Material - de - Lectura - Obligatorio - Unidad - 1 Adquisicion PDF
Material - de - Lectura - Obligatorio - Unidad - 1 Adquisicion PDF
Material - de - Lectura - Obligatorio - Unidad - 1 Adquisicion PDF
01
Language, Learning and Teaching/First Language
Acquisition
Dr. Isaias Santana
Table of Content
2. Linguistic Factors
3. Learning Processes
4. Learning Process
6. Classroom Instruction
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Introduction to Unit I
The act of learning a second language is a demanding process and time
consuming. Students must devote all your efforts to internalize a target language code,
physical, intellectual and emotional dedication to obtain the final goal, consisting in
effective communication. This human activity is influenced by many variables. Thus, it can
be said that is a complex task due to the number of variables impacting in language
internalization.
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Content Development
There are some key concepts n the field of Second language acquisition (SLA) generating research
linguistic and religious heritage. These issues should take into consideration when developing a
program or a syllabus. Besides, teachers should pay attention to weaknesses and strength, abilities,
Linguistics factors. These characteristics show what, how and why the learner must learn as
well as the differences about first language (FL) and second language (SL) acquisition. One key
question to find out by English teachers is what characteristic of the language the learner faces
difficulty in retention.
Learning process. This feature of SLA relates to types of strategies are effective for the
learner and the factors associated to input exposure, attention to form and meaning, memory and the
retention process.
Age and acquisition. This factor refers about the differences between children and grownups
in SLA process. It is of outmost importance the fact that differentiate between fast learners and slow
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Instructional Variables. What are the ingredients for success? What are the effects of
Context. Are the learners attempting to acquire the second language within the cultural and
linguistic milieu of second language, that is, in a ‘second’’ language situation in the technical sense
of the term? Or are they focusing on a ‘’foreign’’ language context in which the second language is
heard and spoken only in an artificial environment, such as the modern language classroom in an
Purpose. Why are the learners attempting to acquire the second language? What are their
purposes? Are they motivated by achievement of successful career, or by passing a foreign language
requirement, or by wishing to identify closely with the culture and people of the target language?
What other emotional, personal, or intellectual reasons do learners have for pursuing this gigantic
Language. The concept of language should adopt some definitions. These definitions,
however, limit its scope. According to Brown (2008), this concept can be dismantled into many
features, such as
1. “Language is systematic.”
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Another concept that can be analyzed about its features is learning. Breaking down into it core
4. “Learning involves active, conscious focus on and acting upon events outside
After studying these concepts, it would be recommended for the new coming teacher to
understand what teaching means. Brown (2008) posited that “teaching is the process of attending to
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people’s needs, experiences and feelings, and making specific interventions to help them to learn
particular things.”
While the general definitions of language, learning, and teaching offered above might meet
with the approval of most linguists, psychologists, and educators, points of disagreement become
apparent after a little probing of the components of each definition. For example, is language
primarily a “system of formal units” or a “means for social interaction”? Or, for better retention,
emerge from equally knowledgeable scholars, usually over the extent to which one viewpoint or
In the 1940s and 1950s, the structural, or descriptive, school of linguistics, with its
advocates—Leonard Bloomfield, Edward Sapir, Charles Hockett, Charles Fries, and others—prided
observables responses” could be subject to investigation. The linguist's task, according to the
structuralist, was to describe human languages and to identify the structural characteristics of those
languages.
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objectively perceived, recorded, and measured. The scientific method was rigorously adhered to,
and therefore such concepts as consciousness and intuition were regarded as mentalistic, illegitimate
domains of inquiry.
influence of Noam Chomsky and a number of his followers. Chomsky was trying to show that
human language cannot be scrutinized simply in terms of observables stimuli and responses of the
Both the structural linguist and the behavioral psychologist were interested in description, in
answering what question about human behavior: objective measurement of behavior in controlled
circumstances. The generative linguist and cognitive psychologist were, to be sure, interested in the
what question; but they were far more interested in a more ultimate question, why: what underlying
human being?
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Constructivism is a school of thought that emphasizes both the learner’s role in constructing
meaning out of available linguistic input and the importance of social interaction in creating a new
linguistic system.
Early constructivists like Vygotsky and Piaget actively emphasized their views many
decades ago.
What took the language teaching profession so long to apply such thinking to classroom
practices?
Latin was thought by means of what has been called Classical Method focus on:
Grammatical rules.
Memorization of texts.
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nineteenth centuries, the classical Method was adopted as the chief means for teaching foreign
languages.
Late in nineteenth century, the classical Method came to be known as the Grammar
Translation Method. There was Little to distinguish Grammar Translation from what had gone on in
foreign language classrooms for centuries, beyond a focus on grammatical rules as the basic for
Translation:
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Introduction
The way in which children learn the first language before their five years of life has amazed
human being for centuries. Language teaching is not the exception to this trend and the educators’
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comprehensible fashion allowing students to retain not only the language code but also
communication strategies.
The first language researchers to do that were Dietrich Tiedemann who recorded his young
son’s psychological and linguistic development observation and Francois Gouin who observed how
his nephew passed the language acquisition stages successfully. After those observation, Language
teachers around the world started to develop a great number of language teaching methods known
The features that allowed children to communicate in L1 have been studied by linguistics
and psychologies. Thus, they theories and believes have adopted to polarized positions to study first
language acquisition. According to Brown (2014) the first claim is held by the “Behaviorist position
which claim that children come into the world with a tabula rasa”. This means that children come to
the world without any traits or preconceived notions, so they are modeled by their setting and
conditioned thru reinforcement. The second extreme is divided into two positions: The first,
according to this author, is that “children come into this world with very specific innate knowledge,
predispositions, and biological timetables”; the second refers that children learn to function in a
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Behavioral Approaches
This perspective explains when children produce responses which are reinforced either
negative or positive. These reinforces will be responsible for children’ acquisition process. Thus, a
positive reinforced will make children to continue using the utterance and internalize; whereas a
negative reinforce will stop children from using the produced responses. Brown (2014) posited that
appropriately to it, and then upon reinforcement children internalize linguistic meaning” (p.24).
This means that language acquisition in children is ruled by the system of rewards.
One of the first psychologist studying language acquisition was Skinner. He posited a theory
well known as operant conditioning. It refers to “conditioning in which the organism emits a
response or operant, without necessarily observable stimuli; that operant is kept by reinforcement”
(p.24).
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References
Brown, H. D. (2014). Principles of language learning and teaching (6th ed.). United
States: Pearson Education. Recuperado de https://epdf.tips/principles-of-language-
learning-and-teaching-5th-edition.html
Videos
https://www.coursera.org/lecture/language-theories/video-7-summary-v58Uo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvOIbDI2fro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnyyeBfP9iU
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