A Brief Account in Language Development Interpretation

A Brief Account in Language Development Interpretation 1
A Brief Account in Language Development Interpretation
Heidy Jaén
Prof. Aleojín Ríos
PET-005
May, 09.
A Brief Account in Language Development Interpretation
During the last century the field of language development interpretation has been
flooded with language development researchers which try to explain how a language
researcher can analyze, interpret and recognize the characteristics that accompany each
stage of a learner’s language development. Moreover, there have been a lot of researchers
that explain what factors affect or benefit the language development.
The studies about first language development have agreed that there is a great
similarity in the way in which children around the world acquire a first language
(Lightbown and Spada, 2006). During the first months of children’s lives, they are able to
produce sounds like cooing and gurgling which make their parents recognize if they are
happy. Besides, it is during this period that children are able to hear the sounds that their
parents and relatives produce around them; however, it is after many months that they are
able to produce the sounds that they have heard before (Lightbown and Spada, 2006). The
researcher had the opportunity to confirm this fact because she repeated and showed a
picture about a monkey to her nephew since he was five months old and after many months
one day when he was ten months old, he watched a monkey on TV and he said the word “a
mokey.” It was really fascinating because the researcher could not believe that this could
happen; very soon he started to produce other words that have been taught to him
previously.
During the pre-school years, children have mastered the basic structures of the
language or languages that they have been learning in their houses or the place where they
socialize. Besides, it is important to point out that three-and four-year-old children learn
thousands of words per day; besides, they can start learning to use complex structures like
passive voice and complex sentences which they use their language or languages in order to
interact in different social events and with unfamiliar people (Lightbown and Spada, 2006).
According to Lightbown and Spada (2006), “children develop the ability to understand
language and to use it to express themselves in the pre-school years” (p. 8). Therefore,
during this stage the only way in which children can get language input is through oral
language; moreover, children acquire this language input from their parents, relatives or
other people who are around them; they can also get language input from the environment
where they live.
Once, children start going to school, they acquire new abilities like learning to read
which help children increase and learn new vocabulary because now they can identify the
letter with the sound and there are other abilities like honing their phonology, semantics
and pragmatics of their language or languages that they are learning (Pence, 2008). One of
the most important language developments that school-age children acquire when they start
school is learning to read. By reading children hone their syntactic, semantic, pragmatic,
morphologic and phonological aspects of the language; besides, reading gives children the
opportunity to learn new concepts, information, and ways of seeing the world which is
around them. Lightbown and Spada (2006) conclude that “seeing words represented by
letters and other symbols on a page leads children to a new understanding that language has
form as well as meaning” (p. 8). It is important to mention that when children learn to read,
they realize that one thing is the word and another different thing is the object that it
represents. For example, the word house is really small; nevertheless, the object which
represents is really big.
Another important ability that children start to acquire in their pre-school years and
that they increase during their school-age years is the metalinguistic competence (Pence,
2008). According to Pence (2008), the acquisition of “some metalinguistic competence or

the ability to think about and analyze language as an object of attention” (p. 257) is one
significant aspect that expand and grow a lot during the school years because it is during
this period that children spend a lot of time analyzing and interpreting language in their
school activities. Moreover, there are two kinds of metalinguistic competence that children
achieve during their school years and they are phonological awareness and figurative
language (Pence, 2008). Phonological awareness is the ability that children have in order to
blend, to distinguish, to manipulate, to recognize the sound structure of a word or words
(Pence, 2008). On the other hand, figurative language is a “language that people use in
nonliteral and often abstract ways” (Pence, 2008, p.258). Among the different kinds of
figurative language that people use in their conversations or written papers it is important to
mention metaphors, similes, hyperboles, idioms, irony, and proverbs. Lightbown and Spada
(2006), acknowledge that “metalinguistic awareness also includes the discovery of such
things as ambiguity. Knowing that words and sentences can have multiple meaning gives
children access to word jokes, trick questions, and riddles, which they love to share with
their friends and family” (p. 9). The acquisition of this kind of figurative language is a
process which starts in the pre-school years and continues its development until adulthood.
However, sometimes some adults cannot achieve this task.
The most important language development achievements during school-age years
are the ones that refer to language content, form, and use. The language content
development can be achieved through the reading of texts which provide students with a lot
of words and concepts that they do not use in common conversations and the other is
through the classroom environment which includes classroom conversations that presents a
variety of topics (Pence, 2008). Besides, the language content development deals with the
way in which children analyze, create, form and learn new words.
