Makalah Psycholinguistics

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQISITION

A PAPER Submitted as a Fullfillment of Psycholinguistics and Second Language Acquisition Assignment

Complied by: Nai Nurbaeti Setyaningsih Lita Tri Lestari

MAGISTER PROGRAM OF ENGLISH EDUCATION TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY SULTAN AGENG TIRTAYASA UNIVERSITY 2017

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of Study Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with speech or manual as in sign. Language acquisition usually refers to first language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, rather than second language acquisition that deals with acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages. Before children put together their first two-word sentences, at very approximately 18 months of age, their language acquisition appears, in terms of what strikes the investigator’s ear, to consist mainly in amassing a stock of words. The period from the child’s first ‘word’, at very approximately 9 months, to the first sentences is then a conveniently delimited one for an essay on early vocabulary. The capacity to acquire and use language is a key aspect that distinguishes humans from other organisms. While many forms of animal communication exist, they have a limited range of no syntactically structured vocabulary tokens that lack cross cultural variation between groups. A major concern in understanding language acquisition is how these capacities are picked up by infants from what appears to be very little input. A range of theories of language acquisition has been created in order to explain this apparent problem including innatism in which a child is born prepared in some manner with these capacities, as opposed to the other theories in which language is simply learned. Generative grammar, associated especially with the work of Noam Chomsky, is currently one of the principal approaches to children's acquisition of syntax. The leading idea is that human biology imposes narrow constraints on the

child's "hypothesis space" during language acquisition. In the Principles and Parameters Framework, which has dominated generative syntax since Chomsky's Lectures on Government and Binding in 1980, the acquisition of syntax resembles ordering from a menu: The human brain comes equipped with a limited set of choices, and the child selects the correct options using her parents' speech, in combination with the context. An important argument in favor of the generative approach is the Poverty of the stimulus argument. The child's input (a finite number of sentences encountered by the child, together with information about the context in which they were uttered) is in principle compatible with an infinite number of conceivable grammars. Moreover, few if any children can rely on corrective feedback from adults when they make a grammatical error. Yet, barring situations of medical abnormality or extreme privation, all the children in a given speechcommunity converge on very much the same grammar by the age of about five years. An especially dramatic example is provided by children who for medical reasons are unable to produce speech, and therefore can literally never be corrected for a grammatical error, yet nonetheless converge on the same grammar as their typically developing peers, according to comprehension-based tests of grammar. Considerations such as these have led Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, Eric Lenneberg and others to argue that the types of grammar that the child needs to consider must be narrowly constrained by human biology (the nativist position). These innate constraints are sometimes referred to as universal grammar, the human "language faculty," or the "language instinct." 1.2 Formulation of the Problem Based on the background of study that has been explained above, the writer idintifies the formulation of the problems that are devided into three points, such as: 1) What are the characteristics and traits of first language acquisition? 2) What is social aspect of interlanguage? 3) What is discourse aspect of interlanguage?

1.3 Objective of the Problem Regarding to the fomluation of the problem that has been stated before, the writer determine the objective of the study. The objectives are devided into three points, those are: 1) To know the characteristics and traits of first language acquisition 2) To know what the social aspect of interlanguge is. 3) To know what the discourse aspect of interlanguage is.

CHAPTER II RELATED THEORIES Over the last fifty years, several theories have been put forward to explain the process by which children learn to understand and speak a language. They can be summarized as follows: Theory

Central Idea

Individual most often

Behaviorist/

associated with theory Children imitate adults. Their correct Skinner

Imitation

utterances are reinforced when they get

Innateness

what they want or are praised. A child's brain contains special language- Chomsky

Cognitive

learning mechanisms at birth. Language is just one aspect of a child's Piaget

Interaction

overall intellectual development. This theory emphasizes the interaction Bruner between children and their care-givers.

