PROGRAM STUDI PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS

UNIVERSITAS TANJUNGPURA PONTIANAK

MID SEMESTER EXAMINATION
SUBJECT : PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
SEMESTER/ CREDIT : V / 2 SKS
DAY/ DATE : 5 Oktober 2022
LECTURER : DR. ENDANG SUSILAWATI, M.Si.
NAME : M. AGIL AZIS AL-HANY
NIM : F1021201015

Instuctions:
 Read the test items below attentively and answer all the questions or the tasks accurately
and appropriately. 
 Submit your answer sheets to your Google Classroom in the room of CLASSWORK
(Student Work) for the effortless grading process 
 Please be aware of THE DUE DATE OF SUBMISSION given to you
Test Items:
1. What is Psycholinguistics? Why do you think we need to learn this field of discipline
(Psycholinguistics)? What is the relevance to language teaching and learning?
Describe your answer correctly and appropriately.
2. Language is universal. What is meant by this statement? What are the formal
properties shared by all languages in the world? Please explain correctly. 
3. What do you know about language acquisition and language learning?  Explain
whether the process of each of them is similar or different. Complete your explanation
with relevant examples.
4. Children’s language acquisition starts from the ‘vocalization stage’ and then step-by-
step proceeds to the higher stage, called the ‘rule formation stage’. Please explain
how language production occurs in the two stages. Illustrate the examples of the
language level the children can produce for each stage.
5. Speech comprehension can occur to someone without being followed by speech
production. Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not? Give your argument
with an appropriate or relevant illustration. 
6. The writing system of languages might be different from one to another. Please
explain the different writing systems found in several European, Asian, and Middle-
east languages (write your examples). Which system of writing occurs in the English
language? What is the implication of the English writing system in teaching reading
to young learners? Describe your answer.  
7. What do you know about the critical age in language acquisition? Is it possible for a
child to acquire a language if his/her critical age has exceeded? If it is or it is not, how
might the process occur? Write your explanation with several cases.   
8. Based on the common belief, children learn a second language better and faster
than adults. What language learning factors possibly make children learn better
than adults? Why do adults learn better in a school setting than in a natural setting?
Explain your answer with relevant examples (a research-based explanation is strongly
recommended).   

ANSWER
1. Psycholinguistics is a knowledge that investigates and describes the psychological
processes that enable humans to understand , master, and use language.
Psycholinguists conduct research on speech development and language development
and how individuals of all ages understand and produce language. According to Chaer
(2003: 6) he argues that psycholinguistics is a knowledge that tries to explain the
nature of the structure of language, and how that structure is obtained, used when
speaking, and when understanding sentences in the speech. In essence, in
communication activities there is a process of producing and understanding speech.
We need to learn psycholinguistic because as prospective teachers we have to
understand and know the difficulty that faced by students, and because
psycholinguistic is a discipline that investigates and describes the psychological
processes that enable humans to understand , master, and use language. So in other
word psycholinguistics is basic knowledge for the language teacher to teach four
language skills in the language, it is listening, reading, speaking and writing.
Specifically, psycholinguistics helps to understand the difficulties of these four skills
both intrinsic difficulties and extrinsic difficulties. Psycholinguistics also helps to
explain the errors students do in the language learning.

2. A universal language can refer to a hypothetical or historical language that is spoken

and understood by all or most of the world's population. In some contexts, it refers to
a means of communication that is said to be understood by all living things, beings
and objects equally. This may be the idea of an international additional language for
communication between groups speaking different primary languages. In other
conceptions, it may be the primary language of all speakers or the only existing
language. Some religious traditions and mythologies state that there was once a
universal language among all people, or that it was shared by both humans and
supernatural beings. In other traditions, there is little interest or general deviation from
the question. For example, in Islam, Arabic is the language of the Qur'an, and so
universal for Muslims. Languages we don't speak or understand may sound like
meaningless babble to us.
All the human languages that linguists have ever studied are very similar.
They all share a number of characteristics, which linguists call universal languages.
This universal language can be considered a property of Chomsky's proposed
Universal Grammar. Here is a list of some of the main ones.
1. All human cultures have human language and use it to communicate.
2. All human languages change over time, a reflection of the fact that all cultures
are constantly changing.
3. All languages are systematic, rule-driven, equally complex as a whole, and
equally capable of expressing whatever ideas the speaker wants to convey.
4. There are no primitive languages.
5. All languages are symbolic systems.
6. All languages have a basic word order of elements, such as subject, verb, and
object, with variations.
7. All languages have similar basic grammatical categories such as nouns and
verbs.
 8. Every spoken language consists of discrete sounds that can be categorized as
vowels or consonants.
9. The underlying structure of all languages is characterized by the feature of
pattern duality, which allows each speaker to utter whatever message they
need or want to convey, and every speaker of the same language to understand
the message.

