitive psychologists agree that the frequency of stimuli and the number of times spent practicing forms are not highly important in learning an item. What is important is meaningfulness. Contextualized, appropriate, meaningful communication in the second language seems to be the best possible practice the second language learner could engage in.

Input

In the case classroom second language learning, parental input is replaced by teacher input. Teachers might do well to be as deliberate, but meaningful, in their communications with student as the parent is to the child since input is as important to the school language learner as it is to the first language learner. And that input should foster meaningful communicative use of the language in appropriate context.

Discourse

We have only begun to scratch the surface of  possibilities of second language discourse analysis. As we search for better ways of teaching communicative competence of second language learners, research on the acquisition of discourse becomes more and more important. Perhaps a study of children’s amazing dexterity in acquiring rules of conversation and in perceiving intended meaning help us to find ways teaching such capacities to the second language learners.