Introduction

Week 1 of 14

Defnitions of L1 & L2

Definition of frst language (L1):

o The language(s) that an individual learns
first.
o Other terms for first languageo Native language or mother tongue

Definition of second language (L2):

o Any language other than the first language
learned (in a broader sense).
o A language learned after the first language
in a context where the language is used
widely in the speech community (in a
narrower sense).
e.g., For many people in Taiwan, their L1 is
Taiwanese and L2 is Mandarin.
Is English a second language for

rst Language acquisitio

o Language acquisition study of the processes

through which humans
acquire language.
o By itself, language
acquisition refers to frst
language acquisition,
which studies infants'
acquisition of their native
language
o second language
acquisition deals with
acquisition of additional
languages in both
children and adults.

Pre-Verbal / Before First

Words

o Crying: Involuntary crying (when they feel

hungry or uncomfortable)
o Cooing: Exercising the articulatory apparatus.
imitation and the beginning of turn-taking.
o Babbling: producie syllable like sounds.
No meaning attached to the babble.
Syllables are often found in repetitive
sequences (babababa).
vocalisation to the sounds of the local
language.
Even deaf children babble
Babbling as part of the biologically
determined maturation of language abilities.
Babbling drift: Around 9-14 months infants
restrict their babbling to native language
sounds.

First words

o First words: Between 12-18 months

o usually produced in isolation
o Words are used holophrastically: A word
stands for an entire sentence.
o Children's first words are similar all over the
planet.
o for objects: food (juice, cookie), body parts
(eye, nose), clothing (nappy, sock), vehicles
(car, boat), toys (doll, block), household
items (bottle, light), animals (doggie, kitty),
and people (mama, dada, baby).
o There are words for actions, motions, and
routines, like (up, off, open, peekaboo, eat,
and go, and modifiers, like hot, all gone,
more, dirty, and cold.

By the age 2 (2 word stage)

o By 24 months they have an

expressive vocabulary of between
50 to 600 words.
o Experience matters for vocabulary
growth.
o Privileged children hear about
2,100 words/hour.
o Disadvantaged children hear only
about 600 words/hour.
o telegraphic sentences (no
function words and grammatical
morphemes) e.g., Mommy juice,
baby fall down
o reflecting the order of the
language. e.g., kiss baby, baby
kiss
o creatively combining words. e.g.,
more outside, all gone cookie

By the age of 4:

Most children are able to

ask questions, give
commands, report real
events, and create stories
about imaginary ones with
correct word order and
grammatical markers most
of the time.
They have mastered the
basic structures of the
language or languages
spoken to them in these
early years.
They begin to develop
ability to use language in a
widening social
environment.

Development of
Vocabulary

oOne of the most impressive language

developments in the early school years is the
astonishing growth of vocabulary.
oVocabulary grows at a rate between several
hundred and more than a thousand words a
year, depending mainly on how much and
how widely children read.
oVocabulary growth required for school success
is likely to come from both reading for
assignments and reading for pleasure.
Reading a variety of text types is an essential
part of vocabulary growth.
oReading reinforces the understanding that
language has form as well as meaning and
a word is separate from the thing it
represents.
oAnother important development in the school
years is the acquisition of different language

L1 Acquisition Stages

Stage

Typical
Age

Description

Babbling

6-8
months

Repetitive CV patterns

One-word stage or
holophrastic stage

9-18
months

Single open-class words

or word stems

Two-word stage

18-24
months

"mini-sentences" with
simple semantic relations

Telegraphic stage
or early multiword
stage

24-30
months

"Telegraphic" sentence
structures of lexical rather
than functional or
grammatical morphemes

Later multiword
stage

30+
months

Grammatical or functional
structures emerge

Mother tongue
instruction

o Mother tongue instruction

generally refers to the
use of the learners
mother tongue (L1) as the
medium of instruction.
o It is considered to be an
important component of
quality education,
particularly in the early
years.
o The expert view is that
mother tongue instruction
should cover both the
teaching of and the
teaching through this
language.

Mother tongue instruction

o Research suggests that children benefit from at

least some periods of formal instruction in a
language, during which their attention is
directed to formal features of the language
itself (e.g., phonological awareness, vocabulary,
syntax), as opposed to simply being immersed
in the language..

Implications

o Although all normal children

acquire language, there are
large individual differences
in the rate at which children
acquire language and
therefore in the language
skills children possess when
they enter school
o speech that uses a rich
vocabulary and long,
information-containing
utterances has been found
to promote language
development

Implications

STAGE 1
o book reading with an
adult is a positive activity
that provides children with
a great deal of language
input.
o Studies show that mothers
produce more speech
during book reading time
than during toy play time,
and this speech is richer
than that produced during
play time.
o Object labeling is also
frequent during book
reading, which may
facilitate word development

Implications

o spending some
instructional time in a
language other than L1
does not discourage
childrens academic
achievement, but the
additional language
should be introduced as
a subject of study in the
curriculum, rather than
as the medium of
instruction for other
curriculum subjects.
o