Talking about the language development it is important to mention that researchers
can see important achievements in language form. Among the most outstanding areas that
are developed during their school-age years it is essential to mention the complex syntax
development, the morphological development and the phonological development (Pence,
2008). The complex syntax refers to develop complex grammar structures among these
complex grammatical structures the researcher can include adverbial conjunctions,
modification of noun phrase, present perfect and passive voice. It is important to mention
that the acquisition of complex syntax development is one of the most difficult areas to
achieve during the school-age years. Pence (2008) states that “many of these syntactic
skills children exhibit are rarely used in conversation, such as the passive voice, so these
form accomplishments can be difficult to witness” (270). Besides, some of the
grammatical structures that children need to master are not part of ordinary conversations
that is the reason why they are very difficult to accomplish. The area of morphological
development deals with the use of the derivational prefixes and derivational suffixes
(Pence, 2008). Finally, the area of phonological development deals with the ability that
children have in order to combine, to distinguish, to manipulate, to recognize the sound
structure of a word or words (Pence, 2008).
The last achievement in language development is in regardless to language use.
While children are studying, they acquire the ability to use language for many purposes
(Pence, 2008). Among these important achievements in language use, the researcher can
mention the ability to use language in order to communicate different purposes and
functions. Lightbown and Spada (2006) states that “children learn how written language
differs from spoken language, and 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” (p. 9). This functional flexibility is important
for children who are in school due to the fact that in their classrooms, they have to perform
several activities which include predictions, comparisons, classifications, analysis,
persuasions, and so on. Another important area in which children show their language use
achievement is in their conversational abilities which deal with the way in which children
face a conversation and the different ways in which they keep and control it. The last area
in which children show their language use achievements is in the narrative development
and it refers to way in which children can mix language structures in writing contexts.
On the other hand, according to Baker around 75% of the world population has
learned a second language (as cited by Pence, 2008, p. 287). When people learn a second
language, they also acquire a second culture too. According to Lucy (1992) the
“anthropologists Franz Boas viewed language as reflecting the conceptual ideas and forms
of thinking characteristics of a culture (as cited by Pence, 2008, p. 287) and “linguist and
anthropologist Edward Sapir (1921) further stated that language does not exist apart from
culture” (as cited by Pence, 2008, p. 287). Both linguists and anthropologists establish that
there is interrelatedness between language and culture. In other words, language is viewed
as the manifestation of a particular culture.
Dialects, pidgins and creoles are different ways in which a language can evolve and
change. A dialect is a regional or social variation of a language which is different among
them in terms of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary (Pence, 2008). Apel (2001)
concludes that”a dialect is a manner of speaking that is used by a specific group or
population” (p.121). In Panama, there are different English dialects among them the
researcher can mention Creole English which is spoken in Colón and Río Abajo and Patua
English which is spoken in Bocas del Toro, San Miguel and Guari-Guari English which is
spoken in Colón. A pidgin is a language that people use when they do not have the same
language and they are in contact for a long time (Pence, 2008). An important aspect to
mention about pidgin language is the fact that it uses the lexicon of the dominant language
and it uses the phonological and syntactic structures of the less dominant language (Pence,
2008). Once pidgin language is passed down to a second generation as a first language, it
becomes in creoles (Pence, 2008).
In this section of this paper the researcher describes the difference between
bilingualism and second language acquisition. Bilingualism is a term that refers to children
who acquire two or more first languages. It is important to point out that there are two
different ways in which children acquire two or more first languages. Bilingualism is a term
that it is used to define the process in which children acquire two first languages (Pence,
2008). There are two streams about the way in which children acquire two first languages
some linguistic researchers describe that children acquire two first languages in a
simultaneous or sequential bilingualism. Simultaneous bilingualism occurs when children
acquire two or more first languages from birth and the children receive these language
inputs from their parents, grandparents or caregivers (Pence, 2008). Besides, sequential
bilingualism is almost the same like simultaneous bilingualism and the only difference is
that children acquire their two first languages in sequence and most of the time within the 3
years of life (Pence, 2008). On the other hand, simultaneous bilingualism is when children
learn two first languages at a time (Apel, 2001). Moreover, sequential bilingualism is when
children learn one language first then later they learn a second language this can happen
when they are between three to five years old (Apel, 2001). It can be seen that
simultaneous or sequential bilingualism are two different ways of learning two first
languages and each one has its characteristics and the way in which it happens. Code
switching is a phenomenon that occurs when bilingual people combine the two languages
that they are learning. Apel (2001) acknowledges that “studies have shown that as children
learn two or more languages, there is a good chance that they may use one word in one
language and another word in another language” (p. 112). Code switching can happen in
two different ways. Intrautterance mixing happens when people alternate one word in a
sentence and interutterance mixing happens when people alternate a sentence in a group of
sentences. Children use more Intrautterance mixing because they lack of syntactic,
phonological, pragmatic, semantic complexity; nevertheless, as children grow up and learn
more, they move from intrautterance mixing to interutterance mixing.