1. Behaviorism B.F. Skinner described learning as a behavior produced by learner's response to stimuli which can be reinforced with positive or negative feedback to environmental stimuli. Skinner added that learning can be observed, explained, and predicted through observing antecedents and consequences. Both positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement increase the probability that the antecedent behavior will happen again. In contrast, punishment (both positive and negative) decreases the likelihood that the antecedent behavior will happen again. Positive indicates the application of a stimulus; Negative indicates the withholding of a stimulus. Learning is therefore defined as a change in behavior in the learner. Punishment is sometimes used in eliminating or reducing incorrect actions, followed by clarifying desired actions. Educational effects of behaviorism

are important in developing basic skills and foundations of understanding in all subject areas and in classroom management. Skinner's Behaviorist approach contends that children learn language through imitation, repetition and the reinforcement of the successful linguistics attempts. Mistakes are considered to be the result of imperfect learning or insufficient opportunities for practice. In such, that a child having a pleasant learning experience (such as rewards or praise) is positive reinforced. Through that positively reinforcing stimulus, a child's learning capacity is triggered. However, unpleasant experiences (such as punishment) serve as negative reinforcements, and cause learners to avoid undesirable responses to stimuli. As such, continuous reinforcement increases the rate of learning, be it positive or negative; a child will respond to different triggers and with experience, remember what is to do and to avoid. Hence, intermittent reinforcement helps a child to a longer retention of what is learned. Skinner contends that both positive and negative reinforcement can shape behavior, and this in turn affects their language acquisition capability, as such, a lack of any reinforcement can also shape behavior. If people receive no acknowledgement of their behavior, they will likely change that behavior until they receive some kind of reinforcement. Behaviorism gave birth to a stimulus-response (S-R) theory which sees language as a set of structures and acquisition as a matter of habit formation. Ignoring any internal mechanisms, it takes into account the linguistic environment and the stimuli it produces. Learning is an observable behavior which is automatically acquired by means of stimulus and response in the form of mechanical repetition. Thus, to acquire a language is to acquire automatic linguistic habits. According to Johnson (2004:18), "Behaviorism undermined the role of mental processes and viewed learning as the ability to inductively discover patterns of rule-governed behavior from the examples provided to the learner by his or her environment". Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991:266) consider that S-R models offer "little promises as explanations of SLA, except for perhaps pronunciation and the rote-memorization of formulae" (Menezes, V. n.d.).

This view of language learning gave birth to research on contrastive analysis, especially error analysis, the main focus of which is the interference of one's first language in the target language. An important reaction to behaviorism was the interlanguage studies, as the simple comparison between first and second language neither explained nor described the language produced by SL learners. Interlanguage studies will be present in other SLA perspectives, as the concern of the area has been mainly with the acquisition of grammatical morphemes or specific language structures. Beside there some truth in Skinner's explanation, but there are many objections to it, such as: 

Language is based on a set of structures or rules.



The vast majority of children go through the same stages of language acquisition.



Children are often unable to repeat what an adult says.



Few children receive much explicit grammatical correction.

2. Innateness Language is not an autonomous system for communication. It is embedded in and supplemented by gesture, gaze, stance, facial expression, voice quality in the full array of options people can use for communicating (Clark, 2009). Learning is complex and the context where it takes place is influenced by our learning experience due to our different experiences. Clark (2009: 7) states that “in learning language, children may first rely on nonlinguistic options, both in their initial understanding and in their own early use”. The Innateness theory by Noam Chomsky (Pinker, 1994) shows the innatist limitations of behaviorist view of language acquisition in 1960’s to the alternative ‘generative’ account of language. The main Argument in this theory is that children are born with an innate knowledge which guides them in the language acquisition task. The children’s ability makes the task of learning a first language easier than it would otherwise be (Crain & Lillo-Martin, 1999). Pinker (1994, p.26) claims that “the universally of complex language is a discovery that fills linguists with awe, and is

