Online Delta Course

Delta Module One

Unit 1
Study Topic Discussion Task 1
Study Guide 1: Language Acquisition
Exam Practice Question 1

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Contents

Study Topic Discussion Task 1.............................................................................. 3

Study Guide 1: Language Acquisition ................................................................... 4

Worksheet One: First Language Acquisition - an introduction ............................ 5

A quick overview of FLA Theory......................................................................... 7

Second Language Acquisition: an introduction................................................... 9

A quick overview of SLA Theory....................................................................... 10

Reading List: FLA & SLA.................................................................................. 13

Module One Exam Practice Questions ................................................................ 14

Paper 2, Task 2 and Task 3 (Evaluation of a Teaching Resource)

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 Module One DELTA Online Preparation Course

Study Topic Discussion Task 1

(1) Download, print out and read the Study Guide (the following pages) to this
week's topic. This document written by the course tutors is your starting point for
each new topic. It may include worksheets, tasks or introductory texts. The aim is
to get you going on the current topic.

(2) Seek out the books and internet links listed in the Reading List. NB: These are
divided into "Key Reads" and "Other Sources". You should aim to have looked at
as many of the "Key Reads" plus some of the "Other Sources" as you can before
writing your responses.

(3) Write an answer to Study Topic Discussion Task 1 (below) using a word
processor.

(4) Find the Section on the Moodle labelled “Study Topic Discussion”. Go into the
forum for this week’s task. Start a new thread taking care to label it clearly e.g.
“Suzanne’s answer to Study Topic Discussion Task 1”.

(5) Copy and paste the text from your answer directly into your forum post. Don’t
attach documents – unless you really need formatting, tables, pictures, etc.

(6) After making your own post, please read other people's posts and join in the
discussion. Chat. Argue your point and respond to what is said. Be open to other
ideas and remain polite at all times. NB It is sometimes hard to judge the force of
what is said in text when you can't hear how it's said!

Aim to write at least 800 words for your initial posting. There is no maximum word
limit - but pay attention to readability. If it's long make sure it is clear, coherent
and has something to say. By all means, be provocative (but not rude). Consider
your readers; aim not to exhaust them.

Study Topic Discussion Task 1

(1) In what ways do you believe that SLA reflects FLA?

(2) How does (or will) your understanding of FLA and SLA affect what you do in
class?

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 Module One DELTA Online Preparation Course

Study Guide 1: Language Acquisition

Introduction

If we are to be principled teachers and are to teach intelligently in the classroom it is

important that we have a sound idea about how people actually learn a language.
Without knowing this, our methodology can at best be hit and miss and might be
entirely wasted effort.

One scientific study that informs us is that of Language Acquisition – i.e. the study of
how people go from not knowing a language to being able to use it, partially or wholly
successfully.

When looking at a baby developing their mother tongue, the study is into First
Language Acquisition (FLA).

When looking at a child or adult learning a second or other language it is Second

Language Acquisition (SLA).

While FLA is arguably not directly relevant to language teaching, knowing something
about it is useful and informs our understanding of SLA. FLA also raises important
questions about SLA, e.g. “Is the process of SLA in an adult similar to or different
from the process of FLA in a baby – and if it is different, what exactly are those
differences?”

Using this Study Guide

FLA

(1) Work through the FLA worksheet on the next page to help clarify your own
views. (You do not need to submit any answers – but you are encouraged to
raise topics for discussion in the forum.)

(2) Read the text “A Quick Overview of FLA Theory” that follows.

(3) Use the book list and internet links to start reading elsewhere around the topic.
Aim to find out how far your views coincide with what others have written.

(4) Use the “Key Concepts, Areas, People and Terms to Study” as search terms for
further research. Aim to find out what each reference means – i.e. what a term
refers to or why a person is important.

SLA

(5) Do the same for SLA (Worksheet > Text > Research). Again, check all the
concepts and feel free to discuss anything online.

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 Module One DELTA Online Preparation Course

Worksheet One: First Language Acquisition - an introduction

It’s impossible to know what’s inside the Black Box

What’s inside the Black Box?

Find out if you are a disciple of Skinner, Piaget or Chomsky!

Think about how you learnt your first language, and consider the following:

1. Do you agree with this statement?

‘You can’t know what’s happening inside the “black box” of the human
mind – so in order to investigate how people learn we can only really
observe what goes in and what comes out.’

