quiz 1 Flashcards
SLA is a amalgam of different academic disciplines:
language teaching(pedagogy),psychology and linguistics.
The following SLA terms:
L1,L2,foreign language and heritage language.
A heritage language:
A language that was spoken by L1 before a dominant colonizing language was imposed that eclipsed and suppressed it.
Brown’s findings on the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes amongst English-speaking children:
They acquired the same morphemes in the same order but at different rates.
B.F. Skinner’s behaviourist perspective of language acquisition:
Children acquire language by imitating and practicing what they hear until they form habits of correct language use.
The positive reinforcement corollary to Skinner’s behaviourist perspective:
Children’s language is considered to be correct because of positive reinforcement from an interlocutor.
Continued language acquisition– inference from the behaviourist perspective:
Once children understand that their utterance is correct, they will listen to, imitate and practice new language forms…until these are deemed to be correct by an interlocutor.
Noam Chomsky’s “logical problem at language acquisition” in response to skinner’s behaviourist perspective:
How do children come to learn more about language than they can reasonably be expected to know on the basis of language samples that they have been exposed to?
Chomsky’s innatist perspective of language acquisition:
Children acquire language through their “biological endowment” they are biologically programmed to acquire language.
The critical period hypothesis(CPH):
There is a critical period in a child’s development in which language can be acquired–that is to say, in which children posses the ability to naturally develop speech without formal instruction.
Piaget’s interactionist perspective of language acquisition:
Language is developed through interaction with the physical environment. Ex: object, touch, smell, temperature.
Vygostky’s interactions perspective of language acquisition:
Language is developed through social interaction.
Vygostky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD):
“The metaphorical place in which a learner is capable of higher performance” because there is support from MODIFIED INTERACTION with an interlocutor who possesses greater knowledge than the learner.
Modified interaction:
Adapted conversation patterns–repetition, paraphrase, lexically and phonologically simplified phrases– that proficient speakers use in addressing language learners so that language learners can understand.
Metalinguistic awareness:
The awareness that language is an object–separate from the object or person that a word signifies. Ex: being able to define a word or say what sounds make up a word.
