Learning First and Second Language Model

A. First Language

First language (L1) is learned through process known as first language acquisition (FLA).
First language acquisition is the high degree of similarity which we see in the early language
of children all over the world. The earliest of vocalizations of the crying of the baby when
hungry or feel uncomfortable. Soon, we hear the cooing and gurgling sounds of countened
babies when they three month old baby. Then, it will be many months before their own
vocalizations begin to reflect the characteristics of the different languages they are learning.

By the end of the first year, most babies understand the repeated word like “bye-bye” or Clap
their hands. As they get older, they understand and produce the words that they hear, one, two
ore more words by themselves. They begin combining the words such as “more outside”,
where the meaning seem “i want to go out side again”. In this time, we see the function or
grammatical morphemes are missing, the words order reflects the words have a meaning
relationship between them which make them more than just a list of words.

By the age of three and a half pr four years, they can ask question, give command, report real
events, and create the story about imaginary ones- complete with correct grammatical
morphemes. The children’s ability to understand language and to use it to express themselves
develops rapidly in the pre-school years.

Metalinguistic awareness is ability to treat language as an object, separate from the meaning
it conveys develop more slowly. The dramatical development in metalinguistic awareness is
the children begin to learn to read. Unlike three years old, a child who can read comes to
understand, for example “caterpillar” is longer than “train”, even though the object it presents
is substantly shorter. Simply, metalinguistic awareness also includes the discovery of such
things as ambiguity (words and sentences have multiple meaning). This gives children access
to joke, trick question, and riddle which they love to share with their friends or family.

Early Childhood Bilingualism

Children who hear more than one language virtually from birth are sometimes referred to as
“simultaneous bilinguals”, in which they begin to learn a second language later are referred to
as “sequential bilinguals”. When simultaneous bilinguals are in contact with both languages
in a variety of settings, there is every reason to expect that they will progress in their
development of both languages at a rate and in a manner which are not different from those
monolingual children.

Children may begin to lose the family language before they have developed an age –
appropriate mastery of the new language. That is, when they learned the second language for
atlong periods in early schooling or day care, it is called subtractive bilingualism. And it can
have negative consequences for children from minority group. In other cases, the children
seems to continue to be caught between two languages: not having mastered the second
language, they have not continued to develop the first. The solution of this case is the
educator recomend the parents to stop speaking the family language at home and concentrate
on majority children’s language.

In their language progress, the children through the stage “developmental sequences” in
language learning are related to children’s cognitive development. For example, the children
do not use temporal adverbs such as “tomorrow” or “last week”.

Grammatical Morpheme

Some studies about grammatical morpheme. Roger Brown and his colleagues in the 1960s.
He studied the development of three children (Adam, Eve, dan Sarah). Jill and Peter de
Villiers (1973). They studied 21 children who were at different ages and stages of
development. They claims that the children did not master the morphemes at the same rate.
They mastered it at different ages.

Negation

Some stages the development of negation in learning language:

1. Stage 1. The child’s first negatives are usually expressed by the word “no” or “any”.
Either all alone or as the first word in the utterance such as “no go, no cookie and any
bath”
 2. Stage 2. An utterances grow longer, and the sentence subject is included, the negative
usually appears just before the verb, such as daddy no comb hair
3. Stage 3. At this stage, the negative element is inserted into a more complex sentence.
Children may add forms of the negative other than no, as “can’t or don’t”. For
example: i can’t do it, he don’t want it.
4. Stage 4. Children begin to attach the negative element to the correct form of auxiliary
verbs such as “do” and “be” and modal verb such as “can”. For example: you didn’t
have supper. She doesn’t want it.