On the other hand, second language acquisition is the way in which a person has
acquired their first language and learns a second language (Pence, 2008). Teaching a
second language is a very complicating task due to the fact that there are many aspects that
the language teachers should take into consideration before starting this activity. First, the
language teachers should define what kind of English they are teaching if it is English as a
second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL). It is important to establish
the fact that the linguistic researchers use the term English as a second language to refer a
person who learns a second language in a country where the language that is being taught is
the main language of the country. Pence (2008) states that “learning English as a second
language (ESL) is when a person speaks a first language other than English then learns
English in the context of an English-speaking country, such as England or the United
States” (p. 304). Taking into consideration this definition English as a second language can
only be taught in countries where the population speaks English as the main language of the
country; therefore, English as a second language is a term that has to be used in countries
like the United States, the United Kingdom and so on. On the other hand, the linguistic
researchers use the term English as a foreign language to refer a person who learns a
language in a country where they do not speak the language that it is being taught.
According to Pence “English as a foreign language (EFL) differs from ESL in that children,
adolescents, and adults learn English in a non-English-speaking country” (p. 307). Taking
into account Pence’s point of view the researcher can establish that in our country Panama
the language teachers teach English as a foreign language due to the fact that they teach it
in a country where English is not the language of the country.
The means of communication also have an important role in the language
development of language learners. Besides, the television, computers and video games can
affect and benefit the language development of language learners. Television provides
different speech and language models that are used by children and people. According to
Apel (2001) “children are active viewers of television. Their little minds are often engaged
in the actions and characters in the shows they watch” (p. 135). On the other hand,
television can hinder the language development because the language learners spend a lot
of time watching TV; as a result, they do not interact with their parents or friends. Apel
(2001) states that” thus, large amount of television watching, together with the viewing of
developmentally inappropriate shows, may result in a less than optimal language learning
situation” (p. 141). Watching TV can be dangerous if the children do not receive adult
supervision; moreover, they must watch programs that are according to their age and
mental development and they must not watch TV for many hours per day. Parents should
allow their children to watch from 15 to 30 minutes per day and supervise what they watch.
The use of computers can help in the language development of children. The
computers provide a lot drill-and-practice, active participation of the user, multimedia
presentations and use of the cognitive, visual-perceptual and motor control skills. The new
computer programs are full of practices that make children learn different skills that they
will need in a future situation. Apel (2001) acknowledges that “children using these
programs can explore and make choices within situations that represent familiar, everyday
events in their lives” (p. 145). These computer programs always present a problem that the
children have to solve and through the use of different obstacles that the computer
programs have the students overcome these obstacles in order to win the game and in this
way they can be successful. These obstacles are more of less the same that adults face in
their real lives. On the other hand, the use of the computers can harm the children because
the excessive use of it can lead the children to alienate themselves, to avoid the use of
social and language skills and to avoid high grades in language tests in the schools. Apel
(2001) states that “researchers have found that in homes where families rely almost solely
on the computer for information and interaction and do very little book reading, the
children tend to perform poorer than their peers on measures of language skills” (p. 151).
Parents have to develop an important role in the life of their children they should not allow
the computers to take away the time that they have to share with their children. Computers
must be considered like tools that help parents to provide their children with valuable
information; however, they must not be considered the nannies or parents of their children.
The last mean of communication that help language development is video games.
Video games are important tools that help children become familiar with the new
technology that is available in our world; besides, they promote the interaction between two
players which is important because the children have the opportunity to share their
experiences with another person that can be a parent or a friend; moreover, they help
children to acquire the concept of directions because in these video games, they have to go
up, down, and so on; finally, they develop their fine-motor and visual-spatial skills because
on the screen children have to perform several activities like jump, jog, and others and in
order to do it they must use their eyes and hands if they want to get all the points or get an
excellent result (Apel, 2001). Apel (2001) states that “given the right game, you can set up
a situation where you and your child can jointly participate and focus on a common goal or
topic” (p. 150). Parents should keep in mind that video games are a way in which they can
teach their children different skills and activities that will help their children in the future;
nevertheless, as in the case of the television and computers the video games are tools that
should be used in an appropriate way from the parents and should never use as a
replacement for the parents´supervision and control of their children. It is important to
mention that video games can help the language development of children because these
video games bring the instructions in English and in this way they oblige the language
learners to learn English and the students learn new vocabulary throughout these games
because they want to understand the video game. On the contrary, video games can hinder
the language development of the children because some video games encourage social
isolation for the children because they are created to be played by one player; there are
some video games that do not present any problem-solving and children only have to shoot
or kill people in them; some video games are full of violence and make children believe
that real life is also violent because children can not separate real life from fantasy. Apel
(2001) maintains that” now, some parents might think that there is no real harm in their
child occasionally playing one-person games or games with little creative required. They
are probably right. However, as children become more entrenched in the playing of video
games, what used to be occasional occurrences may soon become more frequent
occurrences” (p. 152). Video games are perfect ways of avoiding the real world and
sometimes children play them because they do not want to face real problems that they face
every day and it is easier to play a game and forget about the reality, as pointed before,
video games are tools that parents must learn how to use in order to avoid problems with
their children.
