Post 73: First Language Acquisition

Post 73: First Language Acquisition and Learning Models

The Practical Inquiry Model, The Bloom's Taxonomy Learning Model and the Memory Process Model are all pretty similar in that they deal with how people learn and integrate new information into their knowledge base.

First stage in all these models is the perception of new knowledge by the brain. The brain perceives unfamiliar information for the first time through sensory detail. In Bloom's Taxonomy, this is called Knowledge. In the Practical Inquiry Model, you have the Triggering Event where you become aware of a problem or you become aware of new information through inquiry. In the Memory Process Model, the first stage is acquisition of knowledge.

Second, third and fourth stages involve understanding, exploring, discovering, analyzing and evaluating, encoding the knowledge into your life until you are able to apply the new knowledge to your life.

These learning models deal with learning in general and it deals with learning of any subject and how the brain processes new information into an existing knowledge base. Learners construct new knowledge to their knowledge base.

First Language Acquisition deals with how children learn language. When babies learn language, they learn language by being exposed to that language through listening to their parents talk. First, babies babble, then they form sounds, words, and sentences. First Language Acquisition deals with exactly how babies and young children learn their first language without schooling.

Imitation Theory--Babies learn their first language by imitating the sounds around them. No, babies do not learn language simply by imitating their parents.

Reinforcement Theory--Babies and small children learn first language through positive reinforcement. No, small children and babies do not learn language simply through positive reinforcement.

Behaviorist Theory--Instead, modern linguists believe children learn first language through both imitation and reinforcement. Also, Structural Linguists believe children learn language by focusing on sentence patterns and other patterns in language. In fact, Developmental Psychologists believe all children go through the same stages of language development.

Noah Chomsky--Because all children regardless of culture and race go through the exact same stages of learning language, then Noah Chomsky postulates that all human brains have an innate ability to learn language. Our brains are hard wired with an 'innate sense of grammar' that Chomsky calls The Language Acquisition Device. He also calls this innate language ability where each human brain comes hard wired to learn grammar--Generative Grammar--in other words the stages at which a child learns the grammar of a language. All of this language learning occurs before a child learns to read and write. Baby's brains naturally pick up language. The trick is to trigger the Language Acquisition Device through comprehensible input.

Stephen Krashen---Like Chomsky, Krashen believed teaching language by memorizing grammar rules in school does not trigger LAD. Instead, LAD is triggered only when babies listen to their parents talking to them. Then as the babies listen to their parents talking, babies innately know how to form grammatical patterns of any language they are exposed. In other words, if you drop a baby anywhere in the world from Russia, China, America, that baby will learn that first language with a perfect native speaker accent because of its innate ability for language. This explains how children know how to speak English way before they enter school and learn to read and write.

Pettito (2003) scanned human brains and found out that human brains perform better when exposed to more than one language. It is actually better for the child's brain to learn more than one language at a time as this learning naturally stretches the muscles of the brain. Learning extra languages at a young age enriches the brain.

Hymes (1970) states that each child has the natural ability to achieve 'communicative competence' that is a natural ability for a child to use language correctly in any social setting. Children instinctively have 'the knowledge of what to say to when and under what circumstance when language occurs in a social context.'

Social Interaction Theory
Halliday (2007) says that children learn language through interaction with adults and older kids..

Wells in Bristol England says that children learn language better if parents listen for meaning rather than correct every single mistake a child makes. The implications for teaching is for teachers not to correct every single mistake a child makes when the child speaks. When the parent does not correct every single mistake a child makes in speaking, then the child develops more confidence in speaking.

Acquisition--as you can see from all these 1st Language Acquisition theories, children learn language best when they learn language naturally by being exposed to comprehensible input and that input would be exposure to parents, older kids, and other people speaking the target language and also by interacting socially in that target language. In fact, children acquire their first language long before they know how to read and write.

There are three ways to approach 1st Language Acquisition

1. Language as structure--that is you learn grammatical rules of language in school. (Explicit rules)--learning language through memorization, grammar rules or rote oral drills was considered old fashioned and out of date by Chomsky, Halliday and other structural linguists. Instead, language is best acquired when the learner is exposed to others who speak the target language. This means it becomes the teacher's job to provide comprehensible input through pictures, songs, reading aloud, where teacher focus on meaning and not correcting errors--These teaching approaches which I will explore in the next few posts focus on the natural way to learn language--The Natural Approach, The Communicative Approach and Total Physical Response to name a few.

2. Language as mental capacity--Chomsky where children have a natural ability to learn language as long as children are exposed to that target language through comprehensible input. (Implicit rules--learning language innately through being exposed to parents who speak the target language.

3. Language as functional--Halliday--Children learn language through social interaction. (Implicit rules--children learn language without memorizing grammar books or doing rote oral drills led by an overcorrecting teacher. Instead, students learn language naturally and through social interaction with others who speak the target language.

Chomsky's Generative Grammar/Grammar Theory

Children have a natural ability to create their own grammar rules to learn language. Babies do not need to learn language from a grammar book. They have this God Given innate grammar book in their heads. However, children need to learn exceptions to grammar rules in school.

There are two ways to learn language, naturally (implicit rules) or to learn language in school, (explicit rules). We will cover these two ways to learn language in future posts.

In this post, I focused on the theories of how small children learn their first language. In the next post, I will focus on how children or adults learn not only their first language, but also a second language.  The next post will focus on Second Language Acquisition.