Differences Between First Language Acquisition And Second Language Learning 6j266d

Differences between First Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning Differentiating Language learning from language acquisition is considered as one of the many linguistic phenomena that emerged in the 20th century. The need for a systematic study of how languages are learned was developed as part of the cultural and communication expansion the world has witnessed (Ellis 1997, p.3). First Language acquisition is the natural process in which children subconsciously possess and develop the linguistic knowledge of the setting they live in. In contrast, Second language learning takes place where the target language is the language spoken in the language community that differs from the mother tongue “first language” and distinguished from Foreign language learning in which the language is absent from the setting of that community (De Bot, Lowie, and Verspoor 2005, p.7) Many studies addressed the distinction between L1 (First language) acquisition and L2 (Second language) learning. The very first thing to address is the natural process in which L1 learners acquire their language knowledge. L2 learning is more of a conscious one. Compared to L1 learning, L2 learners develop this knowledge by utilising conscious and cognitive efforts. De Bot, Lowie, and Verspoor (2005, p.7) argue that Krashen and Terrel tried to draw a line between second language acquisition and learning by stating that acquisition is a subconscious process and very similar to the one that children develop in their first language. Yule (1985, p.163) defines acquisition to be ‘…the gradual development of ability in a language by using it naturally in communicative situations with others who know the language’. He contrasts it with learning: ‘a more conscious process of accumulating knowledge of the features, such as vocabulary and grammar, of a language, typically in an institutional setting’. The natural subconscious or conscious learning factor is highly and vitally linked and attached to the linguistic setting. This leads to another major distinction between L1 and L2 learners which is exposure. The L1 acquisition, as defined earlier, takes place in a setting where the acquired language is the language spoken by parents and or caregiver. The acquirer is in a constant exposure to this language. Second language learners have lesser with the language, and maybe as few as hours per week in the case of foreign language learners (Yule, 1985, p.163). There are also some individual differences that play part in this distinction and they fall in two groups. First, physical differences and age: Children who are acquiring their first language are still developing their speech organs. This explains the gradual and natural development of sound production accompanied with the brain development. L2 learners’ competence is also affected by age-related physical conditions that hinder their learning. Yule (1985, p.145) argues that the readiness of the human mind to receive and learn a new

language is most in childhood, which is called the critical period. Ellis (1995, p.67) describes the critical period that in which ‘…language acquisition is easy and complete (i.e. native-speaker ability is achieved)’. Second, cognitive and psychological differences: A number of cognitive and psychological learning barriers that separate L2 learners from the L1 acquirers. Recent studies show that motivation plays a great role in attaining language proficiency. Cook (2008, p.136) states that bigger motivation leads to better performance in L2. According to Cook, the motivation for learning falls in two types: Integrative ‘… reflects whether the student identifies with the target culture and people in some sense’; and instrumental one in which learning takes place for a career or other practical reason (Cook (2008, p.136-137). Ellis (1995, p.75) even adds two more types of motivation: Resultative motivation that takes place when learning controls the motivation, and an intrinsic motivation in which it involves the activation, arousal, and maintenance of the learning curiosity. There are other cognitive factors that play a role in determining learner’s effort and competence in the second language learning. Those factors are highly related to aptitude which is “… natural ability for learning an L2″ (Ellis, 1995, p.73) http://j09w.com/wp/?p=37

First Language Acquisition There’s a lot missing from the speech of a typical two-year-old. This in itself is of no great interest--after all, there are lots of other things that two-year-olds aren't that good at. What makes the two-year-old more interesting to the linguist is that there are striking regularities in what gets missed out where... (Colin Phillips 1995, MIT)

One of the first things that should strike any half observant parent is the speed and apparent accuracy in which a child proceeds to learn his or her own language. This remarkably rapid development seems to fly in the face of many known facts about the nature of language—so much so that it has become widely accepted in the scientific community to think of language and its acquisition as one of many utterly unexplainable mysteries that beset us in our daily lives. Even the cleverest of scientists today do not know where to begin with trying to unravel the range of complexities that all of language brings. Even so, the child moves ever onward, seemingly with little deference to this so-called mystery and proceeds with little effort to crack the sacred code nonetheless. How could this be? Firstly, parents provide very little in the way of language instruction to the child— contrary to what might be believed, parents do not teach their children to speak. Most parents wouldn’t even have the means in which to explain language overtly to a child even if they wanted). In fact, parents spend the majority of time correcting falsehoods (those little white lies) rather than correcting erroneous grammars. On the mere face of it, one would think children grow-up being little lawyers seeking out truths rather than little linguists seeking out correct hypotheses to their language. Thank God, the latter indeed prevails. Children will continue to lie in order to take-on an advantage, while, without exception, by-and-by acquiring their mother language. By the time a child enters pre-school, she has more-or-less mastered much of her target language. However, in light of these remarkable achievements, children do seem to go through varying degrees of stages along the way to their full mastery. It is this notion of stages of acquisition that has interested the developmental linguists most. Stage-1: Examples of early multi-word speech Him do it. What daddy doing? Me want car. Where go? Yesterday I go. That John car. Her falled me down. Me no like eat. Why them go there? It is a fact that children do not produce adult-like utterances from the very beginning of their multi-word speech. And so much of the debate ongoing in child first language acquisition has been devoted to the nature and extent of ‘what gets missed out where’ in regards to their early grammatical systems. Theory internal measures have been spawned every which way in effort to for the lack of apparent adult-like