Question

Naturally, the question of language is 5W + 1H word. However, these types of questions in

the early days of language learning.
1. Children’s earliest questions are single words or simple two or three words sentences
with rising intonation. For example: cookie? Mommy book?
2. Stage 2. When their sentences grow longer, and they begin to ask more new
questions, the children use the word order of the declarative sentence. With yes/no
questions, they simply add rising intonation. With WH-question, they put a question
word at the beginning: you like this? Why you catch it?
3. Stage 3. Gradually, they notice that the structure of questions is different and begin to
produce questions such as: can I go? Is that mine?
Generally, the questions are formed by putting a verb at the beginning of a sentence.
Thus: is teddy is tired? Do i can have a cookie?
Furthermore, wh-questions also used such as: why you don’t have one?
4. Stage 4. The children begin to use subject, auxiliary inversion and can even add “do”
in sentences: do you like ice cream?. The wh-question also use in this stage.
5. Stage 5. Eventually, children combine both operations: why can he go out?
6. Stage 6. When performance on questions is correct and well established, there is still
one more hurdle. When wh-question appear in subbordinate clause, children
overgeneralize the inverted form and produce sentence such as:
I don’t know why can’t he go out.
Theoretical Approaches in First Language Learning
Behaviorism
According to this view, the quality and quatity of the language which the child hear as well as
the consistency of the reinforcement offered by others in the environment, should have an
effect on the child success in language learning. The behaviorist view imitation and practice
as primary process in language development. Imitation is word to word repetition of all or
part of someone else’s utterance. Practice is repetitive manipulation of form.

For example the analysing children’s speech, (peter, lois, patsy, candy, kathryn); (kyo and his
dad); (randal, michael, david and his mother). These examples of children’s speech provide
us with a window on the process of language learning. Imitation and practice cannot explain
some of the form created by the children.

Innatism
Accroding to Chomsky, the language the child is exposed to in the environment is full of
confusing information (for example: false starts, incomplete sentences, or slips of the
tongue). The evidence seems very strong that children are no means systematically corrected
or instructed on languge.

He claims that children are born with a special ability called a language acquisition device
(LAD). This device is described as an imaginary “black box” which exist somewhere in the
brain. The kinds of evidence that support Chomsky innatist position:
1. Virtually all chiidren successful learn their native language at a time in life when they
would not be expected to learn anything else so complicated. For children who deaf
will learn sign language in their progress in their language acquisition.
2. Children successfully master the basic structure of their native language or dialect in a
variety of condition (for example caring, attentive parents, etc). Children achieve
different level of vocabulary, creativity, social grace, and so on, but virtually all
achieve mastery of the structure of the language spoken around them
3. The language children are exposed to does not contain examples (or, in any case, not
very many examples) of all the linguistic rules and patterns which they eventually
know
 4. Animals. Even primates receiving intensive training from human-cannot learn to
manipulate a symbol system as complicated as the natural language of a three or four
year old human child
5. Children seem to accomplish the complex task of language acquisition without
having someone consistently point out to them which of the sentence they hear and
produce are “correct” and which are ungrammatical.
The Biological Basis For The Innatist Position consist of:
1. The critical period hypothesis. Lenneberg observed that this ability to develop normal
behaviours and knowledge in a variety of environments does not continue indefinitely
and that children who never learned language (because of deafness). The language
ecquisition device, like other biological function, work succesfully only when it is
stimulated at the right time called “critical period”
2. Natural experiments: victor and ganie. Both victor or ganie were deprived of a normal
home, which may account for their abnormal language development
3. Natural experiment: deaf signers. Elissa Newport and her colleagues have studied
deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL) who acquired it as their first language
at different ages. It is about 5 to 10 percent the deaf children are born to deaf parents
and only some children can exposed to ASL from birth. The deaf signers begin to
learn ASL at different ages. Then, the reserchers were interested to see any different
between native signers, early learners, and late learners in the ability to produce and
comprehend grammatical markers. The result, there was no difference between
groups. By using grammatical markers tests, the native signers were highly consitent
in their use of the grammatical forms. Although the other two groups used many of
the same forms as the native group, they also used forms which are considered
ungrammatical by the native signers. Thus, there is a critical period for first language
acquisition.

