Refleksi

Chapter I (Language acquision in Childhood)

The previous meeting of Critical Review of Second Language Acquisition course discussed
about how children acqire their first language. At first, I feel that being in this course is like following
parenting seminar. The lectrurer explained that mother has important role in her children first
language acquisition. The mothers are demanded to provide great deal of appropriate language
exposures to their child. As what have stated in innatist theory that language exposure is needed to
activate language acquisition device (LAD) or innate knowledge of language. Based on chomsky’s
explanation (in Spada and Lightbown, 2011) that once the language acquisition is activated, the
children will be able to acqire every language. Moreover, he argued that children will still succesfully
acquire the language although he/she build less interaction with other speakers if the LAD had been
activated.

Normally all children in the world will acquire their first language in nearly similar age
(around 3 and 4 years old). However, as Chomsky (in Spada and Lightbown, 2011) argued that if the
children learn the language beyond these specific period (Critical period hypothesis), it will be
difficult for them to acquire the language. Beside the critical period is over, the speech organ begun to
loose its placticity which makes the children difficult to produce oral language. In examining the
evidance of critical period hypothesis, we can the example from the cases of Victor (a 12-year-old-
boy) and Genie (a 13-year-old girl). Victor was found wild in the woods, whereas Genie had isolated
from human interaction for more than ten years. Obviously they have passed their critical period
without any language exposure. Hence, these terrible condition contribute on their inability to produce
the language.

In first language acquisition, the phenomenon of children acquire more than one language
called bilingualism (Spada and Lightbown, 2011, Saville and Troike, 2006). I sometimes hear people
think that it is too difficult for children to cope with two languages. They fear that the children will be
confused or will not learn either language well. Nevertheless, Ellen Bialystok (1991, 2001, in Spada
and Lightbown, 2011) and other psychologists have found convincing evidence that bilingualism can
have positive effects on abilities that are related to academic success, such as metalinguistic
awareness. Yet it shows that having more than one language can lead the first language learner to
increase their academic. However, in situations where children are cut off from their family language
when they are very young. When they are in a different language environment for long periods in pre-
school or day care, their development of the family language may be slowed down before they have
developed an age-appropriate mastery of the new language. Eventually they may stop speaking the
family language altogether. Wallace Lambert (9187, in Spada and Lightbown, 2011) called this loss
of one language on the way to learning another language as Subtractive Bilingualism. In the future, if
I cope with the similar problem, I will make some rule for my children related to the use of language.
The rule is when they are in house or family’s house, the should speak Bahasa to interact with the
whole family. However, if the children are outside the house, the are free to use any languages they
want. Maintaning the family language helps the children to retain family connections with
grandparents or relative who do not speak the new language.