¡Descarga applied linguistics y más Apuntes en PDF de Filología Inglesa solo en Docsity!
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
PART I. General Introduction to the
Discipline of Applied Linguistics
1. An overview of Applied Linguistics
There are several key terms that should be taken into account:
- Narrow definitions: short, specific, restricted, limited, just focusing on one aspect.
- Broad definition: unrestricted, non-limited, general. The traditional vision focuses on a narrow definition, just focused on one aspect.
- Problem-driven discipline: guided by the problems that are given on a context.
- Interdisciplinarity
1.1. What is Applied Linguistics?
There are several definitions of Applied Linguistics. Applied Linguistics, at least in America, was first officially recognized as an independent course at the University of Michigan in
- In those early days, the term was used both in America and in England to refer to applying a so called “scientific approach”, to teaching foreign languages, including English for non-native speakers. 1946, end of World War II. The idea of forming these people in another language, in order to act undercover, involved investing large amounts of money in learning languages. They provided them with everything necessary for this learning and teaching of a language: laboratories, dictionaries… In Europe, the emergence of Applied Linguistic as an academic discipline was closely related to the foundation of AILA, The Association Internationale De Linguistique Appliquée. The creation of AILA was agreed upon the international colloquium of Applied Linguistics, at the University of Nancy (France) in 1964. They meet every year in one country. Each country has its own AILA. Traditionally, Applied Linguistics is concerned with language teaching in mother tongue education or with the teaching and learning of foreign or second language. This is the narrow definition of this term, given by Wilkins in 1972, Kaplan in 1990 and Sridhar in
At present, this definition has changed, giving a broad definition. Applied Linguistics refers to the application of linguistic research to the solution of practical, educational and social problems of all types. This definition was given by Trudgill in 1984. But, what is Applied Linguistics? - “Applied Linguistics is essentially a problem-driven discipline, rather than a theory-driven one” (McCarthy, 2001:4)
- It’s also defined as an activity. “The application of linguistic knowledge to some object, situation or problem” (Corder, 1973:15) Corder is probably the father of Applied Linguistics. Some examples of Applied Linguistics are: 1. In communities with more than one language, which ones should be used at school? Any language can be said, but giving a strong explanation to why that language should be studied: German, French, Chinese, Italian, Russian… 2. Should everyone learn foreign languages? And if so, which one or which ones? Which is the best method to do so? 3. Should deaf children learn a sign language, or a combination of lip reading
and speaking?
1.2. The development of Applied Linguistics.
In addition to AILA, there are other national associations:
- The British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) in 1967.
- The American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in 1979.
- The Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics (AESLA) in 1982.
- The Cameroon Association of Applied Linguistics (CAMAILA)
- and over 40 different associations world-wide… This is a very world-wide movement. All these associations reflect the good health of the discipline and its fast growth. The topics are very diverse; they cover all type of fields:
“To an observer, the most notable change in Applied Linguistics has been its rapid growth as an interdisciplinary field” (Richard Tucker in the AILA conference 2005)
Success in the Applied Linguistics enterprise depends on:
- Identifying and defining problems. Everybody has overcome this problem. A linguist does this because he or she wants to know more.
- Contextualizing those problems within linguistic study and developing a theoretical stance. Look more into the problem.
- Employing appropriate resources for the exploration of possible solutions.
- Evaluating the proposed questions. This, in a teaching context, is quite common.
1.3. The Interrelationship of the Disciplines
At present, Applied Linguistics is regarded as an interdisciplinary discipline, that is, one that uses or cuts across several established disciplines or traditional fields of studies. Interdisciplinary approaches typically focuses on problems felt by the investigators to be too complex or vast to be dealt with the knowledge and tools of a single discipline. There is a linguistic visible element, but there is more that deals with this. Some examples of this interdisciplinarity are:
- Clinical linguistics: the application of linguistic theories and methods to the analysis of disorders of spoken, written or signed language. A patient that suffers aphasia or dysphasia loses total or partially the speech. So the linguists have to study the problem and find a language to be used by this patient. For that, you have to document yourself in order to know what type of language these types of patients use.