the first reason to suspect that language is not just any cultural invention but the product of a special human instinct”. It is an innate biological function of human beings just like learning to walk. On the other side, Clark (2009, p.2) poses that “even if children are born with a learning mechanism dedicated to language, the main proposals is to focus only on syntactic. The rest has to be learnt.” This essay believes that children have the innate ability to learn language as Chomsky believes, but this needs to be learn and develop by social interacting with environments such as adults and in cognitive development. According to Clark (2009) children beside their innate abilities; their acquisition of language could also be affected by social interaction and cognitive development. Moreover, Chomsky (2009) argues that Language learning is not really something that the child does; it is something that happens to the child placed in an appropriate environment much as the child’s body grows and matures in a predetermined way when provided with appropriate nutrition and environmental stimulation. Furthermore, according to Crain and Lillo-Martin (1999), the innate knowledge, known as the language Acquisition Device (LAD), includes principle common to all human languages, called the Universal Grammar (UG). This is similar to Pinker(1994, p.43) claims that the evidence corroborating the claim that the mind contains blueprints for grammatical rules comes, once again out of the mouths of babes and suckling’s. For example, looking at the English agreement suffix- s as in He walks’ Chomsky theorized that children were born with a hardwired language acquisition device (hereafter, LAD) in their brains (Pinker, 1994). LAD is a set of language learning tools, intuitive at birth in all children (Pinker, 1994). Pinker (1994) further expands this idea into that of universal grammar, a set of innate principles and adjustable parameters that is common to all human languages. The language acquisition Device (LAD) is a postulated organ of the brain that is supposed to function as a congenital device for learning symbolic language (Chomsky, 2009). To Chomsky (1977, p.98) all children share the same innateness, all children share the same internal constraints which characterize narrowly the grammar they are going to construct”

Therefore, Crain and Lillo-Martin (1999) pose that LAD explains human acquisition of the syntactic structure of language; it encodes the major principles of a language and its grammatical structures into the child’s brain and enables the children to analyze language and extract the basic rules of universal grammar or generative grammar because it is a system of rules that generate or produce sentences of the language. We are born with set of rules about language in our brains and children are equipped with an innate template or blueprint for language and this blueprint aid the child in the task of constructing a grammar for their language (Chomsky, 2009). The universal grammar according to Chomsky (2009) does not have the actual rules of each language but it has principles & parameters in which the rules of language are derived from the principles & parameters. In other words, the principles are the universal basic features of grammar such as nouns and verbs and the parameters are the variation across language that determines one or more aspects of grammar e.g. pro, drop and head direction (Chomsky, 1977). Therefore, the parameters in children set during language acquisition (Chomsky, 2009). 3. The Cognitive Theory The Swiss psychologist Piaget (1990) placed acquisition of language in the context of a child's mental or cognitive development. He argued that a child has to understand a concept before she/he can acquire the particular language form which expresses that concept. A good example of this is seriation. There will be a point in a child's intellectual development when s/he can compare objects with respect to size. This means that if you gave the child a number of sticks, s/he could arrange them in order of size. Piaget suggested that a child who had not yet reached this stage would not be able to learn and use comparative adjectives like "bigger" or "smaller". Object permanence is another phenomenon often cited in relation to the cognitive theory. During the first year of life, children seem unaware of the existence of objects they cannot see. An object which moves out of sight ceases to exist. By the time they reach the age of 18 months, children have realized that

objects have an existence independently of their perception. The cognitive theory draws attention to the large increase in children's vocabulary at around this age, suggesting a link between object permanence and the learning of labels for objects. According to the cognitive theorist all aspects that are learnt by an individual are as a result of what learners have constructed or discovered their own mental process and not through observable behaviour (Warren, 2012). Wilburg (2010) asserts that children /learners come to school with knowledge, skills and related experiences to the learning situations and this make them actively involved in their learning process. Therefore, several studies has shown that children growing up in polyandry situations are taking part in multiparty conversation from an early age and in many of these cultures adults have particular interactional techniques to help them do so. According to Wyatt (2007), he describes the speech transmission between adult and child in Piaget theory namely: 

Psychological level: the feelings of speech partners for each other, their relationship, their mutual expectancies, and the respective levels of maturation, which determine the choice of words by the speaker and the interpretation of their meaning by the listener.



Linguistic level: process of word finding; selecting the correct sounds and putting them into correct sequences; putting words into correct grammatical order to form sentences.



Physiological

level:

Neural

activities

affecting

the

speaker‟s

perceptual and motor mechanisms and activating the hearing mechanisms of speakers and listener. 

Acoustic level: Sound waves travelling through the air between speaker and listener. There is not much evidence of the effects of the presence of siblings on

children’s language. On the other hand, Lieven (1994) reviews a report on young children’s language in conversations which include their mother and an older sibling as more complex than when alone with the mother.