2. Is a child learning L1 comparable to a child learning to tie a shoelace?

3. Is our ability to learn our first language a matter of habit formation

reinforced by praise from our parents?

4. When considering a young child's first language learning, what might be

meant by "poverty of stimulus"?

5. Do we learn our first language by listening and imitation?

6. Can children create new sentences that they have never heard before?

7. Is our ability to learn our first language a feature of our general problem-
solving ability?

8. Development of a child’s First Language is interconnected with all other

mental development and growth and cannot be separated from it.

9. Human intelligence is a process of constructing and adjusting an internal

mental representation of reality. A child does not come fully equipped to
understand the world – but has to work to make sense of it all.

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10. Do we have an innate "Language Acquisition Device" hard-wired into our
brain from birth?

11. Are the sentences below grammatically good English sentences (and how
do you know)?

(a) ‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
(b) Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
(c) He walked down the High Street and went into the pub.

12. We talk about L1 and L2. Could there be an L0 ? i.e. Is there a core
Universal Grammar underlying all languages of the world?

13. Is there a "critical age" – i.e. when the chances of learning a language are
best?

14. Summarise your own opinions - FLA: "Nature" or "Nurture" ?

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 Module One DELTA Online Preparation Course

A quick overview of FLA Theory

Person-in-the-street views

The average parent often assumes that FLA is the result of children listening to their
parents and “copying” what is said to them. How much does this view stand up? The
two leading scientific explanations have been from the Behaviourist school (now
largely discredited) and the Cognitive school (still by and large in vogue).

Behaviourist Descriptions of FLA

A behaviourist view is that language learning is essentially “habit formation”. It is

based on looking at the visible/audible evidence without any hypothesising as to what
may be going on inside the unseen “black box” of the brain. The behaviourist
observer may see the stimulus (e.g. a mother asking a baby a question) and the
response (e.g. baby makes a gurgling noise) and the reinforcement (e.g. Mother
praises and cuddles the baby). This view of language growth i.e. that babies respond
to stimuli and have positive behaviour reinforced (i.e. validated and encouraged) was
expounded by BF Skinner especially in his 1957 book Verbal Behaviour in which he
outlined an expansion of this theory of learning called operant conditioning.

Cognitive views of FLA: Chomsky

Skinner was famously criticised by Noam Chomsky in a damning review written in

1959. He pointed out that the stimulus-response-reinforcement view of language
learning could not possibly account for the wide ranging language that children
produce. He showed that children could produce language that they had never been
exposed to, and hence argued that they must have some ability to internalise
patterns and creatively generate language to express their own meanings.

Chomsky had an electrifying impact on the world of linguistics especially his 1957
book Syntactic Structures – which was originally rejected by prestigious publishers
everywhere.

Key ideas:

• The poverty of the stimulus

Imitation does not work as an explanation for how a child learns language
because, during the key years when a child’s language is growing they are not
exposed to enough language to account for their linguistic capability. There is a
need for something more than mere exposure. They hear a finite number of
often imperfectly formed sentences, but manage to produce an infinite range of
novel sentences that express ideas far beyond anything they have heard.

• LAD
Amongst Chomsky’s proposals was that humans are born with some sort of
“Language Acquisition Device” (LAD) – something specific to humans of form
and location unspecified (but presumably in our brains) which facilitates the
learning of language. Chomsky has abandoned this notion in his later work and
has proposed a parameter-setting model of language acquisition (see “UG”
below)

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 • UG
Related to the LAD is a hypothesised “Universal Grammar” (UG) – a foundation core
set of constraints within whose rules all human language may be created. This is
hard-wired into our brains in some way – i.e. we are genetically created to be ready
to learn any language we are exposed to after birth; we do not have to learn the
concept of what a language is – we merely need to be exposed to a language and as
a result, flip a large set of switches into the correct positions (e.g. The switch is
placed in “subject comes before verb” position or in “subject comes after verb”
position – this is what Chomsky calls parameters).

A Child-Development View

Other views of child language development stress that it is only one part of a child’s
mind’s general growth and development. Growth in language ability is intricately
linked with (and limited by) the child’s parallel learning about how to understand and
interact with the world. The key name here is Jean Piaget.

Key Concepts, Areas, People and Terms to Study

• BF Skinner – Verbal Behaviour - Operant conditioning

• Noam Chomsky – Review of Verbal Behaviour
• Language Acquisition Device
• Universal Grammar
• “Colourless green ideas sleep furiously”
• Competence (systematic knowledge and understanding)
• Performance (actual use of / doing of something).
• The “Wug test” (a famous experiment in child rule generation)

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 Module One DELTA Online Preparation Course

Second Language Acquisition: an introduction

Think about how you learnt (or failed to learn) a

second language.