- Forensic linguistics: the study of any text or item if spoken or written language which has relevance to a criminal or civil dispute, or which story goes on in a court of law or to the language of the law itself. For example: with the suicide notes, you could compare his idiolect with how the note is written, his handwriting… Other examples are: police confessions, wills, declarations of war…
- Ecolinguistics: it is a new branch of linguistics, which investigates the role of language in the development and possible solutions of ecological and environmental problems.
Reading 1 : Schmitt, N. An Overview of Applied Linguistics.
1. What are the “traditional” areas that Applied Linguistics covers? The narrow definition is the teaching and learning of second or foreign languages. The broad definition refers to the second language acquisition, second language pedagogy and its
7. Explain the meaning of the acronym CALL. Computer-assisted language learning. In here, learners work in the computers with audios and videos, in order to learn more of the language. A characteristic of this is that it’s very interactive. 8. In the section “Incorporating Social/Cultural and Contextual Elements into Applied Linguistics” the name of Wundt (1877) is mentioned. Explain why he is important in the discipline psychology. He splited psychology into 2 strands:
- physiological psychology: on elementary functions (sensory experience); its research method would rely on experimental research. More physical
- higher psychology: a process that includes “deliberate remembering, reasoning and language”. It includes elements of human interaction and knowledge gained from society. It requires descriptive methods, such as ethnography and interview, which could capture the social elements. There is human interaction. 9. What is “Sociocultural Theory”? What are its theoretical principles? It emphasizes individual-social integration by focusing on the neccessary and dialectic relationship between the sociocultural endowment (between a person and his or her environment) and biological endowment (mechanisms and processes of a person), out of which emerges the individual. Only through social interaction with others does the human develop their language and cognition. Combination of the social and biological factors that were explained by Chomsky. 10. The concept of “learner strategies” has changed the view of language teaching. In what way? Because it gives a several list of strategies that facilitate language learning. After a study made, they took the strategies that ‘good’ learners used in order to learn the language. The learner is like a glass, in which you fill it with water (knowledge). Like a “tabula rasa”.
PART II: Traditional areas
covered in Applied Linguistics
2. Applied Linguistics and First Language
Acquisition (L1)
2.1. Theories of first language acquisition
2.1.1. Behaviourist approaches: Bloor and Skinner Each one is different and opposite to the previous one. Behaviourist Approaches (Bloomfield, Language 1933):
- Language is regarded as a collection of “habits”. Thus, language learning is based on imitation, memorization and drilling. We learn language by habit forming, repetition… For them, language is a matter of habit.
- Language is stimulus-bound. To a particular stimulus responds the learner. I train the learner with certain stimulus and the student will respond to that.
- Language descriptions are based on the analysis of a corpus (performance or, better, “parole”). Observable behaviour.
- Study of surface structure.
- Accused of neglecting meaning and focusing on form and correctness.
- Primary interest in the phonetic system of language. Lots of studies have been made of contrasting phonetics from different languages.
- Study of the different and unique characteristics of each language. Linguistic determinism: the language you speak conditions the way you think (Sapir and Whorff). The language reflects a view of the world. The “Hopi” language is an example of this: different ways of viewing the world because it doesn’t have verb tenses. Behaviourist implications for language teaching → audio-lingual method:
- Language is viewed as mainly spoken. For the first time, we can start analyzing spoken language. The areas of language in which it emphasizes are: a. pronunciation b. vocabulary c. (later) structures
- Role of the teacher = provider of input teacher – centred approach. Make students overlearn (en exceso para que se convierta en algo natural) structures and pronounce accurately.
- Role of the learner = path follower or sponge. The interaction between teacher and learner is frequent but mechanical (no meaning exchange). Typical repetitions with very little message.
- The mother tongue is absolutely forbidden.
