AGE AND ACQUISITION2nd lecture

Cognitive consideration

Stages of child’s intellectual development : •Birth -2sensorimot

or

•2-7preoperational

•7-16•Concrete operational:7-11•Formal operational: 11-16

operational

Language acquisition and concrete/formal stage transition

1) Ausubel (1964) pointed at the connection stating the question:

Dose the capacity of formal, abstract thought have a facilitating or inhabiting effect on language acquisition in adults?

Adults contrary to children, would profit from grammatical explanations and deductive thinking

2) Rosansky (1975) believes: That children are highly centred. The lack

of flexibility and of decentration is necessary for LA. They acquire language easily as they are not aware of the social values or attitudes.

However, we cannot state that adults could not be successful language learners.

So, variables may lie outside the cognitive domain entirely, but centrally in the emotional domin.

3) Dekeyser (2000) emphasises:

The superiority of children in implicit learning (acquisition of linguistic patterns without explicit attention or instruction).

Although studies have shown hat adults could use explicit mechanisms to master implicit rules, still mental ability to induce abstract patterns starts at early stages.

4) Bialystok (2002) responds to

Dekeyser’s belief indifferently. He argues that a strong case for critical period must show a discontinuity in learning outcomes . Changes could be related to changes of age.

5) The lateralization hypothesis

The growth of the dominance of the left hemisphere contributes to tendency to be intellectually centred on the task of SLL.

6) The Piagetion notion of equilibration: Equilibration is: progressive

organization of knowledge in a stepwise fashion.

This is moving from states of doubts and uncertainty (dequilibrium) to stages of resolution and certainty (equilibrium) and then back to further doubt, that is in time also resolved at (14-15). Children become aware of contradictions and ambiguities as they grow and become intellectual to reach resolutions.

7) Rote & Meaningful learning (Ausubel): There is no room for rote learning. Both

children and adults learn language in natural meaningful contexts.

We should not depend on rote activities in classrooms

Effective considerations in child-adult comparisons: 1) Egocentricity: children are self-

focused 2) Inhibitions: children develop and

experience physical, cognitive, and emotional changes. They learn how to relate to others socially and communicate to reach effective equilibrium.

3) Language ego: the identity a person develops in reference to a language. It is the interaction of native language and ego development.

4) Second identity: 5) Attitudes: 6: Peer pressure:

Linguistic considerations in age-related questions about SLA:

1)Bilingualism: learning two languages simultaneously.

bilingualism

Code-switching

(inserting one language into

another)

2) Inference between 1st and 2nd language: Errors made by effects of 1st and 2nd

language interference. E.g: Possessions – gender – word order- verb

forms questions, and negations

Adults use 1st language to fill the gap that he cannot fill by generalization.

3) Order of acquisition:

In child learning, interference rarely happens. Children use creative construction instead.

There are 5 determinants of acquisition order:

1- Perceptual silence (hear or see a structure)2- Semantic complexity (how to express

meanings)3- Morpho-phonological regularity (the effect of

phonological environment on morphology)4- Syntactic category (grammatical forms)5- Frequency in the input

Issuse in 1st LA:

1- competence and performance 2- comprehension and production 3- nature or nurture 4-universals 5- systematicity and variability 6- language and thought 7- imitation 8- practice and frequency 9- input 10-discourse

Age-and –acquisition- inspired meatods

1)Asher (1977) total physical response (TPR)

(commands- interrogatives)

2) (Krashen & Terrell , 1983) natural approach:

Communication skills

Some controversial issues of NA

Silent period vs. Comprehensible input