The most important influences of first language into second language can be seen
thorough the effects of transfer on language and pronunciation. There have been a lot of
researchers who have tried to define this word; however, each of them comes with a new
meaning for it. Therefore, Odlin stated that it is difficult to define the word transfer; on the
contrary, Kellerman and Sharwood Smith stated the idea of crosslinguistic influence instead
of transfer; then, Corder stated the idea of borrowing instead of transfer; and finally
Ringbom stated that the term transfer is the influence of first language structures and
procedures in comprehension and production of the second language (Ringbom, 1992).
According to Ringbom (1992) “transfer is defined as the influence of L1-based elements
and L1-based procedures in understanding and producing L2 text” (p. 87). The
phenomenon of transfer occurs in two different ways which are the overt transfer and the
covert transfer (Ringbom, 1992). According to Ringbom (1992) “overt transfer- which
may be transfer of forms, especially lexical items, but also of phonological and
morphological forms, grammatical patterns, or even procedures-“ (p. 105). These kinds of
transfers have been studied a lot from the researchers because they have been the cause of
many errors from the first language into the second language (Ringbom, 1992). On the
other hand, according to Ringbom (1992) covert transfer occurs when “L1-based
procedures may also be used when no similarities are perceived, in fact, because
similarities have not been perceived” (p. 105). Most of the time covert transfer happens
because there is a lack of knowledge from second language procedures and structures
(Ringbom, 1992).
The phenomenon of transfer must be studied in the way in which it affects the
development of the four language skills which are listening, reading, speaking and writing.
The effect of transfer in the listening comprehension skill is really crucial one
because it is through it that a learner really shows if he/she is in command of a second
language. For any learner It is very easier to read and understand a written text because the
learner can make use of different subskills in order to attain this task; nevertheless, it is
very difficult to get the accurate meaning of a word or a sentence especially if they are
spoken due to the fact that the rhythms and intonations of the words are different from their
written forms. According to Ringbom (1992) “even though they may be able to make
reasonably good sense out of a newspaper text in a language related to the L1, it does not
necessarily mean that they can understand what people say in the L2” (p.93). When a
learner is listening, there are some subskills which can help him/her to attain his/her
objective of understanding the second language conversation and they are the context in
which the words or sentences are used, gestures and tone of voice. The knowledge of
actual and potential vocabulary which is being used in the reading comprehension has
brought other ideas about a declarative knowledge which is the knowledge about the rules
and structures of a language and procedural knowledge which is the performance or
demonstration of the declarative knowledge. Ringbom (1992) states that” declarative
knowledge, knowledge that, is static, in that it comprises knowledge of the elements and
the rules of language and is independent of the communicative use of language in real time.
Thus, declarative knowledge cannot be employed directly, only through procedures
activating it for comprehension and production” (p.94). Following this idea about
declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge, the researcher can say that reading
comprehension and listening comprehension can be considered as declarative knowledge

and speaking can be considered as procedural knowledge because when a learner reads or
listens, he/she has all the potential knowledge to accomplish this task; however, it is
through speaking that he/she shows his/her if he/she really knows a language. Meanwhile,
reading is performed in not real time, speaking is performed in real time.
The effect of transfer in reading comprehension is important to point out that it can
be positive if the second language is related to the learner’s first language. One important
aspect in the reading comprehension is the learning of cognates. Cognates are words that
have the same or a close meaning in the first and second language of the learner (Ringbom,
1992). These cognates are considered as potential knowledge which is a knowledge that a
learner has about a word or structures that he/she has not studied before and he/she has in
his/her mind. Ringbom acknowledges that “it refers, for example, to the knowledge about a
word or construction that the learner has, without actually ever having come across it
before” (p.89). The cognates are very important when reading a text because they help the
learner to understand a text in a better and easy way. On the contrary, cognates can
interfere with the comprehension of a text when a learner finds what it is commonly known
as false cognates which are words that have similar spelling in the first and second
language and then, the learner thinks that they have the same meaning and he/she comes to
a wrong understanding of the text. According to Ringbom (1992) “there are, of course, also
cases in which the cognates are deceptive, but compare to the good cognates, the false
friends are few in number” (p. 92). In general, the cognates play an important role in the
reading comprehension of a text and their use in understanding a second language text is
very important and must not be underestimate by any English teacher.