- Assessment (how do we measure student’s performance): Through multiple-choice tests (for vocabulary). Discrimination exercises (for pronunciation) → distinguish the different sounds: see sea sit seat Errors are regarded as something undesirable, in which there is little room for them. Very little meaning to exchange: how are you?, what’s your mother’s name?. The errors give you information of the learner’s process or development, but in the other situation there is no room for them.
2.1.2. Nativist approach: Chomsky (50s/60s)
- Language is regarded as a rule-governed system. Learning a language involves internalising the rule. This is cognitive habit, which is very important.
- It emphasizes on the productive or creative character of the language. Thus, Generative Grammar.
“An infinite number of sentence can be produced by what seems to be a rather small finite number of grammatical rules. A speaker does not have to store a large number of ready-made sentences in his head: he just needs the rules for creating them and undestanding them”
- Language description as the description of the native speaker’s norm (competence).
- Study of deep structures F 0A E grammatical rules.
- Later, after the study, we have the incorporation of semantic structure F 0A E meaning.
- Phonetics is not so central F 0A E superficial aspects.
- Study of the universal common characteristics of all languages ( Universal Grammar ).
- Knowledge of language is acquired through Universal Grammar (UG).
- The Universal Grammar gives the child advanced knowledge of many abstract and complete properties of language, so that these do not have to be learnt from linguistic input or by general learning strategies F 0A E data you receive.
- Sociolinguistics Competence: the ability to adjust out utterances to the social context. More important these social principles.
- Discourse Competence: the ability to interpret the larger context and how to construct longer stretches of discourse, so that different parts make a coherent whole.
- Strategic Competence: the ability to organize a message effectively and to compensate, via strategies, for any difficulty in communication. It is essential in a L2 learning. A dictionar will be an example of strategic competence. We naturally acquire these competences in our native language. Even thou in the L2 is different, we need to live abroad in order to acquire these competences.
The startegic competence compensates the breakdown in your language and improves it at the same time. Andrew’s Pivot Grammar as given in Braine:
- Combinations with “all”: all broke, all buttoned, all done, all wet…
- Combinations with “no”: no be, no fix, no home, no mama…
- Combinations with “more”: more car, more cereal, more fish…
- Calico all done = Said after the death of Calico, the cat.
2.1.3. Functional approaches: cognition and language development (Piaget) and Social Interaction. Functional Approaches aim at accounting for the contextual aspects of language. Louis Bloom (1971) pointed out that telegraphic utterances could mean different things to a child depending on the social context. She found at least 3 possible underlying relations in the utterance “mommy sock”: agent-action: mommy is the one putting the sock on. agent-object: mommy sees the sock. possessor-possessed: mommy’s sock. These varied meanings were inadequately captured in a Pivot Grammar ( Nativist Approach ). Likewise, Brown (1973) puts forward that children’s “two-word utterances” could be interpreted as expressing a range of semantic relations. There are various early semantic relations and examples of it:
RELATION EXAMPLE
Attributive big house Agent-action daddy hit Action-object hit ball Agent-object daddy ball Nominative that ball
Demonstrative there ball Recurrence more ball Non-existence all-gone ball Possessive daddy chair
Bloom’s research, along with that of Piaget, Slobina and others paved the way for a new wave of child language study F 0A E what children learn about language is determined by what
they already know about the world. Language development is thus connected with cognitive development and with children’s interaction with their environment.
Cognition and language development According to Piaget, there is a reltionship between cognitive development and first language acquisition. Linguistic structures will emerge only if there is an already established cognitive foundation. For example, before children can use structures of comparison (e.g. this car is bigger than that), the need to make relative judgements of size. If you don’t understand something cognitively, you can’t explain it linguistically. Piaget (1972) challenged the behaviourist view that cognition is too mentalistic to be studied by the scientific method. Piaget claimed that cognitive development is at the very center of the human organism and that language is dependent on cognitive development (Brown 2000:37) In Piaget’s model of cognitive development, there are 4 stages:
- Sensorimotor Stage (birth-2 years) Children are developing in terms of movement and senses. There is a linguistic explosion. Infants mainly make use of senses and motor capabilities to experience the environment. For instance, if infants make cannot see or touch an object, they stop trying to find it. Once infants develop the capability to recognize that a hiden object still continues to exist, they start searching for it. During the later part of this period (around 2 years old), children develop a sense of object permanence, in which they will begin to search for objects that they have seen hidden. At this stage children construct a mental picture of a world of objects that have independent existence (Crystal, 1987:235) The character limitation of this stage is “thinking only by doing”. Th sensorimotor infant gains physical knowledge.
