First Language Acquisition (FLA) and Literacy Development PDF

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISATION (FLA) AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT Learning Objectives: The students should be able to: Define first language, mother tongue, heritage language, and dialect. Explain how children acquire a language and the process involved in their literacy development. Compare t...

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISATION (FLA) AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT Learning Objectives: The students should be able to: Define first language, mother tongue, heritage language, and dialect. Explain how children acquire a language and the process involved in their literacy development. Compare the different theories of language and literacy development. Critique the MTB-MLE curriculum framework in the Philippines Children learn language from their primary caregiver, who is sometimes referred to as "motherese" in 1970s. Language acquisition is not biological. This is the term used to describe language adaptations made by adults to enhance children interaction and learning possibilities. The utterances are considerably simplified, especially with respect to their grammar and meaning. There are several features whose purpose seems to be clarified. Extra information is provided that would be considered unnecessary when talking to an adult. There is also an expressive, or affective element in motherese, shown by the use of special words or sounds. Diminutive or reduplicative words like wee-wee, pee- pee, ma-ma are common OPENING VOCABULARY What is a first language? The language first acquired as a child like mother tongue and native tongue, or preferred language in a multilingual situation. What is a second language? It is a non-native language that has an official role in a country. In the Philippines, English and Filipino are the two official languages of commerce and industry as stipulated in the 1987 Philippine Constitution. What is a foreign language? It is a non-native language that has no official status in the country. Spanish used to be a second language in the Philippines in 60s and 70s but lost official status and became a foreign language. This means that Spanish is no longer officially spoken in the country nor mandated to be taught in the elementary and secondary schools just like French, German, etc.  What is heritage language? Languages other than the dominant language are referred to as language identities. Examples of this include the United States and the Philippines, where immigrants speak minority languages but English is the dominant language. A heritage language is a minority language (either immigrant or indigenous) learned by its speakers at home as children, but often not fully developed due to insufficient input from the social environment What is a dialect? A dialect is a variation of a language that reflects a user's social or regional background through vocabulary and grammar. Dialects can understand one other; Tagalong is one example. Different dialect speakers can still comprehend one another despite differences in word choice, accent, and pronunciation. A Batangueño will say "ay sadya" while a Bulacaño will say "ay totoo" but will still understand each other. A Caviteño will say "Parini ka ngang bat aka!" while a Manileño will say "Halike nga ditong bat aka!" Despite the predictable stages of mental, physical, and socioemotional development, language teachers must have a broad understanding of a variety of theories and methodologies in order to establish a responsive curriculum appropriate for all generations. This is because language acquisition has changed over time. To better understand the complexity of language acquisition, let us understand the different theories that influenced it. BEHAVIORIST PERSPECTIVE Behaviorism, a perspective on learning and language acquisition, suggests that language can be taught through repetition, imitation, and habituation. Influenced by B.F. Skinner's Operant Conditioning Theory and Edward Thorndike's Connectionism Theory. B.F. Skinner, the father of Operant Conditioning, argues that studying internal systems is unproductive and that understanding behavior involves examining the causes and consequences of actions. He posits that children learn language through imitation, based on reinforcement principles. Children acquire up language by imitating and enhancing adult responses. Positive reinforcement is given for accurate speech, emphasizing the value of clarity in communication. While positive reward, such as a smile or kiss, strengthens inaccurate words, negative reinforcement decreases language development. For example, when the child says 'ma-ma' and the mother smiles and gives her a kiss, the child will find this outcome rewarding, reinforcing the child's language development. According to the behaviorist points of view, language is a formal pattern that is consistent and is formed by repeated practice and imitation, much like habituation. It also informed the military method of audio-lingual instruction, which was created to assist forces in learning the languages of their allies in World War II. It has three basic parts. 1. Presentation through oral and dialogue form with little explanation. Errors are immediately corrected, accuracy emphasized, accurate repetition and memorization of the dialogue is the goal of this stage. 