To sum up, language acquisition occurs through connectionism. In this case, the children
need to know is essentially available in the language they are exposed to. This theory can
account for complex syntax as well as for the learning of words and grammatical morphemes.

Interactionist Position: A Little Help From My Firends

This theory focuses on the role of linguistic environment in interaction with the child’s innate
capacities in determining language development. The interactionist position view that
language develops as a result of the complex interplay between the uniquely human
characteristics of the child and the environment in which the child develop. It is referred to
“children directed speech” in which the language is not only addressed to children but also
the way to make them easier understand. In addition, this theory see language acquisition as
similar to and influenced by the acquisition of other kinds of skills and knowledge, rather
than the independent of child’s experience and cognitive development.

In summary, this theory is unlike innatist in which Piaget did not see language as based on a
separate module of the mind. Language can be used to represent knowledge that children
have acquired through physical interaction with the environment. The Psycologist Lev
Vigotsky who worked in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930 concluded that language
develops entirely from social interaction. It is referred to child’s proximal development in
which the child is able to advance to a higher level of knowledge and performance.

Child-Directed Speech

Child directes speech involves a slower rate of delivery, higher pitch, more varied intonation,
shorter, simpler sentence pattern, frequent repetition and paraphrase. The topic of
conversation is limited on child environment. For example: Peter says, “Dump truck, Dump
truck! Fall!fall”, Lois respond, “Yes, the dump truck fell down”.

In other word, the behaviorist, Innatist and Interactionist theoriest explain a different aspects
of children’s language development. Behaviorist and connectionst explain the acquisition of
vocabulary and grammatocal morphemes. Innatist explains the complext grammar. The
interactionst explains how the children relate form and meaning in language, how the interact
in a conversation, and how they learn to use language approprately.

B. Second Language

Model of second language learning come from the theory of Second Language Acquisition
(SLA). That theory must take into account that:
 1. A theory of SLA includes and uderstanding of what language is, what learning is, and
for classroom context, what teaching is.
2. Knowledge of children’s learning of their L1 provides essential insights to an
understanding of L2 acqusition
3. There are important different between adult and child learning, and between L1 and
L2 learning
4. There is tramendous variation between learners in cognitive style and within a
learner’s strategy choice
5. Personality will effect both the quality and quatity of second language learning
6. Learning of seond language implies learning its culture
7. Errors show the leaner is learning, and teachers and learners can gain insight from
them
8. A theory of second language acquisition must be comprehensible in including as
many relevant factor as possible while at the same time it must have a practical
application in the real word
Some theories of Secon Language Learning
1. Nativist Theory
They explain acquisition by positing an innate biological endowment that makes
learning possible
2. Input based Theory.
a. Acquisition and learning Hypothesis. A subconcious process, natural, identical to
the one little children learning their mother tongue use and affective (acquisition).
Second process is learning, which is the concious and consists learning grammar
rules
b. Natural order hypothesis. Second language rules are acquired in a fixed way,
determined by innate mechanism and not by the linguistic complexity or explicit
teaching
c. Monitor hypothesis. It explain how the languge is acquired. L2 is acquired
processing comprehensible input (i + 1), that is, input that has been listened to and
understood
d. Affective filter hypothesis. The role of acquistion has several factors, such as
motivation, self-confidence or anxiety.
3. Environment Theory. For example: connectionist model involves:
 - Processsing is distributed in parallel (we can receive different information at the
same time without having to concentrate on only one thing)
- Processing is activated through input
- Knowledge is conceived as the strength of connection between the different nodes
(neural network
- Learning takes place when the connection between the units or nodes are changed)

4. Interactist Theory
Klen’s Model. Acquisition of language is organized around three dimension:
propensity, or necessity to acquired the language (relate to factor such as motivation,
education,......), Linguistic facult for learning that language (related to his biological
capacity and the knowledge), access (relate to input and communication
opportunties). The process of learning also requires a sequences (time), a structure
(order or part of learning), a final state (which may not coincident with the target
language)