3. Language acquisition is a subconscious process similar to the process by which

children acquire their first language (Kramina, 2000: 27). Therefore, language
acquisition is an integral part of the unity of all languages (Robbins, 2007: 49). So
according to this statement Language acquisition refers to the natural assimilation of
language, through intuition and subconscious learning. Language acquisition is the
product of real interactions between people in the target language and cultural
environment, in which the learner, as an active player, develops his or her
communicative abilities.
While Language learning is a conscious process, is the product of either formal
learning situation or a self-study programme (Kramina, 2000: 27). Hence, language
learning is an integral part of the unity of all language (Robbins, 2007: 49). Language
learning refers to the analysis and study of the language as a system, primarily in its
written form. The objective is to understand the structure of the language and produce
knowledge about it. It has been the traditional approach to the study of languages for
centuries and is still today practiced in high schools worldwide.
The process of these concept is different because in Language acquisition children
acquire language through natural subcasuis process during which they unware of
grammatical rule while on the other hand language learning is the result of direct
instruction in the rules of language
The example of Language acquisition is a children or young adult that living abroad
for years on exchange programmes or because something else, often attaining nearly
the same fluency as natives, knowing little about the language but having good
pronunciation without being too phonological and ignorant what are perfect tenses,
modals or phrasal verbs, but intuitively they recognize and know how to use all the
structures.
And the example of Language learning is the large number of graduates from the
English Education Study Program FKIP from the University of Tanjungpura is one
example of language learning. They are certified teachers with knowledge of language
and literature but only able to communicate in English with poor pronunciation,
limited vocabulary, and lack of awareness of the language culture.

4. language production occurs in these two stages, the problem of discontinuity

involving, as Jesperson (1933) noted many years ago, the distinction between
intentional and involuntary vocalizations. Babbling is involuntary in the sense that
certain sounds are not under central cognitive control; The baby accidentally makes
certain babbling sounds that occur. They seem to occur by chance coordination of the
speech articulators (various parts of the body used to make speech sounds: mouth,
lips, tongue, vocal cords, etc.). The case of meaningful speech is very different. Here,
the sound should not be uttered carelessly but must be in accordance with the
 previously heard sound which is conventionally associated with certain objects, needs,
and so on. To achieve this feat, the child needs to discover the sounds created by the
speech articulators. This knowledge must be acquired by children in order to speak
meaningfully. However, speech depends to some degree on babbling, because by
engaging in babbling, the child will be exposed to many of the various articulatory
mechanisms for producing speech and providing practice for the use of the
articulators.
Vocalization to babbling
The ability and propensity to utter such sounds thus appear to be unlearned. Later,
around the seventh month, children ordinarily begin to babble, to produce what may
be described as repeated syllables (‘syllabic reduplication’), e.g. ‘baba’, ‘momo’,
‘panpan’.
Babbling to speech
It is from the advanced stage of babbling that children move into uttering their first
words. Often this occurs at around 1 year of age but can occur much earlier or much
later. When children begin to utter words, somewhat surprisingly only some of the
sounds that they have uttered in babbling appear in speech. The other sounds must be
reacquired.

5. I do not agree with this statement because children cannot pronounce words or
sentences for communication purposes without first gaining understanding speaking it
is almost impossible the other way around. If children do not first learn to understand
the meaning of words and sentences, they will not be able to use words or sentences
in a meaningful way. They observe what others say and how what is said relates to
objects, situations, and events. To say that understanding a language must precede
production does not mean that a child must understand all languages before being able
to produce something. On the other hand, progress is gradual. When the
understanding of some words, phrases, or grammatical forms is learned, some of that
learning can be produced in speech (Ingram, 1974). Speech comprehension that
always precedes production is a pattern that continues throughout the acquisition
process (Ingram, 1989) whether it be for first words (Clark and Barron, 1988),
complex syntax such as passive (Golinkoff and Hirsch-Pasek, 1995), or acquisition.
then idioms and figurative speech (Levorato and Cacciari, 1995). It should also be
noted that the two systems of understanding and production do not develop separately
for a normal child. When children acquire aspects of grammar for understanding,
children will then try to find ways to use them in production. Thus, the child tries to
coordinate production to fit the system that the child has developed for understanding
(Clark and Hecht, 1983).