- Preoperational Stage (2-7) Children start to use symbols such as language to represent objects. For instance, the child understands the word “apple”, although a real apple is not seen. In the video, when the little girl only calls “banana” to a physical one. However, the preoperational child still learns from concrete evidence while adults can learn in abstract ways. The preoperational child is also unaware of another person’s perspective. They exhibit egocentric thought and language.
- Concrete Operational Stage (7-11) Children start to think logically. The concrete operational child begins to think logically. Operations are in concrete situations, but not in abstract manipulations. Concrete operations allow children to classify several classes into a bigger group or to combine a number of classes in any order. The ability to classify the world into different classes.
- Formal Operational Stage (11-beyond) Students have the ability to consider many possibilities for a given condition.
Open word F 0A E you can put whatever you want. The pivot grammar is trying to show that this combination: My that F 0A E doesn’t appear because children know which category the words belong to.
5. What are the main characteristics of the functional approach? The main characteristics of the functional approach would be that the sequences of development are determined more by semantic complexity than by the structural one. Another important characteristic would be the social interaction and langauge development
- language functioning extends well beyond cognitive thought and memeory structure.
2.2. General stages in the L1 Acquisition Process:
phonological, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic.
- Pre-language stage: In the first stages, babies produce cooing and babbling sounds. With cooing velar consonants such as /k/ and /G/ are usually present as well as high vowels, such as /i/ and /u/. By 6 months, the child is usually able to sit and can produce a number of different vowels and consonants such as fricatives and nasals.
- The 1-word/holophrastic stage: Between 12-18 months. Single unit utterances for everyday onjects (milk, cookie, cat…). These singles forms are functioning as a phrase or sentence.
- The 2-word stage: Between 18-20 months. Vocabulary increases to 50/60 distinct words. Expressions of the type baby chair, mommy eat, cat bad will appear. Adult interpretation of such combination is tied-to context of utterance. So these sentences are multiple depending on the context.
- The telegraphic stage: Between 2/3 years old. Multiple-word utterances of the type: Andrew want bat. This shoe all wet. Cat drink milk… The child has developed some sentence-building capacity and can order the forms correctly. Grammatical inflections begin to appear and simple preposition.
Grammatical development morphology + syntax Morphology By 3 years old, incorporation of some inflectional morphemes which indicate the grammatical function of nouns and verbs used:
- ‘-ing’ form: cat sitting, mum reading.
- regular plural: boys, cats… Overgeneralization: foots-footses, boy-boyses (following the houses patterns)
- possessive inflection’s: girl’s dog, daddy’s tie.
- different forms of the verb ‘to be’: is, are, was.
- regular past tense: walked, played. Overgeneralization: wented, comed.
- regular ‘-s’ marker on 3rd^ person singular verbs: comes, looks. Then followed with auxiliaries: does, has. There is a lot of inconsistency because the rules have not been totally internalized. These are the basic ones.
Syntax
- Question formation: 1 st^ stage: ‘wh-’ forms added to the sentence: where mum? rising intonation: sit chair? 2 nd^ stage: more ‘wh-’ forms: what, why. rising intonation: see my doggie?
3 rd^ stage: inversion subject-verbal: can I have a piece? combines with no inversion: why kitty can’t eat?
- Negatives: pre-verbal negation: no fall, no sit here. introduction of: don’t and can’t. ’no’ and ’not’ begin to be placed in front of the verb rather than at the beginning of the sentence: he no bite you. incorporation of other auxiliaries forms such as: didn’t and won’t. Later, the form is added.
