Ortega: Terms
What does the term "Second Language Acquisition" entail?
Learning and teaching of languages following the acquisition of the first language(s).
SLA as a field investigates the human capacity to learn languages once the first language – in the case of monolingual children – or the first languages – in the case of bilingual or multilingual children – have been learned and are established (p. 4).
What ages are the upper limit for the acquisition of the first language(s)?
4-5
What does "overgeneralization" mean?
Talk > Talked
Buy > Buyed
Book > Books
Foot > Foots
What is the first wh- word to be acquired in L1 English?
What :)
What is "bilingualism" in the traditional sense?
We use the term ‘bilingual acquisition’ or ‘multilingual acquisition’ to refer to the process of learning two or more languages relatively simultaneously during early childhood (p. 4).
What does SLA study as a field? Give at least two soecific examples.
- individual differences
- identity
- age
- motivation
- external factors
2) Methods of teaching second/additional languages
3) influence of L1 on L2
4) Feedback
5) Error correction/treatment
What does "developmental sequence" of L1 acquisition entail? Name at least two of the stages.
cooing
bubbling
one word stage
telegraphic speech
Infants stop making distinctions between sounds that are not phonemic in the language that is spoken around them. Explain this statement with an example.
For example, by the time they are a year old, babies who will become speakers of Arabic stop reacting to the difference between ‘pa’ and ‘ba’, which is not phonemic in Arabic. Babies who regularly hear more than one language in their environment continue to respond to differences between these sounds (Werker, Weikum, & Yoshida, 2006).
What is naturalistic versus instructional SLA?
Naturalistic learners learn the L2 through informal opportunities in multicultural neighbourhoods, schools and workplaces, without ever receiving any organized instruction on the workings of the language they are learning.
Instructed learners learn additional languages through formal study in school or university, through private lessons and so on (p. 6).
Why is the term "Second Language Acquisition" problematic?
Because it assumes everyone is monolingual before they attempt an L2. It excludes people with two or more mother tongues.
What does "order of acquisition" mean in L1 (morphology) acquisition?
The order of morphemes acquired as a child. Age and rate may differ but order remains the same across individual kids.
Give an example of how "cognitive development" influences children's language acquisition.
For example, children do not use temporal adverbs such as ‘tomorrow’ or ‘last week’ until they develop some understanding of time.
What is a "foreign" versus "second" language?
Foreign language: Learning Chinese in the USA
Second Language: Learning Chinese in China
What are social dimensions of L2 acquisition? (at least three)
Educational policies
Language ideologies
Racism
Sexism
Homophobia
Any other form of discrimination and agression
What is "metalinguistic awareness"? Give an example.
The ability to recognize and talk about linguistic structures. Kids can recognize "weird" sentences.
As Terry Piper (2006) and others have documented, some children will have even more to learn if they come to school speaking an ethnic or regional variety of the school language that is quite different from the one used by the teacher. They will have to learn that another variety, often referred to as the standard variety, is required for successful academic work.
Explain the challenges the "standard variety" may pose for the speakers of enthic/regional varieties.
Academic "failure"
Discrimination
Bullying
Oppression / suicide rates
What is "interlanguage"?
Learners’ mental grammar, and the special variety of language that it generates when they speak or sign, interact, write, negotiate and express themselves in the L2, based on the mental representations they forge of the new grammar (p. 6).
SLA research has unveiled a number of universal influences that help shape the nature, pace, route and finish line in the path towards learning a second language. Give at least two examples of universal influences.
Among universal influences, the most important and well-studied sources of universal influence are age, mother tongue, environment and cognition.
Another important development in the school years is the acquisition of different language registers. Explain the term register giving examples.
Children learn how written language differs from spoken language, how the language used to speak to the principal is different from the language of the playground, how the language of a science report is different from the language of a narrative.
In this test, children are shown drawings of imaginary creatures with novel names or people performing mysterious actions. For example, they are told, ‘Here is a wug. Now there are two of them. There are two ____’ or ‘Here is a man who knows how to bod. Yesterday he did the same thing. Yesterday, he ____’.
By completing these sentences with ‘wugs’ and ‘bodded’, children demonstrate that they know the patterns for plural and simple past in English.