4. Input or Interactionist Theories In contrast to the work of Chomsky, more recent theorists have stressed the importance of the language input children receive from their care-givers. Language exists for the purpose of communication and can only be learned in the context of interaction with people who want to communicate. Interactionists such as Bruner suggested that the language behavior of adults when talking to children (known by several names by most easily referred to as child-directed speech or CDS) is specially adapted to support the acquisition process. This support is often described to as scaffolding for the child's language learning. Bruner also coined the term Language Acquisition Support System or LASS in response to Chomsky's LAD. Trevarthen studied the interaction between parents and babies who were too young to speak. He concluded that the turn-taking structure of conversation is developed through games and non-verbal communication long before actual words are uttered. Scaffolding Theory was first introduced in the late 1950s by Jerome Bruner, a cognitive psychologist. He used the term to describe young children's oral language acquisition. Helped by their parents when they first start learning to speak, young children are provided with instinctive structures to learn a language, for example are bed-time stories and read aloud. Scaffolding represents the helpful interactions between adult and child that enable the child to do something beyond his or her independent efforts. The construction of a scaffold occurs at a time where the child may not be able to articulate or explore learning independently. The scaffolds provided by the tutor do not change the nature or difficulty level of the task; instead, the scaffolds provided allow the student to successfully complete the task.

CHAPTER III THE RELATED RESEARCH

One of the research related to first languge acquisition is conducted by Opitz (2011) which is titled “First Langage Attrition and Second Language Acquisition in a Second Languge Environment”. This thesis is concerned with the outcomes of the parallel processes of first language maintenance and second language acquisition in adult bilinguals resident in a second language environment. Current perspectives on first language attrition and bilingualism makes a strong case for considering L1 attrition as a feature of multi-competence in bilinguals, and for taking into account changes across the range of languages known by a bilingual in assessing proficiency. They suggest that the simultaneous maintenance of several languages by a bilingual may result in trade-offs between those languages, but also that dynamic interactions between languages and a host of other factors will result in very different outcomes for individuals. In a mixed between-group/within-group design, 27 native speakers of German who emigrated to Ireland as adults (mean age at arrival = 26.8 years; mean LOR = 19.5 years), and two matching control groups of 18 Irish and 20 German L2 users were tested on an extensive test battery of parallel German and English language tests. Participants additionally attempted a linguistic aptitude test and responded to several questionnaires, allowing the comprehensive probing of a wide range of predictor variables for L1 attrition and L2 acquisition. The thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of the between-group data, assessing participants' L1 and L2 performance across three tasks. Participants' proficiency is thoroughly investigated on quantitative and qualitative measures of complexity, accuracy and fluency at the group and individual levels. The results of the attrition study show that the bilingual group's performance does not differ significantly from that of the German control group on most individual measures, the exceptions being one fluency measure (percentage of repetitions) and certain error types. However, when all measures

are combined in z-scores, differences do become significant. There are three individuals who consistently show low performance, who can be considered L1 attriters, while others perform on a par with the native-speaker controls. There is, however, considerable variability within each group, in line with the assumptions of dynamic approaches to language attrition. The L2 attainment study, on the other hand, shows that on measures emphasising breadth of linguistic knowledge and accuracy the bilingual group performs differently compared to the Irish control group, while on measures focusing on fluency, lexical diversity and idiomatic language use it was comparable. Over half of the bilingual participants have z-scores within the control group's range, indicating native-like performance across the three tasks. The significant group difference on the total scores is due to some bilingual participants who have not overall achieved a similar level of proficiency. However, even those participants perform in a nativelike manner on some of the measures, and the bilingual group overall performs significantly better than the other group of L2 learners, pointing to successful L2 acquisition on the part of the bilingual group. A brief consideration of some of the results of the within-group study serves to point out future directions of research in relation to this study, and the chosen line of enquiry.

