Romi Andriansyah Raspati

4330017003

1. Psycholinguistic is the study about psychological and neurobiological factors, which

allow human to obtain, use, and understand the language (Psycholinguistic, 2006). So, in
other words, learning psycholinguistics can help us to understand psychology from how we
learn, how we understand language, whether first, second and third language. Many
psycholinguistic work has been used for the learning of language by kids, on the speech
process and also understanding by kids and adults. In traditional areas of research, there is
language production, language understanding, language acquisition, language disorder,
language and mind, and neurocognition (Encyclopedia Britannica). An Important thing of
psycholinguistics is unconscious application of grammatical rules that allow people to
produce and understand intelligible sentences. Psycholinguists investigate the relationship
between language and mind, debate arises whether language is function of thinking or
thinking a function of the use of language. For example: Babies. At birth, the baby can only
cry. As time goes by, when his age between one until two years old, he often listened to the
words of those around him. He began to say a word or two word.

2. Language Acquisition is the process of how human can know, understand, and produce
language and use or arrange words and sentences. Chomsky believes that the ability of
human to acquiring language is not through explicit instruction/teaching, but they already
have a tools in their brain, that is capable of understanding and producing language
(Chomsky, 1955).
There are three theories in Language Acquisition, namely imitation and reinforcement or
behavior, constructing grammar from input experience and innateness hypothesis.
Immitation reinforcement or habit formation can be said as behaviorism. In this theory
believes that the development of language acquisition from reciprocal relationships, such as
if children listen to people around them talk, then they can mimic sounds well, then it can be
said the child can acquiring the language easily(Skinner, 1957). The second theory is
constructing grammar from input to experience. This theory explain where the children
begin to learn some rules or structure of how a sentences is formed. The process of
constructing grammar can be explained as, input is form of the adult speech, then the
children hear and learn the language, then they try to arrange the words in their mind with
the rules of grammatical that they have, then as output, they say the sentence(Chomsky,
2000). Innateness hypothesis explains how language is processed in the human mind or
brain. In this theory, believes that human are born with the ability to understand language.
This ability is assisted by a tool called Language Acquisition Device (LAD). This theory
was put forward by noam chomsky, because when he entered the world of language
education, he took the concept of Plato’s problem or power of stimulus which means “when
the input is so meager, why is the output so large?” from this concept, made chomsky
discover that theory. This theory states that human have the ability to master language from
 birth, so they can say whatever comes out of their mind even if the word is impossible and
does not make sense, like the famous example from chomsky, “Colorless green ideas sleep
furiously”(Chomsky, 1955).

3. There is five stages of language acquisition development, Stage 1: One-word stage or

holofrase stage, around one year of age. For example: milk = I want milk
Stage 2: Two-word stage, two years. For example: Want to drink = He is thirsty, want to
drink milk.
Stage 3: Development stage, between two and a half and three years. For example: baby car
(points to a toy car, meaning: this is a baby car)
Stage 4: Almost adult grammar, between three and five years. For example: I want to buy,
they can show a desire for something.
Stage 5: Full competence, at the end of childhood. It’s fluent in speaking, can already show
emotion and can already mimic other people’s language. For example: I am happy if you
doing something fun.

4. Language Acquisition Device is a organ inside the brain that have function as a original
device which is helping human language acquisition’s process(Chomsky, 1955).

5. Stephen Krashen(2015), stated:

“Language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious grammatical

rules and does not require tedious drill”

“Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural

communication - in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their
utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding”

“.... 'comprehensible input' is the crucial and necessary ingredient for the
acquisition of language”.

“The best methods are therefore those that supply 'comprehensible input' in low
anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These
methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students
to produce when they are 'ready', recognizing that improvement comes from
supplying communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcing and
correcting production”.
 “In the real world, conversations with sympathetic native speakers who are
willing to help the acquirer understand are very helpful."

- Stephen Krashen (2015)

From the statement, it is clear that language acquisition doesn’t need intensive teaching, but only
daily conversation has a big effect. Why is that?, because sometimes in teaching, students
sometimes feel worried, it caused they feels compelled to learn the language. So, it will be
difficult for students to acquiring the language. From there, it is said that teaching has little effect
in language acquisition.
 References

Chomsky. (1955). The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. Cambridge, MA.

Chomsky. (2000). Linguistics and Brain Science. In A. Marantz, Y. Miyashita, & W.O’ Neil
(eds.), Image, Language, Brain. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Skinner. (1957). Verbal Behavior. Acton, MA.

Krashen, S. D. (1987), Principles and practice in second language acquisition/Stephen D.

Krashen. New York: Prentice-Hall Internat.