2. Practice through patterned drills to help learners master the structure of the language and fluency overly emphasized 3. Application through the use of the memorized structures in different contexts  The imitation theory, which claims that outside influences shape young learners' language skills, is unable to account for why children still make mistakes when they are exposed to language under supervision. Constructivists have offered an alternate view on learning and language acquisition as a result of the theory's inability to explain the connection between cognition and language development. CONSTRUCTIVIST PERSPECTIVE Famous cognitivists Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky have different opinions about how children learn and generate meaning. They contend that children are built to learn and acquire language through various developmental phases, unlike behaviorists who see children as empty vessels (Tabula Rasa). COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTIVISM Jean Piaget's cognitive-developmental theory suggests that children are active learners who construct meaning from their environment. He explains the interconnectedness of knowledge and language acquisition through qualitative changes in their mental processes as they develop. Piaget views children as constructing knowledge through four developmental stages. The sensorimotor stage, from birth to language acquisition, involves children actively understanding the world through physical interaction with their senses. This development, known as object permanence, allows children to create mental pictures of objects they perceive from the environment, demonstrating that they are separate from the environment and continue to exist.  The preoperational stage of childhood, starting around age two and lasting up to seven years, is characterized by children's egocentricity and difficulty understanding concrete logic. Knowledge development and language acquisition are primarily centered on symbolic play, where children use objects to represent others. This stage progresses to symbolic function, where children can mentally understand, represent, remember, and picture objects without seeing them. At the end of this stage, children acquire intuitive thinking, a desire to know everything, and curiosity about the world. However, they still struggle with organizing their thoughts and utterances. Jean Piaget's cognitive-developmental theory suggests that children are active learners who construct meaning from their environment through four developmental stages. The first stage, the sensorimotor stage, begins from birth and continues until language acquisition. During this stage, children actively construct meaning through physical interaction with their environment, forming mental pictures of objects they perceive. The second stage, the preoperational stage, begins at age two and continues up to seven years. Children still struggle with concrete logic and egocentrism, but develop intuitive thinking through symbolic play. They eventually acquire intuitive thinking and become curious about the world around them. The third stage, the concrete operational stage, occurs from age seven to 12 years (preadolescence), where children begin to acquire concrete logical thinking like inductive reasoning. They solve problems logically and language acquisition moves to social matters, reshaping their sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility. The final stage, the formal operational stage, extends from adolescence to adulthood, where knowledge development is demonstrated through logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts. Children learn to use language abstractly without relying on concrete representation. Constructivist's perspective of language acquisitions generally focuses on brain development. Hunt (1965) and Schickedanz (1993) provide a summary of Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development and how children construct knowledge and acquire language.  The relationship between thought and language acquisition is explained by constructivist theory, which holds that children get better at learning and using language to express ideas as they grow in complexity. But this point of view ignores the reality that not every person on earth reaches formal operational levels. SOCIOCULTURAL CONSTRUCTIVISM Jean Piaget's theory of language acquisition focuses on children's logical thinking changes through four stages, while Vygotsky's perspective emphasizes the role of culture and social interactions in children's development of thinking. Vygotsky argues that children's speech is a significant tool in their thinking development. Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural model of human development, known as social or cooperative learning, emphasizes the importance of private speech in turning shared knowledge into personal knowledge. He suggests that children who use private speech more effectively learn complex tasks than others. Vygotsky's theory suggests that cognitive development and the ability to control one's actions require mastery of cultural communication systems and learning to use these systems to regulate thought processes. He also emphasizes the sociocultural nature of learning, stating that every individual has a zone of proximal development (ZPD), the gap between actual ability (AA) and potential ability (PA). Without a scaffold, children may struggle to acquire important vocabulary and interact with others, hindering their development. Vygotsky's theory is a significant contribution to understanding human development and learning. Vygotsky's social learning theory emphasizes scaffolding, where competent peers or adults provide assistance to children during early stages of learning. This support gradually diminishes as children take on more responsibility. Vygotsky believed that higher mental functioning often exists in conversation and collaboration among individuals before within them. To support children's language acquisition and development, Slavin (1997) suggests setting cooperative learning arrangements among groups of students with different abilities, planning cooperative learning activities, emphasizing scaffolding, planning instruction for upper levels of the zone of proximal development, and providing hints and prompts at different levels to scaffold learning at varying levels of complexity. THE CRITICAL PERIOD (CP) HYPOTHESIS Eric Lenneberg (1921-75) was a linguist and a neurologist who pioneered on innateness argued that the development of language in children can best be understood in the context of developmental biology (Lenneberg, 1969) that critical period in human maturation existed especially on language acquisition (Crystal, 1987). Lenneberg explained... My interests are in man as a biological species, and I believe that the study of language is relevant to these interests because language has the following six characteristics. 