QUESTIONS NEGATIVES
Stage 1 (18- months)
- ‘wh-’ forms added to the beginning of the sentence: where mum?
- utter the expression, rising intonation: sit chair?
- ‘no/not’ at the beg of any expression: no sit here no fall not a teddy bear no mitten.
Stage 2 (22- months)
- more ‘wh-’ forms, more complex expressions: why you smiling?
- rising intonation, the strategy continues: see my doggie?
- ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t’
- ‘no’ and ‘not’ begin to be placed in front of the verb: don’t know he no bite you there no squirrels Stage 3 (24- months)
- inversion subject-verb but not always in ‘wh-’ forms: can I have a piece? how that open?
- combined with no inversion: why kitty can’t eat? did I cauight it? what did you do?
- incorporation of other auxiliary forms such as ‘didn’t’ and ‘won’t’ (dissappearance of the Stage 1 forms)
- form ‘isn’t’: very late acquisition (some Stage2 forms still used)
Semantic development The learning of vocabulary is the most noticeable feature of the early months of language acquisition. Children do not learn a word with its meaning “ready made”. They have to work out for themselves what it must mean, and in so doing they make errors. Three types of errors occur often between 2 and 3 yeas old. Overextension : children use limited vocabulary to refer to a large number of unrelated objects. The most common pattern is for the child to overextend the meaning of a word on the basis of similarities of shape, sound and size (to a lesser extent of movement and texture). For example, the girl in the video uses the word “apple” to refer to all rounf fruits. Some other examples of overextension are:
escape), *skycar (airplane) Noun compounds are one of the earliest derivational constructions. Children create novel compounds out of familiar elements in order to convey their first agent or instrument nouns. Because of this, there is a process of conventionality: abandon the new words in favor of the conventional or existing forms.
2.4. The Critical Period Hypothesis in L1 Acquisition:
Genie’s study (CPH)
The age factor is important for first language acquisition. The notion of a critical period was first used by ethologists studying the origin of species-specific behaviour. It was found that with certain species (e.g. rats), there were periods in which a particular kind of stimulus had to be present if the baby was to develop normal behaviour. The question was, then, raised: are there critical periods also in human maturation? It’s in first language acquisition were there is a critical period. Eric Lenneberg (1921-1975) American Psycholinguist, argued that such a period existed in the area of language acquisition. Main claim F 0A E the potential for the language function in humans existed in very young cildren. With increasing age, This linguistic ability deteriorated. The development of language was said to be the result of brain maturation: the 2 hemispheres are equipotential (the same capacity) at birth, with language gradually becoming lateralised in the left hemisphere.
left side F 0A E linguistic abilities The process of lateralisation begins at around age 2 and end at puberty (this period depends of the race, culture…), when the brain is fully developed and lateralization is complete. At this point, there is no longer any neural “plasticity” (cuando puedes moldear algo), which would enable the right hemisphere to take over the language function if the left side was damaged. Arguments in favour:
- patterns of recovery in brain-damaged adults and children. Adults seem to have less of that ability to recover language if lost, whereas children showed an ability to recover over a longer period. They could even make a complete recovery if they were very young at the time of the damage. Arguments against:
- controversial evidence.
- the pathological evidence is mixed. Comparisons of child and adult cases are difficult to make. Paths of linguistic recovery have not been studied in a detailed way. This is what we call: aphasia (total lost of speech) and disphasia (partial lost of speech). Some people recover vey well some part of the speech, but others don’t. But these cases aren’t very reliable because the conditions of research are limite, due to the fact that we’re dealing with a small number of subjects.
- the evidence of normal language acquisition is also mixed. Aspects of phonological and grammatical acquisition do continue around puberty, but most of these skills are very well established before age 5. Other aspects (semantics and pragmatics) are still developing in young children. For example: children don’t understand ironies. Generally speaking, lateralization takes some years befoe its firmly established, and this overlaps the main period of language acquisition in a way that is not yet understood. The relationship between hemiphere specialization and language is a complex one that prevents a continuing research challenge.