6. Writing systems based on speech sounds: phonemes or syllables In sound-based

systems, each symbol represents the sound of speech, both phonemes and syllables.
There are many voice-based writing scripts in use around the world today – for
example, Devanagari in India, Arabic in Egypt, Hangul syllable in South Korea, two-
syllable Kana in Japan, Cyrillic alphabet in Russia and Bulgaria, and Roman alphabet
in other countries. -English speaking countries and Western Europe. Some of these
voice-based orthography are very well suited to the spoken form. Among these are
 Finland and Spain, which use the Roman alphabet to represent the phonemes of their
spoken language, and Korea and Japan, which each use their own native scripts,
Hangul and Kana, to represent the syllables of their spoken language. (However,
complications occur with Japanese, as it also incorporates Chinese-type characters
into its writing system even though those characters (kanji) can be written in syllable
form.) The voice-based orthography of these languages is easier to read than others.
voice-based orthography where the correspondence of written symbols to sound is not
high, as is the case in English.
Being essentially a sound-based writing system, English letters are intended to
represent the individual phonemes of the language. Because the Roman alphabet was
based on the Latin language, which used fewer phonemes than English, English
orthography (and those of other European lands) had to make adaptations in order to
suit its language. For English, the following adaptations were made: (1) A letter could
be assigned more than one sound, especially vowels. Thus, the letter a represents two
phonemes, /a/ (want) and /æ/ (cat). (2) A combination of letters serves to represent
other English sounds, e.g. th (think, that), a + C + e (/ei/ as in ‘ate’ as opposed to ‘at’)
and i + C + e (/ai/ as in ‘bite’ as opposed to bit), where C is any consonant. While
English convention also uses some morpheme symbols, e.g. 1 for the word ‘one’, 2
for the word ‘two’, + for ‘plus’, and & for ‘and’, the writing system is predominantly
a sound-based one where letters represent the phonemes of the language. Another
principal reason why English letters frequently do not signal the correct sound is the
failure of English spelling to reflect the changes that the spoken language has
undergone. English spelling has changed relatively little over the past 600 years or so,
compared to the great changes that have occurred in the spoken language.

7. The critical age in language acquisition that occurs in the first few years of life is the
time when language develops easily and after that (sometimes between age 5 and
puberty) language acquisition is much more difficult and ultimately less successful.
This is because when students have passed the critical age they will be more difficult
to accept and learn a second language due to Internal factors Age: Second language
acquisition is influenced by the age of the learner. Personality: Introverted or anxious
learners usually make slower progress, especially in the development of oral skills.
Motivation (intrinsic): Intrinsic motivation has been found to be strongly correlated
with educational achievement. And Mack (1986) and Perani et al. (2003) argue that
even if highly competent second-language speakers seem to perform on a native level,
experimental tasks will reveal the difference both in grammar and in pronunciation.

8. In natural situations, younger children will do their best. Looking along the lines, we
have a High Natural Situation and an Inductive High. (The Low on Explicative is
irrelevant here because in Natural Situation Learning is through induction, not
explication.) There is a High on Memory and Motor Skills. Adults have Low and
High Natural Situations in Inductive and Explicative intellectual learning.
Unfortunately, High on Induction doesn't help much in learning syntax because adult
learners don't get enough relevant language and non-language data to analyze through
Natural Situations. Explanations are irrelevant to the Natural Situation because it is
rare for people to be able to explain grammatical points in the learner's mother tongue
(in the rare event that they wish). Given these facts in addition to Moderate Memory
and Low Motor Skills, adults are expected to do very poorly. Older children will do
better than adults because they are Moderate in Natural Situations and Moderate/High
in Memory and Motor Skills. Natural situations are more favorable for children
because adults generally experience a decrease in the quality and quantity of social
interactions that are conducive to good language learning. Psychologically, while both
children and adults have optimal induction powers, and are able to induce the
grammar of a second language more or less equally well, however, it is easier for
children to learn syntax than adults.
In class situation
In classroom situations, adults will do better than young children, because they are not
only better at processing explanations but, simply put, they know how to be students.
They have enough maturity to cope with the rigors of a formal learning environment,
where concentration, attention, and even the ability to sit still for long periods of time
all play a role in learning. Older learners have less cognitive experience in young
children, and, as such, may become better learners (Edwards, 2004). Matsui (2000)
found that experience with the mother tongue helps adults even to reach near-native
levels of pronunciation if given explicit instructions. In classroom-based studies
comparing junior high school students with elementary school students (Politzer and
Weiss, 1969), older students scored higher on all tests.