ELD 211: ‘‘Language Acquisition and

Language Teaching’’
Mr. M. Pute
Department of Language Education, UWC

mpute@uwc.ac.za
Child Language Development and
Second Language Learning
Central Questions

• Why does virtually everyone learn a language,

regardless of whether it is actively taught to
them or not? What makes this possible?

• Why are there differences between learning

one’s first language (L1) and learning a second
language (L2)?

• For what sorts of purposes do people learn a

second language?
 Theories of Language Acquisition
Theory Central Idea Individual with
theory
Behaviourist Children imitate adults. B.F. Skinner
Their correct utterances
are reinforced when they
get what they want or are
praised.
Innateness A child’s brain contains N. Chomsky
special language-
learning mechanisms at
birth.
Cognitive Language is just one J. Piaget
aspect of a child’s overall
intellectual development.
Interaction This theory emphasises Bruner
the interaction between
children and their care-
givers.
 BEHAVIOURISM
• Oldest language learning theory – 1913

• Behaviourism is basically a psychological theory in its

essence

• Focuses on observable behaviours.

• Behaviourists believe that all things organisms do —

including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be
regarded as behaviors (Staddon, 2001).
 BEHAVIOURISM

• Approach main belief:

All behaviour, such as language learning, is the result of
people (and animals) forming habits in response to stimuli in
their environments.
–Argues that behaviour is learned through interaction with the
environment through a process called conditioning.
–Language learning and its development is a matter of conditioning by
means of imitation, practice, reinforcement, and habituation, which
constitute the paces of language acquisition.
–behaviour is simply a response to environmental stimuli.
–Language acquisition
Linguistic input that children receive in their environment is
responsible for their acquisition of language.
 BEHAVIOURISM
• Children are born with a blank state of mind.

• Children learn language through stimuli given to them

• Their responses to stimuli are conditioned through

reinforcement.

• Stimuli-response
 BEHAVIOURISM
• 5 Basic Tenents
• Primary medium of language is oral. We learn to speak before we
learn to read and write. Language is primarily what is spoken and
secondarily what is written
• Behaviourist theory is the habit formation theory of language
teaching and learning.
• The stimulus-response chain, stimulus response is a pure case of
conditioning
• All learning is the establishment of habits as the result of reward vs
punishment
• each person can learn equally if the conditions in which the learning
takes place are the same for each person
 BEHAVIOURISM
• Children learn a language by imitating the sounds and patterns
which they hear and repeating them until it becomes a habit
(Lightbown & Spada: 1999).
• Children learn a language by first making babblings that resemble
the words they hear.
• Actually babies first communicate by crying
• Desirable speech sounds made by children are encouraged through
positive reinforcement and (as the child’s vocabulary grows)
• 2 types of reinforcements:
– POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT (reward)
– NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT (punishment)
 BEHAVIOURISM
• Conditioning: stimulus + response +
reinforcement
• "human and animal learning is a process of habit
formation. A highly complex learning task, according to
this theory may be learned by being broken' down into
smaIl habits. These are formed correct or incorrect
responses are rewarded or punished respectively'.
(Hubbard Jones and Thomton Wheeler, 1983; 326).
 BEHAVIOURISM

• Imitation
– Children learn through imitation.
– Children acquire the language by listening to and
repeating the speech they are exposed to in their
environment.
• Reinforcement
– Children learn grammatical utterances through
reinforcement.
• Children are rewarded for good grammar and corrected for
bad grammar.
• Reinforcement is often used for most subjects in pre-schools
and prep schools. E.g. Stars & Sweets.
 LIMITATIONS OF BEHAVIOURISM

Child: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.

Mother: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?

Child: Yes

Mother: What did you say she did?

Child: She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.

Mother: Did you say she held them tightly?

Child: No, she holded them loosely.

 LIMITATIONS OF BEHAVIOURISM

• Structures, Rules and Mistakes

– Children often make grammatical or structural mistakes in
their speech.
– Where do they imitate these mistakes from, since adults
do not speak with these grammatical or structural errors?
– This reveals that children are not simply imitating but
actively working out and applying rules.
• They are actually over-applying rules when they make some
mistakes. E.g. holded vs. held, drinked vs. drank, etc. when the
child has discover the past tense rule in English.
• These are called intelligent mistakes or virtuous errors.
 LIMITATIONS OF BEHAVIOURISM

• Do Some Parents Care?

– Few children receive much explicit grammatical
correction.
– Parents are more interested in politeness and
truthfulness.

• Evidence of Critical Period for Language Acquisition

Children who have not acquired language by the age of
about 7 will never entirely catch up.