Reading 3 : O’Grady, W., How do they do it?
1. According to the text, in which aspects of language acquisition is imitation involved? Can the imitation explanation fully account for the process of language acquisition? Justify your answer. Most of the time they imitatewods. With every words they hear, they construct sentences. Imitation doesn’t simply involve memorizing. They don’t imitate sentences because they know they aren’t very good at it. They can produce sentences that they have never heard. The former instructions of the native language aren’t necessary 2. What are the recasts? Are they always effective? Why (not)? Not correcting the child, but continuing the conversation using the child’s sentence in the correct way. It is a partial repetition. The mother retakes the sentence and fomulates it in a different way in order to give them the right input. They can and cannot be effective at the same time. It isn’t effective because they don’t start using the the correct form in response to their parent’s recasts. And it is effective when a child has already learn those structures, not when they acquire it for the first time. It is helpful but not absolutely necessary because sometimes the recast can be wrong. 3. What is motherese? Can you describe three noticeable features of motherese? When the parents speak to their children in a special way. It involves pronunciation (intonation), vocabulary and meaning, and sentences. Some properties of motherese are:
- Pronunciation: Slower speech with longer pauses between utterances and after content words. Higher overall pitch: greater pitch range. Exaggerated intonation and stress. Fewer words per minute.
- Vocabulary and meaning: More restricted vocabulary. Three times as much paraphrasing. More reference to the here and now.
- Sentences: Fewer broken or run-on sentences. Shorter: less complex utterances (approx. 50% are single words or short statements) More well-formed and intelligible sentences. More commands and questions (approx. 60% of total) More repetitions. 4. What type of speech is considered a key contribution to language acquisition? The type of speech that is about what they can see or hear, what they want to know about, and what they have just experienced or are about to it. 5. What evidence is provided in the text for the relation between genetic factors and language capacity? A study was made for identical twins that were adopted. (page 180-182) 6. What is meant by “the acquisition device”? Explain Chomsky’s view (View 1) of how the language acquisition device works. Scientists talk of a “black box”, a term that they use to describe a device whose contents cannot be directly observed. Well, in this box there is a part concerned with language learning, and this is called the “acquisition device”. this device turns experience into
learnt from the language that children hear around them? Babbling sounds, repeat syllables every time. This is good for them, because they exercise their vocal chords. They don’t learn this from the adults, this technique is already acquired when they’re born. It’s universal, in all places, the babbling sounds are the same. But this is not a form of community.
4. According to the video, what is the relationship between production and comprehension? Which one comes first? They first need to comprehend what surrounds them, then produce whatever they want. But there is also some production without comprehension coming first. 5. Drawing on Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, how would you explain that the baby on the video uses the word “lala” only to refer to a real banana? They don’t understand that one word can refer to a group. For her, she uses only “lala” to refer to those bananas that she can eat, when it refers to a tangible, concrete, physical object. This occurs during the Sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years). 6. How does the word “apple” seem to be used by children when they are around on year old? What is the name for this type of semantic error? The word “apple” is used to refer to any type of round fruit: peach, plum… She understands that one word can refer to a big group of things that have the same characteristics. This type of “semantic error” is called overextension of the word. 7. What type of words are first learnt by children? Can you think of a reason for this? Words that don’t have anything to do with the sentence. These type of words are: names, adjectives and verbs. These words are used to relate concepts. They are stressed words. 8. Are children’s first sentences built at random? What type of grammar do they show? They’re not built at random. They use only the most important words. They can be not related to the adult’s speech; however, these sentences have rules, but with a rudimentary grammar. This type of grammar is called pivot grammar. 9. Between one year old and a half and five years, at what frequency do children increase their vocabulary? They learn around 60 words per week, or 10 words per day. Linguistic explosion. 10. What grammatical features does this girl’s story about the Beauty and the Beast illustrate? She uses language to express herself. She makes up sentences that she hadn’t heard before, by picking up words that she heard. She knows some rules for negotiating, interacting… Uses grammatical structures and the correct plural. 11. How does the video explain the symbolic function of language? Language can refer to things that are not present, each object has a name. They want to categorize all the objects into groups. So they use language to represent objects. This happens during the Pre-operational stage (2-7 years old). 12. What process underlies the creation of “mouses” as the plural form for “mouse”? She creates it herself. She applies the logical rules for plural form: just adding an “s”, until she is taught the irregular forms of some nouns. This process is called overgeneralization. 13. What type of thought does the recurrent use of “I/Me” show? With what stage proposed by Piaget would you relate this reference to I/Me? She thinks that it makes her be a separate person from everybody else. This is called self-
awareness: they can recognise their image, but they’re not conscious of their self-awareness. This takes time to develop, when they have 14 months, they don‘t have it, but when they‘re 2‘5 years old, they start to develop it. It occurs during the Pre-operational stage.