language in young children. Theories abound. Despite some evidence that would seem to point to the contrary, more robust syntactic theories from the outset continue to view the very young child as maintaining an operative level of language closely bound to abstract knowledge of grammatical categories (Pinker 1984, Hyams 1986, Radford 1990, Wexler 1996, and Radford & Galasso 1998). For instance, Pinker (1996) has described early language production (‘bottom-up’) in of a ‘first order’ (general nativist) cognitive , suggesting a potential bottleneck effect which attributes a limited high-scope memory to for the child’s truncated syntax of Tense/Agreement and Transitive errors (e.g. Her want), and overapplication of Tense errors (e.g. Does it rolls?). In this sense, it is believed that high-scope memory serves as a kind of scaffolding for formal abstraction. One possible interpretation of this would be to suggest that a rule-based abstraction process (syntax) somehow has evolved out of a biological need to handle and compute the vast and newfound quantitative/qualitative store of linguistic material presently endowed to humans due to this increase in memory: i.e., high-scope memory spawns variable abstraction. There is no question that a purely associative-based model of lexical storage, with the entire range of inflections being stored as whole lexicalchunks, would burden the memory process in such a way that it would squeeze out any remaining computational space required for more convoluted syntactic operations (such as movement and the realization of formal functional features). Radford (1990), on the other hand, has maintained a ‘second order’ (special nativist) maturational affecting syntactic complexity in order to explain the same lack of adult-like speech. In this sense, memory has nothing whatsoever to do with the emergence of formal syntax (or lack thereof) and a more special nativist stance—special in the sense that we are now operating on a ‘top-down’ scenario—is pursued. Notwithstanding peripheral differences regarding the inherent causes of such errors, it should be noted that these two long standing nativist positions share a more common bond in that they were reactions to much of what was bad coming on the heels of work done in the 1970s—theories which sought not only to for such errors on purely semantic grounds, but, likewise, seemingly to demote the child’s entire early grammatical apparatus to a mere level of associative-style cognitive learning (e.g., Bloom 1975, Braine 1976, and to some extent Bowerman (1973) among others). Although it is true that a certain amount of Pinker’s work in this general context continues to ‘bootstrap’ early grammars to semantics, the steering away from potential non-nativistic associative learning-based s to proper syntactic-based s was viewed by many to be a timely paradigm shift, acting as a safeguard against what might be construed as ‘bad-science’ behaviorism (of the purely semantic kind). This shift adjusted toward a more accurate nativist stance, swinging the Plato vs. Aristotle debate back to Plato’s court, at least of the time being (as witnessed in Chomsky’s entitled book ‘Cartesian Linguistics’)—a move keeping in line with what was then coming down the pike in Chomskyan linguistics. One thing, however, that seems to have caught the imagination of developmental linguists in recent years has been to question

again the actual infrastructure of the child brain that produces the sort of immature grammar: namely, a rejuvenation has reappeared in the literature circumscribing new understanding of age-old questions dealing with the computational structure of the mind (see The Dual Mechanism Model).

Second Language Learning Much of Second Language Learning centers around issues of the nature of learnability. Whereas it is understood that first language acquisition is somewhat a mystery and relies mostly on innate universal principles of constraints and assumptions, second language learning seems to rely more on cognitive mechanism in order to fashion general problem solving learning strategies to cope with the material. This difference between First Language ‘Acquisition’ vs. Second Language ‘Learning’ has been recently articulated as a Fundamental Difference Hypothesis. It goes without saying that children naturally acquire their first language. Adults (post-critical period) do not naturally acquire their second language, as a number of fundamental differences appear in their rationale towards learning. Attempts to juxtapose what we do know about first language development, parameter settings, syntactic-categorical development (Lexical vs. Functional), etc. and comparing and contrasting these to second language have spawned new theoretical models, approaches and theories which seek to address new issues in TESL pedagogy. http://www.csun.edu/~galasso/lang1.htm