1. It is a form of behavior present in all cultures of the world. 2. In all cultures its onset is age correlated 3. There is only one acquisition strategy-it is the same for all babies everywhere in the world. 4. It is based intrinsically upon the same formal operating characteristics whatever its outward form. 5. Throughout man's recorded history these operating characteristics have been constant 6. It is a form of behavior that may be impaired specifically by circumscribed brain lesions which may leave other mental and motor skills relatively unaffected. Lenneberg (1969) argued that human behavior with six characteristics may have a specific biological foundation. Language development is a result of brain maturation, with the hemispheres being equipotential at birth and language gradually becoming lateralized in the left hemisphere. This process begins at around 2 and ends at puberty, when the brain is fully developed and lateralization is complete. Language acquisition typically occurs in infancy and early childhood, with a critical or sensitive period affecting learning. Critical periods in most behavioral domains involve gradual declines in learning, with some individual variation in mature organisms. It is not surprising that a critical period for language in humans would show some continuing ability to learn, with individual variation, during adulthood. INNATENESS Noam Chomsky, a renowned linguist, criticized behaviorists' view of children's language acquisition. He proposed a generative account of language, arguing that children possess "innateness" to acquire language through exposure to adult speech, which he called the child's language acquisition device (LAD). INPUT LAD or Universal Grammar OUTPUT General Primary Language Grammatical Linguistic Data Child’s Speech Learning Knowledge (Adult Speech) Principles Crystal proposed the Universal Grammar theory, which suggests innate biological grammatical categories facilitate language development in children and adult processing. Children use their LAD to understand adult speech and construct sentences through trial and error. This theory explains why children acquire language quickly, but it doesn't account for other input, such as adult speech, which also forms generalizations. INTERACTIONISTS' PERSPECTIVE Bandura's Social Learning Theory (SLT) suggests that children learn from others through observation, imitation, and modeling. This theory bridges the gap between behaviorist and constructivist perspectives on learning and language acquisition. Interactionists argue that children need more than an innate LAD to create universal grammar from primary linguistic inputs. They need language acquisition support systems like families, community, technology, and print and non-print materials to help them acquire the language. Bandura's analysis of observational learning involves four phases: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivational.  ATTENTION RETENTION REPRODUCTION MOTIVATION PHASE PHASE PHASE PHASE The observational learning phase During the Once teachers and The final stage in involves paying reproduction phase, attention to a adults have learners attempt to the observational model, influencing learners' replicate the model's learning process is children's attention attention, it is behavior. In the motivation. to TV commercials time to model the classroom this takes Children will and pop culture. behavior they the form of an imitate a model Teachers and adults want students to assessment of because they must understand replicate and then learners' learning. In believe that doing children's interests give learners a homes, this is when so will increase to effectively children act out the chance to practice their own chances capture their behavior as if it is attention and or rehearse. their own. to be reinforced. engage them. Bandura's SLT focuses on two types of learning: vicarious learning and self-regulated learning. Vicarious learning involves children learning from others' reinforced behaviors, while self-regulated learning involves children evaluating their own behavior and reinforcing or punishing themselves. Self- regulated learners are effective because they analyze tasks, set goals, use strategies, and monitor progress. Teachers can support self-regulation by focusing on cognitive processes and explicit teaching methods. 1. SUPPORT STUDENTS TO ANALYZE TASKS AND TO SET APPROPRIATE GOALS. Discuss the importance of analyzing tasks as a first step in learning (Butler, 1995). Lay out requirements clearly and discuss criteria for task completion. Confirm students understandings of tasks (in class discussions, through learning logs). Emphasize learning objectives rather than the pursuit of grades. 2. EXPLICITLY SUPPORT STUDENTS' USE OF EFFECTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES. Talk through the process of task completion with students. Teach students effective learning strategies in the context of meaningful tasks. Involve students in discussions about the strategies they used to learn and about the relative merits of different strategies (Borowski, Estrada, Milstead, & Hale, 1989). 3. SUPPORT STUDENTS' MONITORING Support students' efforts to identify clear criteria for assessing their own performance Help students to make judgments about the quality of their own performance. Encourage students to reflect on their learning, to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies they used, and to modify learning approaches, if necessary.