Bilingüismo
First and second Language Acquisition
First language acquisition is a process by which people acquire an ability to perceive and to produce language themselves. However, as it is a very complex process which was first analysed back in the times of Plato and is still not completely understood and agreed upon up to his day, there are various different theories. Some scholars argue that language acquisition is a learnt behaviour, others that it is programed to human nature and yet others say that both of these elements have to coexist in order to acquire proper language skills.
Even though behaviourism, as an approach, can be traced back to the late 1800s, its’ main ideas did not change much up until 1930 when a psychologist B. F. Skinner introduced his idea of language acquisition being an outcome of nurturing. Behaviourists believe that all behaviours are either reflexes produced by a response to certain stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history. In retrospective, Skinner in his work Verbal Behaviour argued that the environment the infant is brought up in is the most important factor in first language acquisition, thus if a child is often exposed to a rich an vivid language, then he will learn the language of his environment properly. However, what this theory dismisses, according to Lesley Lanir, is that children do not tend to imitate everything they hear but are rather selective and only reproduce unassimilated language chunks. In most cases, they also produce many more sound combinations than they hear and recognize many more than they can actually produce. However, the faults in the behaviourist’s theory very observed much earlier, i.e. when Noam Chomsky addresses and argued Skinner’s work.
Noam Chomsky, who by some have been called a ‘father of modern linguistics’, looked at the phenomenon of language acquisition from a completely different approach i.e. nativist approach. Nativists believe that certain abilities as, for example, stereoscopic vision and bipedal locomotion, are ‘native’ and thus hard-wired into the brain at birth. Chomsky, accordingly, put first language acquisition into this section of nature given abilities as well. He proposed the ‘Innateness Hypothesis’ which also claims that language acquisition has a biological foundation. According to Erika Hoff, innate linguistic knowledge is often regarded as more relevant as there is evidence that very young children are sensitive to structural properties of language for which there is no obvious explanation in terms of infants' experience. Thus, Chomsky rejected Skinner’s ideas by calling them ‘largely mythology’ and ‘serious delusion’. While this kind of attack might be regarded as bit too brute, most scholars nowadays agree with Chomsky’s ideas and theories more than with the ones Skinner had proposed.
However, as it might already be obvious to some, neither nature nor nurture alone can sufficiently trigger language learning and these ideas are backed up by theories of yet another approach – emergentism. According to Farid Ghaemi and Esmaeil Hassannejad, both of these influences must work together in order to allow children to acquire a language and they also claim that language acquisition is a cognitive process that emerges from the interaction of biological pressures and the environment.
In conclusion, there are more varying opinions on the phenomenon, but all are more or less based on the two main and already discussed approaches, i.e. behaviourists and nativists. Therefore, while some of the ideas can be argued, it is crystal clear that first language acquisition to some extent lies and depends on both – nature and nurture.
The mode by which we learn a second language have also been analysed for a long time and by many people, but there are two theories that stands out between the others, they are Krashen theory and the Stern theory.
Stephen Crashen is a linguistics expert who knows very well how the language develops in the brain of the people. His theory of the second language acquisition has been creating impact since the 1980s. The theory of Krashen, also known as the theory of the monitor is based on five main hypotheses.
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The first one is the hypotheses of differentiation between learning and acquisition. Acquisition is a subconscious process, because humans need to communicate. In order to get a complete familiarity with the language we want to get, we need to be fully and permanently in contact with that language. In order to explain this, Krashen uses the acculturation of some immigrants as an example. In opposition, learning is a conscious process, because it is when we start to know the grammatical rules of the language we are getting inside our brain.
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His second hypothesis is the monitor hypotheses. Krashen thinks that the hability of producing sentences in a foreign language is linked to an acquired competence. Krashen says that the acquisition system begins the statement and the learning acts like a monitor. The monitor will not appear in the process if the speaker does not want to correct her/himself or if does not know the language rules. The role of the monitor must be the less important. It just serves as a tool of correction for cases of deviation of the act of speaking.
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The third one is the hypothesis of natural order. This one is linked to the acquisition but not to the learning. Krashen states that in the manner of a first language acquisition has a determined order; the second language learning has it too. However, the order is not the same as in the first language acquisition.
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The fourth hypothesis is the input hypothesis. This is probably the most important one for Krashen, because it says that the learner has to be exposed to samples of the foreign languages. This hypothesis brings two important statements: the act of speaking is the result of the acquisition, so the language cannot be taught directly. Also, if the input is enough and understood, the necessary grammar is given automatically.
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The fifth and last hypothesis is the affective filter hypothesis. This hypothesis involves three factors that are related to the process of acquisition and learning of a second language. These three factors are motivation, self-esteem and anxiety.
Krashen states that a student who presents a good image of himself, motivation, self-esteem and a low level of anxiety, he or she will be in better conditions for the acquisition of the L2.
In contraposition to the theory of Stephen Krashen, we can find the theory of Stern. Stern states that the second language acquisition and learning is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon which depends on a group of variables. Probably the more important are:
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Social context, in reference to sociolinguistic variables.
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Learner features, in reference to the cognitive and affective variables.
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Learning conditions in reference to the variables related to the educational system and/or the exposition to the second language.
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The learning processes, including the different operations and strategies.
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The result of the learning, in reference to the final competence of the learner.
REFERENCES
Hoff, E. "First (Primary) Language Acquisition." Education.com. N.p., 23 Dec. 2009. Web. 08 Jan. 2017.
http://www.education.com/reference/article/first-primary-language-acquisition/
Lanir, L. "First Language Acquisition Theories: Nature vs. Nurture." Decoded Science. N.p., 18 July 2013. Web. 08 Jan. 2017.
Ghaemi F. & Hassannejad, E. 2015. "Emergentism: a key to first language acquisition." International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World, Volume 8(4)
‘’Teoría de adquisición de segundas lenguas. ’’Jcabello.wordpress.com N.p April 2007.
https://jlcabello.wordpress.com/2007/04/04/teorias-de-adquisicion-de-segundas-lenguas/
‘’Teorías de la adquisición de una segunda lengua’’. Sites.google.com
https://sites.google.com/site/adquisiciondeunasegundalengua/teorias