CHAPTER IV THE FOCUS OF DISCUSSION 4.1 First Language Acquisition Dardjowidjojo (2008: 225) stated that the process of the child begins to recognize verbal communication with its environment is called language acquisition of children. The term used for the acquisition of British counterpart of the term acquisition, namely the process of language acquisition by children naturally when he learns his native language (native language). Firthermore Sofa (2008) proposed that there were two notions about language acquisition. First, the beginning of language acquisition has a squally, suddenly. Second, language acquisition to have a gradual beginning that emerged from the achievements of motoric, social, and cognitive pralinguistik. Meanwhile, acccording to Syafrizal (2014: 8), first language acquisition is the study of the process through which learners acquire languge. First language acquisition studies the infant’s acquisition of their native language, whereas second languge acquisition deals with acquisition with additional languages in both children and adults. First language acquisition occurs when a child who from the beginning without the language has acquired language. During the language acquisition of children, more children leads to the communication function rather than form of the language. Child language acquisition can be said to have the characteristics of continuity, have a continuum, moving from simple one-word utterance into a more complicated combination of words. Language acquisition is closely related to cognitive development, namely, first, if the child is able to produce utterances which, based on the grammar which are neat, does not automatically imply that the child has mastered the relevant languages well. Second, the speaker must obtain the cognitive categories that underlie the various meanings expressive natural languages. During the first language acquisition, Syafrizal (2014: 27-29) also proposes four main stages which occur when a child acquire his first language as follow:

1. Pre-speech: Much of importance goes on even before the child utters his first word: infants learn to pay attention to speech, pays attention to intonation and the rhythm of speech long before they begin to speak. Infants respond to speech more keenly than to other sounds. Speech elicits greater electrical activity in the left side of the 2 month old infant's brain than do other sounds. Experiment with microphone and nipple showed that infants suck more vigorously if the action triggers a human voice as opposed to music or other sounds. Child learn to recognize the distinctive sounds, the phonemes of the language they hear from birth long before they are able to pronounce them. Infants can distinguish between /p/ and /b/ at three or four months (in an experiment with /ba/ played vs. /pa/, a two month infant showed awareness of the change). But children do not learn how to use these sounds until much later-- around the second year or later--as shown by the experiment with /pok/ and /bok/. The same is true for rising vs. falling intonation, which only becomes systematically funtional much later. Infants know the difference between one language and another by recognition of phonological patterns (Story of the Russian fairy tale book.) 2. Babbling stage. Begins at several months of age.

Characterized by

indiscriminate utterance of speech sounds-- many of which may not be used in the given language but are found in other languages-- clicks. Many native speech sounds may be absent-- some are naturally harder to pronounce-- /r/ /th/. Very few consonant clusters and repeated syllables are common. 3. One word (holophrastic) stage. Infants may utter their first word as early as nine months: usually mama, dada (these words resemble babbling). Deaf babies whose parents use sign language begin making their first word/gestures around eight months. This stage is characterized by the production of actual speech signs. Often the words are simplified: "du" for duck, "ba" for bottle. When the child has acquired about 50 words he develops regular pronunciation patterns. This may even distort certain words-- turtle becomes "kurka".

Incorrect pronunciations are systematic at this time: all words with /r/ are pronounced as /w/. sick--thick, thick--fick. Children tend to perceive more phonemic contrasts than they are able to produce themselves. The first 50 words tend to be names of important persons, greetings, foods, highlights of the daily routine such as baths, ability to change their environmentgive, take, go, up, down, open. The meaning of words may not correspond to that of adult language: overextension-- dog may mean any four legged creature. apple may mean any round object. bird may mean any flying object. Child can still distinguish between the differences, simply hasn't learned that they are linguistically meaningful. Dissimilarities linguistically redundant. Two patterns in child word learning— referential-- names of objects. expressive-- personal desires and social interactions: bye-bye, hi, good, This is a continuum. Child's place on this continuum partly due to parent's style: naming vs. pointing. The extra-linguistic context provides much of the speech info. Rising and falling intonation may or may not be used to distinguish questions from statements at the one-word stage. Words left out if the contexts makes them obvious. At this stage, utterances show no internal grammatical structure (much like the sentence yes in adult speech, which can't be broken down into subject, predicate, etc.) 4. Combining words-- 18 mo--2 years. By two and a half years most children speak in sentences of several words--but their grammar is far from complete. This stage rapidly progresses into what has been termed a fifth and final stage of language acquisition, the All hell breaks loose stage. By six the child's grammar approximates that of adults. Children learning any language seem to encode the same limited set of meanings in their first sentences: ownership-- Daddy's shoes; describing events-- Me fall; labeling-- That dog; locational relations-- toy in box.