14. Explain the relationship between a child’s IQ (intelligence quantifier) and his/her ability to lie with the experiment conducted by professor Michael Lewis. The higher the IQ of a child, the more they lie. This is a crucial stage. They know that if they tell the truth, they’ll get punished. 70% of the kids that peeked, lied. The ability to lie is a sign of cognitive development. (¿De qué va?: se le sienta a un niño de espaldas a un tren teledirigido, que va haciendo un recorrido. La supervisora se marcha y le dice que no puede ver hasta que ella no haya llegado. El 70% de los niños se da la vuelta y le hecha un vistazo al juego. Cuando llega la supervisora, les pregunta si se han dado la vuelta. Ellos mienten y dicen que no. Al final pueden jugar con el juguete) 15. Explain what the Theory of Mind consists in and at what age it usually takes place. It marks the transition from babyhood to childhood. It takes place when they’re around 4 years old. It is a neccessary aspect for social development and interrelations. They start to understand that there are different ways of understanding the world. This is a big accomplishment for them because they find out that nobody thinks the same. This is located in the brain, in the frontal part. Theory of Evolution: language as a defense mechanism. It gives us advantage over the species. The fastwe you speak or understand, the safer you’ll be.
Video Session: Genie
1. What was Genie’s behaviour when she was newly found? - she walked in a weird way, almost inhuman - only smelled and scratched - spitted - she hardly spoke and expressed sounds - she was very shy - she used diapers 2. How did she recognise different objects? She explores it by touching and getting it near her lips and smelled it. This looked as if she were blind. 3. How many words did Genie learn at first? What kind of words were they? She learned more than a 100 words that spring. She learned them by repetition. This words were used to express emotions (sadness, happiness, fear), shapes and colors. They were different words that a child used to learn. 4. Which linguistic premises did Genie’s investigation follow? Chomsky’s Theory of Nativism. Also Eric Lenneberg proposal of the Critical Period of Hypothesis. 5. There are two major questions that the research could not answer, which ones?
- Was Genie mentally retarded from birth? The sleep spindles proved that she was birth-retarded.
- Or is she functionally retarded? This was a result of the severe isolation. 6. Genie produced the following kind of sentences: “What red blue is in?” or “Applesauce buy store”. What does this prove from a linguistic point of view?
stable order of acquisition F 0A E all members learn a similar order when learning a foreign language
simple to complex order of learning F 0 A E we start with basic tenses to more complex tenses
In theory is easy to divide both terms, but in practice is harder. A child acquires the language without being conscious of it, while an adult learns it, seen mostly when he/she does exercises to practice.
- Natural Order Hypothesis Second language acquisition (primarily morphemes) takes place in a predictable order. This order seems to be independent of the learner’s age, the conditions of exposure and the background of the first language development. This is seen as teachers when teaching an international group: you see the different errors the different learners make. All learners have to share a similar level in the target language in order to see common patterns (predictable order), without caring of the different ages. Natural order patterns of the second language acquisition do not follow those of the first language acquisition patterns. Nonetheless, there are patterns to second language development. We do not learn a second language following the same patterns that we use to learn a first language. However, there is a kind of transfer: first language can affect positively in the learning of second language.