Do you agree with these statements? Mark them

True or False and add a reason for your answer.

FLA compared with SLA

1) Learning a second or foreign language as an adult is more or less the

same process as learning a first language as a child.
2) We acquire our first language; but we learn our second.
3) Learning a language is like building a house. The teacher and course-
book's job is to provide the right bricks at the right time.
4) Learners have a natural in-built syllabus which they follow.

Errors in SLA

5) Errors are a bad thing and teachers and materials writers should try to
minimise the learners' scope for making them
6) Errors are caused by "interference" from the first language.
7) Errors represent a learning strategy.

L1 and L2 (...and L0)

8) Very few people become bi-lingual. (… and if that’s true … why?)

9) Learners use their L1 as a resource when learning L2
10) Learners restructure L1 into L2
11) Learners create L2 from nothing
12) Learners create L2 from L0 (i.e. blueprint in the brain)

Individual differences in SLA

13) “Different people learn in different ways”.

If this is true … consider …

o What is aptitude?
o What factors are important: Age? Motivation? Attitude? Aptitude?
Gender? Personality? Context?
o Is there a difference in route, or rate, or both?

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 Module One DELTA Online Preparation Course

A quick overview of SLA Theory

FLA and SLA

When considering how an adult might learn a foreign language, an obvious starting
point is to see if it could be similar to the way a child learns their first language.

Children / Adults

There are obviously some key differences between children and adults, for example:
• A baby is learning about life and the world at the same time as learning a
language. An adult already has established much of their understanding of
the world via a first language.
• Adults arguably have more expectations and inhibitions (based partly, e.g.
on previous learning experiences) about how they will learn. There may be
many non-linguistic factors (e.g. self-image, self-esteem, hierarchical role,
anxiety etc) that interfere with the language learning process.

Critical Period

Lenneberg, in his 1967 book Biological Foundations of Language, proposes that

there is a biologically predetermined period (possibly up to 12 to 14 years old) that is
optimal for learning a new language, after which it becomes much harder to acquire
further languages.

Behaviourist versus Cognitivist

Behaviourists viewed the process of SLA as largely connected with the transfer of
language habits from L1 (first language) to L2. By this argument, grammatical
patterns that were different in the two languages led to second language interference
errors or negative transfer (which could be studied and predicted by a process of
contrastive analysis of the two languages).

Cognitivists in contrast saw the language learning process far more from a point of
view within the target language and suggested that most errors were part of the
normal learning process of acquiring that language – intralingual (i.e. within the one
language) rather than interlingual (i.e. between two or more different languages).

The learners’ language at any stage of learning seemed to have some distinctive
features, no matter what the L1. This “interlanguage” represents a learner’s partial
and partially incorrect version of the new language.

Stephen Krashen

One interesting and controversial theorist in the SLA field is Stephen Krashen. His
ideas are widely criticised, but all the same seem to have much intuitive appeal to
teachers. Among his theories are:

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 o Learning / Acquisition distinction Krashen suggests that we learn
language in two ways. Acquisition is what we do naturally (subconsciously)
when we live in a target language context and are naturally exposed to lots of
comprehensible input and engage in meaningful communication
(=”immersion”). In other words, it is based on innate processes. Learning is
what we do (consciously) when we study language (e.g. looking at rules in
school; reading a coursebook explanation of grammar etc).

o Comprehensible Input is language that is just slightly above a learner’s

current level i.e. they can understand it but need to make a small effort to do
so, and in doing so, slightly raise their level. This is sometimes characterised
as “i + 1” (where i = the current level and +1 is the small but unspecified
quantity of a step above the level).

o The Monitor Model Krashen controversially stated that language learnt (as
opposed to acquired) is not available for use in communication but only
allows a speaker to monitor the language he uses (i.e. to help notice mistakes
etc).

o Affective Filter Krashen suggested that the process of acquiring a language

can be particularly hard for many adults because of the appearance of an
“affective filter” (i.e. a kind of emotional barrier between language and
learner).