Sentences usually two words. Children can repeat more complex sentences spoken by adults but cannot create them until later (called prefabricated routines) not indicative of the child's grammar. 4.1.1 Characteristics and Traits of First Language Acquisition 1) It is an instinct. This is true in the technical sense, i.e. it is triggered by birth and takes its own course, though of course linguistic input from the environment is needed for the child to acquire a specific language. As an instinct, language acquisition can be compared to the acquisition of binocular vision or binaural hearing. 2) It is very rapid. The amount of time required to acquire one's native language is quite short, very short compared to that needed to learn a second language successfully later on in life. 3) It is very complete. The quality of first language acquisition is far better than that of a second language (learned later on in life). One does not forget one's native language (though one might have slight difficulties remembering words if you do not use it for a long time). 4) It does not require instruction. Despite the fact that many non-linguists think that mothers are important for children to learn their native language, instructions by parents or care-takers are unnecessary, despite the psychological benefits of attention to the child. (https://www.unidue.de/ELE/LanguageAcquisition.htm) What is the watershed separating first and second language acquisition? Generally, the ability to acquire a language with native speaker competence diminishes severly around puberty. There are two suggestions as to why this is the case. 1) Shortly before puberty the lateralisation of the brain (fixing of various functions to parts of the brain) takes place and this may lead to general inflexibility. 2) With puberty various hormonal changes take place in the body (and we technically become adults). This may also lead to a inflexibility which means that language acquisition cannot proceed to the conclusion it reaches in early childhood.

4.2 Social Aspects of Interlanguage 4.2.1 Interlanguage as a Stylistic Continuum Tarone in Ellis (1997: 37), has proposed that interlanguage involves a stylistic continuum. She argues that learners develop a capability for using the L2 and that this underlies all regular behavior. This capability, which constitutes ‘an abstract linguistic system’, is comprised of a number of different ‘style’ which learners access in accordance with a variety of factors. At the end of the continuum is the careful style, evident when learners are consciously attending to their choice of linguistic forms, as when they feel the need to be ‘correct’. At the other end of the continuum is the vernacular style, evident when learners are making spontaneous choices of linguistic form, as is likely in free conversation. Collect samples of spoken English form a number of Japanese learners over a period of time and under different conditions of language use-free speech, reading a dialogue =, and reading lists of isolated words. One study found Japanese learners produced /z/ most accurately when reading isolated words and least accurate in free speech. This study also showed that over time he learners improved their ability to use /z/ accurately in their careful style to a much greater extent than in their vernacular style. Tarone herself has acknowledged the model also has a number of problems. First, later research has shown that learners are not always most accurate in their careful style and least accurate in their vernacular style. L2 speakers show greatest accuracy in the vernacular style, for example, when a specific grammatical feature is of special importance for conveying a particular meaning in conversation. A second problem is that the role of social factors remains unclear. Styleshifting among native speakers reflects the social group they belong to. Another theory , the theory of stylistic variation but which is more obviously social is Howard Gile’s accommodation theory. The seeks to explain how learner’s social group influences the course of L2 acquisition. When people interact with each other they either try to make their speech similar to that of their

addressee in order to emphasize social cohesiveness or to make it different in order to emphasize their social distinctiveness. Accommodation theory suggests that social factors, mediated through the interactions that learners take part in, influence both how quickly they learn and the actual route that they follow. 4.2.2 The Acculturation Model of L2 Acquisition A similar perspective on the role of social factors in L2 acquisition can be found in John Schumann’s acculturation model. Acculturation is the way people adapt to a new culture. The Schumann theory on acculturation is mainly based on the social factors experienced by those learning English as their second language within the mainstream culture. The factors determine the social distance between the second language learner and the mainstream culture in which they are living in. this distance between the learners and the mainstream culture in turn determine the rate of language acquisition. Schumann states that “the degree to which a learner acculturates to the target language group will control the degree to which he acquires the second language”. There are several social factors that Schumann accounts for the rate of second language acquisition: 1. Limited integration of cultural groups 2. Size of minority group-the group is more self-sufficient the larger they are 3. How tight-knit the group is 4. The variance of characteristics between their culture and the mainstream culture 5. Majority groups attitude towards the minority group 6. Language learner expects to stay a short time in the country 7. Motivation, culture shock and attitude of language learner 8. Language learner and mainstream culture both view each other as equal 9. Language learner and mainstream culture both desire assimilation