The effects of transfer in writing are subtle due to the fact that this skill is presented
to absent people who cannot answer immediately. However, this skill requires from the
second language writer a great ability to use such subskills as spelling, punctuation,
accuracy and organization. Besides, it is important to mention that if the second learner has
good writing abilities in his/her first language, he/she is not going to have a lot of problems
in the second language writing. However, the researcher can mention that the effect of
transfer in writing can be seen in the area of cognates, but this is a problem that can be
fixed with time and the use of the potential vocabulary.
Nowadays, there are several second language researchers as Asher, Purcell, Scovel,
Long and others who stated the idea that there is a critical period to learn a second language
without acquiring a foreign accent (Flege, 1997). Some like Long stated that if a learner
begins to acquire a second language by the age of 6 years, he/she will not acquire a foreign
accent; however, if a learner begins to acquire a second language after the age of 12 years,
he/she will acquire a foreign accent (Flege, 1997).
In the field of the acquisition of a foreign accent there are two problems that these
hypotheses face. First they cannot explain why there are some people who learn a second
language after the limited age and they do not acquire a foreign accent. Thus, these studies
have shown that there are some talented adults and adolescents who have learned a second
language after this period and they have not acquired a foreign accent. Second, they cannot
tell the time when the foreign accent is going to appear.
Among the hypotheses that try to explain the acquisition of a foreign accent, the
researcher can present some of them. First, the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) proposes
that there is a critical period for acquiring a second language without getting a foreign
accent. According to Flege (1997) “the so-called Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) is
widely viewed as providing an explanation for why many individuals speak their L2 with a
foreign accent” (P. 170). Second, the exercise hypothesis establishes that a learner has the
ability to learn a language throughout his/her entire life (Flege, 1997). Next, the unfolding
hypothesis establishes that a foreign accent is due to a fully phonetic development in the
learner’s first language. Flege (1997) concludes that “the unfolding hypothesis predicts
that the more fully developed the L1 phonetic system is at the time L2 learning begins, the
more foreign-accented the pronunciation of the L2 will be” (p. 171). All these hypotheses
try to explain how the foreign accent appears; nevertheless, they could not be tested by their
proposers in the language field due to the fact that there is almost impossible to get together
a group of people who can have the different characteristics that were proposed by their
proposers. Finally, there is a hypothesis which tries to explain how the amount of first
language use affects the pronunciation of a second language and it is the single system
hypothesis which proposes that the less time that a learner uses a first language the better
changes that a learner has to reduce the foreign accent. The single system hypothesis was
tested by Flege.
The field of language development interpretation has helped many language
researchers to fill a lot of gaps that had appeared in this area; besides, it has helped to
develop new methods, strategies and techniques that have smoothed the way in which
language teachers teach a second language. These discoveries have taught the language
teachers that the language which is being taught must be exposed to the language learners
through a comprehensible input; the language learner can only learn the structures and
procedures that are in the next level according to their natural sequence of development.
Moreover, there are many factors which affect the language learning process like the effects
of transfer and pronunciation from first language into second language. Finally, it is
important to point out that the social environment where the language learner is affects the
way in which he/she acquires a second language. Nowadays, there are many language
researchers who are working very hard in order to propose and test new hypotheses that
will contribute to achieve the goal of finding the best way of teaching a language in an easy
and fast way without provoking a lot of traumas in the language learners.
References
Apel, K. (2001). Beyond Baby Talk: From Sounds to Sentences–A parent’s Complete
Guide to Language Development. The Influence of Culture on Language, 6, 109-
129
Flege, J. E. (1997 Amount of Native-Language Use Affects the Pronunciation
of a Second Language. Journal of Phonetics, 25, 169-186.
Lightbown, P. & Spada N. (2006). How Languages are Learned. Language Learning in
Early Childhood, 1, 1- 27.
Pence, K. L. (2008). Language Development from Theory to Practice. School-Age Years
And Beyond, 8- 9, 252-313.
Ringbom,H. (199”.First Language Transfer on Second Language Comprehension and
Production. Language Learning, 42:1, 85-112.

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