Whether Krashen is right or not, many teachers refer to the terms learning and
acquisition in the way that he used them and his influence is felt in many
contemporary classroom practices. Two important conclusions that might be drawn
from Krashen are (a) on the importance of exposure to lots of language (e.g. through
reading or listening) (b) on the relative unimportance of traditional formal “grammar
teaching” via explanation, rule reading, exercises etc. In the longer term, Krashen’s
influence is felt in the rise of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)
programmes in school which do much less explicit formal work on language and
focus more on understanding of the content (e.g. history, geography, etc) being
taught.

Other views

Other researchers have rejected much of Krashen’s work. You will find arguments
based on the relative lack of success of immersion teaching programmes (hence the
failure of the comprehensible input theory), arguments for the importance of a
structured and ordered grammatical syllabus (a challenge to the argument that learnt
language is relatively unimportant) and arguments that structured demands for
learner output are more significant than the quality of input they are exposed to.

Krashen’s appeal may partly be accounted for by the relative simplicity and
comprehensibility of his core concepts. However, it is likely that the truth is far more
complex and multi-faceted. SLA is probably affected by a multitude of complex
social, linguistic, cognitive, psychological and interpersonal factors. While simple
metaphors such as the “Monitor model” are attractive, the actual process of a learner
learning to communicate involves thousands of simultaneous things that interact and
interweave. The metaphor of language learning as “building a wall”, Nunan suggests,
is simplistic and unsatisfactory; it is more like tending a large garden – flowers,
weeds, constant flux and change - with slow progress – and setbacks - over time.

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Key Concepts, Areas, People and Terms to Study

• Contrastive analysis (CA)

• Second language interference versus Second language transfer
• Interlanguage
• The Natural Order Hypothesis
• Silent phase
• The Critical Period hypothesis
• Stephen Krashen’s Learning / Acquisition distinction
• Stephen Krashen’s Monitor model
• Transformational / Generative Grammar as a model for a UG
• The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
• The role of individual differences in language learning

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 Module One DELTA Online Preparation Course

Reading List: FLA & SLA

Key Reads (Read at least one of these if at all possible)

The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language

Crystal CUP
(relevant chapters on language acquisition)
Principles of Language Learning and Teaching
Douglas Brown Pearson
(relevant chapters)
Lightbown &
How Languages are Learned (relevant chapters) OUP
Spada
Pinker The Language Instinct (relevant chapters) Penguin

Other Sources

Mitchell & Miles Second Language Learning Theories (2nd edition) Arnold
Second Language Acquisition (and/or similar titles
Ellis OUP
by Ellis)
The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the
Krashen & Terrell Alemany
Classroom (and/or similar titles by Krashen)
Carter and Nunan Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages CUP

Internet Links

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_language_acquisition
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wug_Test
• http://www.percepp.com/pinker.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_Instinct
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Period_Hypothesis
• http://www.timothyjpmason.com/WebPages/LangTeach/Licence/CM/OldLec
tures/L1_Introduction.htm
• http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/pinker.langacq.html
• http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/L1%20and%20L2.htm
• http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test4materials/ChildLangAcquisitio
n.htm
• http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/index.htm
• http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/199812--.pdf
• http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/196701--.pdf
• http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19720629.htm

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 Module One Exam Practice Questions
Paper 2 Task 2 and Task 3 (Evaluation of a Teaching Resource)

The text for tasks 2 and 3 is reproduced below.

It is from New Headway Elementary (Third Edition) Pages 20 and 21.

Note: You don’t have the accompanying recording scripts marked T 3.1 T 3.22
etc

Task 2 (25minutes)

The purpose of the extract as a whole is to teach and practise third person Present
Simple statements to Elementary learners.

a) Identify the purpose of the material in the box below in relation to the purpose of
the extract as a whole.

• Page 20 - Starter
• Page 20 - Three Jobs Exercise 1
• Texts: Istvan Kis, Pamela Green
• Grammar Spot 1,2,3
• Page 20 - Three Jobs Exercise 2
• Page 21 - Three Jobs Exercise 3

b) Identify a total of six key assumptions about language learning that are evident in
the exercises listed above and explain why the authors might consider these
assumptions to be important for learning. You must refer to each of the exercises at
least once.

Task 3 (10 minutes)

Comment on the ways in which the practice focus in the remaining material in the
extract (Page 21 Practice 1, Practice 2 and Practice 3) combines with the exercises
discussed in task 2.

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© Oxford University Press – Advertising Sample - downloaded from www.oup.com

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© Oxford University Press – Advertising Sample - downloaded from www.oup.com

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