Definition: According to Schumann in Ushioda (1993), there is a taxonomy of eight factors which control social distance that determine how close an individual will come to becoming like the TL group: 1. Dominance/subordination: Relating to the perceive status of a group in relation to another. 2. Integration pattern: Assimilation (giving up your own lifestyle in favor of another) /acculturation/preservation (how much of your own culture you hold on to), 3. Degree of enclosure of both groups: Amount that the L2 group share the same social facilities (low enclosure), or have different social facilities (high enclosure). 4. Degree of cohesiveness of 2LL group: intra group contacts (cohesive), or inter group contacts (non-cohesive) 5. Size of 2LL, 6. Degree of congruence of the two cultures: The culture of the L2 group may be similar or different to the TL group. 7. Inter-group attitudinal evaluations: Positive or negative attitudes to each other. 8. Intended length of residence of 2LL group members: Whether the L2 group intends to stay a long time or a short time. Schumann in Ushioda (1993) lists five affective factors that may increase the psychological distance: 1. Language Shock: Disorientation caused by learning a new linguistic system. 2. Culture Shock: Stress, anxiety and fear caused when entering a new culture, the routines activities suddenly become major obstacles. 3. Culture Stress: Prolonged culture shock, such as, homesickness, and questioning self identity. 4. Motivation: Instrumental and integrative.

5. Ego permeability: The amount in which an individual gives up their differences in favor of the TL group. 4.2.3 Social Identity and Investment in L2 Learning Bonny Peirce has two views about the relationship between social context and L2 acquisition: 1. The notions of “subject to” and “subject of” are central. She has studied an adult immigrant learner of English in Canada named Eva. The girl which is working with me pointed at the man and said: ‘Do you see him?’ – I said ‘Yes. Why?’ ‘Don’t you know him?’ ‘No. I don’t know him.’ ‘How come you don’t know him? Don’t you watch TV? That’s Bart Simpson.’ It made me so bad and I didn’t answer her nothing. The theory of social identity assumes that power relations play a crucial role in social interaction between language learners and target language speakers. Eva indicated she had felt humiliated at the time. She said that she could not respond to the girl because she had been positioned as a “strange woman”. What had made Eva feel strange? The girl’s questions to Eva were in fact rhetorical. She didn’t expect, or possibly even desire a response from Eva: “How come you don’t know him? Don’t you watch TV? That’s Bart Simpson.” It was the girl and Eva who could determine the grounds on which interaction could proceed, it were them who had the power to bring closure to the conversation. Eva became subject to a discourse which assumed an identity she didn’t have. She was also the subject of the discourse had she attempted to continue on which the interaction could proceed, for example, by asserting that she didn’t watch the TV program of which Bart Simpson was the star. 2. Language learners have complex social identities Peirce argues that language learners have complex social identities that only be understood in terms of the power relation that shape social structures. A

learner’s social identity is ‘multiple and contradictory’. Investment is required for learners to construct an identity that enables them to get their right to be heard and become the subject of the discourse. It is something learners will only make if they believe their effort will increase the value of their “cultural capital”. Successful learners are those who reflect critically on how they engage with native speakers and who are prepared to challenge the accepted social order by constructing and asserting social identities of their own choice. 4.1 Discourse Aspects of Interlanguage The study of learner discourse in SLA has been informed by two rather different goals. On the one hand there have been attempts to discover howL2 learners acquire to ‘rules’ of discourse that inform native-speaker language use. On the other hand, a number of researchers have sought to show how interaction shapes interlanguage development. 1. Acquiring discourse rules There are rules or at least, regularities in the ways in which native speakers hold conversation. In the United States, for example, a compliment usually calls for a response and failure to provide one can be considered sociolinguistic error. Furthermore, in American English compliment responses are usually quite elaborate, involving some attempt on the part of the speaker to play down the compliment by making some unfavourable comment. However, L2 learners behave differently. Sometimes they fail to respond to a compliment at all. At other times they produce bare responses There is growing body of research investigating learner discourse. This show that, to some extent at least, the acquisition of discourse rules, like tha acquisition of grammatical rules, is systematic, reflecting both distinct types of errors and developmental sequences. 2

