Chapter 2 – Reflection paper (THÁI NGUYỄN HOÀNG TUẤN, MTESOL019, Open University)

Summary: The issues presented in this chapter center the main idea of first language acquisition (FLA).
2.1-2.2: Babies have the ability to acquire language and is termed as “prewired”. They are able to
remarkably distinguish a large number of sound differences. Besides, babies all around the world have the
similar linguistic stages and achieve linguistics milestone at similar ages. Two terms, overextension and
underextension, both mention about the child’s use of a word with various scales of meaning.  About 18 months
old, children tend to put two words together and omit function words. They have their own unique rate of
development as calculated in terms of MLU (mean length of utterance). They are also able to discover and
apply underlying rules to new exemplars and it is clear that they do not acquire language like a rote imitation.
2.3: There are four views of language acquisition which are revolved in nativism or empiricism views.
While Skinner’s opinion named behaviorism that viewed the child like a passive recipient and are influenced by
the surroundings (empiricism), Chomsky’s viewpoint (nativism) stands for the “prewired” ability of a child to
acquire language and are defined as universal grammar. Besides, interactionism recognizes both the impact of
the environment and the innate ability in acquiring a language. Finally, both emergentism and connectionism
are underlain the view of empiricism.
2.4.1: There are some contrasts between FLA and SLA such as: the age impact, metalinguistic
awareness, the support from already owning a linguistic system, the transfer and interference of using L1 and
L2, the learning context and the expectation, the target language exposure time, the adaptation facilitation
factors between L1 and L2 learners, the sequencing of language skills and the fluency possibility.
2.4.2: FLA and SLA also share many similarities: the need for exposure into the target language input,
repetition, conversational partner, use of formulaic sequences or expressions, the ability of understanding more
than producing, the availability of reconstructing, overgeneralization and the engagement in productive skills
before receptive skills.
Comments
+ It is clear that children have the innate ability to acquire language. It is more solid to state that by their
use of a word with various meanings in situations.
+ Being a language teacher, we cannot just apply only one language acquisition view but try to filter and
adapt remarkable points from those in order to make our teaching relevant and helpful to the learners.
+ Understanding the differences between FLA and SLA leads language teachers to many impacts for
their teaching career. They not only know the rationales beyond the learning process of each type of learners
according to age, but also know how to facilitate their teaching so as to ease and maximize the teaching practice
efficiency.
+ The similarities among FLA and SLA also contribute to the language teaching and learning process.
Teachers are aware of the need for exposure into the language no matter what the age of the learners. The
ability of reconstructing also helps teacher in knowledge consolidation for students.

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Chapter 2 – Reflection paper (THÁI NGUYỄN HOÀNG TUẤN, MTESOL019, Open University)

Questions

1/ To what extent does a language teacher help L2 learners experience as much as possible the
cognitive stages to accelerate the language learning process?
2/ Many college students in my teaching context seem to be under the elementary level of English. How
can I help them study English better and in a quickest way by applying knowledge of FLA and SLA in this
chapter?