- Monitor Hypothesis The language that one has subconsciously acquired “initiates our utterances in a second language and is responsible for our fluency”, whereas the language that we have consciously learned acts as an editor in situations where the learner has enough time to edit. The monitor is responsible for correcting the language we produce. It is focused on form, and knows the rules (such as on a grammar test in a language classroom or when carefully writing a composition). This conscious editor is called the monitor. You have to be exposed to data, but also you need to be aware of the form you learn. If not, it doesn’t work. Krashen (1994) explains that in order to use a monitor well, 3 factors must be met:
- Time: not available in normal conversation (or unplanned linguistic exchanges)
- Focus on form: awarenes of form, correctness.
- Knowledge of the rules only partially known (not internalised). If you correct yourself it means that you know the rules. Types of learners (from a monitor perspective):
- Monitor over-users : rely too much on grammatical knowledge.
- (^) Monitor under-users : rely too little on grammatical knowledge.
- Monitor optional-users : rely on grammar when needed (not interfering with communication).
- Comprehensible Input Hypothesis Humans acquire language in only one way-by understanding messages or by receiving “comprehensible input”. The learner improves and progresses along the natural order when he/she receives second langauge input that is one step beyond his/her current stage of linguistic competence F 0A E i+1. This refers to something new but not too compex to understand, language which is slightly beyond his/her knowledge. There are 3 key elements to this hypothesis: a. Language is acquired, not learned, by learner receiving comprehensible input
that has arrangements or structures (elements, items) just beyond the learners current level of mastry (i+1). b. He pays a lot of attention to the speaking and listening part. Speech should be allowed to emerge on its own. There is usually a silent period and “Speech will come when the acquirer feels ready. The readiness state arrives at different times for different people” (Krashen, 1994, p.55) It should not be taught directly and a period of grammatically incorrect speech is typical but with these constant repetition, the learner abandons these utterances and starts using them in the corect way. c. The input should not deriberately contain grammatically programmed structures. “If input is understood, and there is enough of it, i+1 is automatically provided” (Krashen, 1994, p.57) But we need, for example, to be careful when learning a romance language (italian, french, spanish…) because of the similarities between them, which can do you wrong when learning this type of languages.
- Affective Filter Hypothesis
- Low filter F 0A E if I want to learn a second language, language will be received without any problem.
- High filter F 0A E if I’m nervous, anxious or not interested in learning the language, I will receive it with some problem. Affect is defined as: “ The effect of personality, motivation and other ‘affective variables’ on second language acquisition” (Krashen, 1994, p.57) Krashen applies this theory to language learning and looks at its influence on the rate of second language acquisition in 3 areas: anxiety, motivation and self-confidence. All of these are interrelated:
- anxiety: -anxiety F 0A E +acquisition
- motivation: +motivation F 0A E +acquisition
- self-confidence: +self-confidence F 0A E +acquisition If a learner has low anxiety, high motivation or high self-confidence, he/she is said to have a low affective filter. This in turn assists with allowing in more information and providing a fertile venue (place) for learning. On the contrary, if a person has high anxiety, lower motivation or a lower self-esteem, the affective filter will be higher and does not provide the learner with as many “subconscious language acquisition”. -anxiety +acquisition = LOW FILTER +anxiety -acquisition = HIGH FILTER But an excessive self-confidence can be negative for the child because he/she thinks that he/ she knows everything. For that, there is a high-affective filter.
- Critique to Krashen’s Input Hypothesis There are different critiques: a. Difficult to verify empirically Provision of i+1 does not mean that input aids automatically language development. Counter-evidence: learners are able to understand more than they can actually produce. b. Input preferences also affect acquisition Not all input is processed in the same way. Learners are active participants in choosing the target models they prefer (affective filter). Your preference is going to help you acquire it F 0A E high motivation.