The role of input and interaction in L2 acquisition A number of rather different theoretical positions can be identified. A

behaviourist view trearts language learning as environmentally determined, controlled from the outside by the stimuli learners are exposed to and the

reinforcement they receive. In contrast, mentalist theories emphasize the importance of the learner’s ‘black box’. They maintain that learners’ brains are especially equipped to learn language and all that is needed is minimal exposure to input in order to trigger acquisition. Interactionist theories of L2 acquisition acknowledge the importance of both input and internal language processing. Learning takes place as a result of complex interaction between the linguistic environment and the leraners’ internal mechanisms. Two types of foreigner talk: 1. Ungrammatically foreigner talk It is socially marked. If often implies a lack of respect on the part of the native speaker and can be resented by learners. It is characterized by the deletion of certain grammatical features such as copula be , modal verbs and articles, the use of the base form of the verb in place of the past tense form, and the use of special constructions such as ‘no + verb’. 2. Grammatical foreigner talk It is the norm. various types of modification of baseline talk can be identified: 

First, grammatical foreign talk is delivered at a slower pace.



Second, the input is simplified.

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Third, grammatical foreigner talk is sometimes regularized.



Fourth, foreigner talk sometimes consist of elaborated language use According to Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis, L2 acquisition takes

place when a learner understands input that contains grammatical forms that í + I’. Karenshen suggests that the right level of input is attained automatically when interlocutors succed in making themselves understood in communication. Success is achieved by using the situational context to make messages clear and through the kinds of input modifications found in foreigner talk.

Michael Long’s interaction hypothesis also emphasizes the importance of comprehensible input but claims that it is most effective when it is modified through the negotiation of meaning. Another perspective on the relationship between discourse and L2 acquisition is provided by Evelyn Hatch. Hatch emphasizes the collaborative endeavours of the learners and their interlocutures can grow out of the process of bulding discourse. Other SLA theorist have drawn on the theories of L.S. Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, to explain how interaction serves as the bedrock of acquisition. The two key constructs in what is known as activity theory’, based on vygotsky’s ideas, are ‘motive’ and ‘internalization’. 

First, concerns the active way in which individuals define the goals of an activity for themselves by deciding what to attend to and what not to attend to.



Second, concerns how a novice comes to solve a problem with the assistance of an ‘expert’. Who provides ‘scaffolding’, and then internalizes the solution. Vygotsky argues that children learn through interpersonal activity, such as

play with adults, whereby they form concepts that would be beyond them if they were acting alone. In other word, zones of proximal development are created through interaction with more knowledgeable others. Subsequently, the child learn how to control a concept without the assistance of others. 3. The role of output in l2 acquisition Here we find conflicting opinion: 1) Krashen argues that ‘speaking is the result of acquisition not its cause’. He claims that the only way learners can learn from their output is by treating is as auto-input. In efeect, Krashen is refuting the cherished belief of many teachers that languages are learned by practicing them.

2) Merrill Swain has argued that comprehensible output also plays in L2 acquisition. She suggests a number of specific ways in which learners can learn from their own output: 

First, output can serve a consciousness – raising function by helping learners to notice gaps in their interlanguages.

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Second, output helps learners to test hypotheses.

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Third, learners sometimes talk about their own output, identifying problems with it and discussing ways in which they can be put right.

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION 1.

In general, first languge acquisition is defined as a process of children in acquiring and learning his native languge for the first time from he was born. First language acquisition includes four main stages in the process of its occurence: Pre-speeech, babbling stage, one word stage, and combining word stage, which in outline, the characteristics and traits of first language acquisition are: It is an instinct; It is very rapid; It is very complete; And it does not require instruction.

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