Crucial differences between L1 and L2 acquisition [Robert O'Neill - April 1998] A great deal of what is called 'Communicative Language Teaching' is based on what is essentially a 'nativist' view of second language (L2) acquisition. A 'nativist' view assumes – consciously or unconsciously – that somehow L2 learning can and should be like learning our native language (L1). This is wishful thinking and is based on a profound misconception about the nature of L2 learning - just as it is a misconception about how L1 acquisition occurs. The best way to explore the differences between the two processes is to view them side-by-side – in parallel, as below. L1 ACQUISITION 1. L1 acquisition is genetically triggered at the most critical stage of the child's cognitive development. 2. The 'engine' of language – its syntactic system – is 'informationally encapsulated' – which means that children are not even aware of developing a complex, rule-governed, hierarchical system. Most L1 speakers do not even realise this is what they are using. 3. The L1 is typically acquired at the crucial period of cognitive development; pre-puberty, when L1 and other crucial life-skills are also acquired or learned. 4. Children never resist L1 acquisition, any more than they resist learning to walk. 5. Given even minimal 'input' during critical pre-pubescent development, all humans acquire the L1 of the society or social group they are born into as a natural and essential part of their lives. Even braindamaged and/or retarded children usually acquire the full grammatical code of the language of their society or social group. 6. In short, L1 acquisition is an essential, biologically–driven process. It is part of every individual's evolutionary history and development in the most critical stage of that individual's acquisition of essential life-skills. L2 LEARNING 1. L2 learning is not genetically triggered in any way unless the child grows up bi-lingually (in which case, it is not really L2 learning at all). 2. The syntax of the L2 is not acquired unconsciously, or at least not in the way L1 syntax is acquired. Few L2 learners develop the same degree of unconscious, rule-governed insight into and use of the L2 which they demonstrate with the L1. 3. The L2 is not learned as part of the learner's general cognitive development. It is not an essential lifeskill in the same way that the L1 is. 4. There is often great conscious or unconscious resistance to L2 learning.

5. Many highly intelligent individuals with impressive learning skills often have great problems learning an L2. Many L2 learners 'fossilise' at some stage, so that even if they use the L2 regularly, and are constantly exposed to input in it, they fail to develop full grammatical or 'generative' competence. 6. L2 learning is not a biologically-driven process. It is not an essential aspect of an individual's general development, especially when the L2 is simply another subject on an already overloaded school curriculum or something that has to be undertaken by people with busy lives and heavy work-loads. Some Conclusions I Personally Have Drawn From the Foregoing 1. Speech-act theory, upon which so much of so-called 'Communicative Language Teaching' (CLT) is based, has some importance and should not be ignored. Yet the engine of generative competence – syntax – is just as important. In fact, I would argue that it is even more so, just as I would argue that it is as wrong to ignore the teaching and/or study of syntax as it is to ignore the pragmatic acts of everyday language-use which are the focus of speech-act theory. In other words, the question is not 'Is syntax important' but 'How – if at all – can it be taught and learned in the study of any L2?' 2. I believe that texts – typical, naturalistic (but not 'authentic') instances of every-day language use – should be the central vehicle of my own teaching. Teaching and learning with and through texts makes it possible to study both the generative and pragmatic domains of language and also favours 'unconscious' learning of language as text - language in context. 3. As important as systematic and regular study of the underlying generative system is, it is even more important to maintain the interest of learners and to give them a certain degree of confidence that they can and will learn the L2 to a reasonable degree of accuracy and fluency. Texts also make this possible, especially if they have 'narrative-drive' – that is, if they arouse the interest of learners in what is going to happen next and what may have happened before the time-focus of the text. 4. Just as all good 'native-speaker' texts are directed at particular native-speakers and written, spoken and edited with a clear idea of what they are likely to understand and be interested in, so all good 'non-native' texts should be created with the same clear understanding of what those non-native speakers are likely to understand and be interested in. Such texts may be based to some degree on 'authentic' texts, but once any text is adapted or changed in some way, it is no longer 'authentic'. Authenticity for its own sake is an empty and irrelevant fetish. 5. It is essential for the text to be 'accessible'- so that learners do not spend too much time struggling simply to make sense of the text and all the words or structures they do not know. In real-life with our own language, we usually 'switch off' when we encounter such texts. Typical instances of 'authentic' speech acts and typical 'authentic texts taken from newspapers and other sources are often incomprehensible even to native-speakers when the background context is no longer 'here and now'.

6. Texts for classroom use need to be fairly short, so that there can be time in the lesson for various activities and exercises that encourage learners to use the language of the text and to modify it for their own purposes or the purposes of the lesson. Most typical newspaper articles, even from sources likes 'Newsweek', are simply too long. 7. The text is there not just to be read but to generate language use by the class, and to lead to further study. So it will almost always be adapted for these purposes and thus cease to be 'authentic'. Authentic materials – in the narrow sense of the word are often boring and hardly ever as relevant or as useful as texts that have been skilfully-written for specific didactic aims. Of course, such texts are often based on 'authentic' materials. They should reflect different types of such texts just as they should be naturalistic and interesting. 8. The argument that texts should be 'authentic' is as superficial and misconceived as the belief that L2 learning can and should be like L1 learning. All genuine 'authentic' texts in the real world are created with definite purposes and for clearly perceived and defined audiences. Texts created or designed for classroom purposes must have their own purposes and their own clearly defined audiences, as well. http://www.tedpower.co.uk/esl0412.html