Universidade Federal do CearáCentro de Humanidades

Departamento de Letras EstrangeirasTeorias e Princípios de Aquisição de Segunda Língua

Aluna: Déborah Monnise Conrado

Questionnaire 1

Use Chapter 1 from Lightbown and Spada’s 2006 How Languages are Learned to answer the questions below.

1. What are Developmental Stages?

According to the text, they are related to children's cognitive development. The

discovery of language occurs into their first three years old, in which they pass

through some stages that are "cooing", "babbling", "telegraphing" and "word

and syntax".

2. What’s the first stage of acquisition of negation in English

At this stage, children usually use the word 'no' to express the negation. It can

be all alone or as the first word in the speech.

e.g: No. No cookie. No comb hair.

3. What are the latest wh-word questions to be acquired by children in English?

The wh-questions 'how' and 'when' are the latest to be acquired when it has a

better understanding of manner and time by the children.

4. What is acquired in pre-school and school years?

In pre-school years, children continue to learn vocabulary and develop

metalinguistic awareness. In addition, they are able to use language in a social

environment. Although, abilities acquired at the pre-school years expand and

grow, children in school years develop more sophisticated metalinguistic

awareness. Other point is the vocabulary growth that depends mainly how

much children read. Furthermore, children develop the acquisition of language

registers and learn how this can differs in a variety of 'forms'. For example, the

written language differs from the spoken language.

5. What is the basic premise (the explanation of how language is acquired) of

Behaviorism, Innatism, Interactionism and Connectionism?

Behaviorism: With regard to this theory, children acquire language by the

imitation and practice of sounds and patterns produced around them. However,

the reproducing of what they heard added to their environment will provide an

important role to achieve a successful communication.

Innatism: According to this perspective, the language acquisition is innate and it

is developed as well as other biological functions. For Chomsky, language

acquisition is very similar to the way that children learn to walk, for example.

Interactionism: Here, researchers believe that the language acquisition is

related to the ability children have to learn from experience. That is, it depends

of interactions with the people and object around them.

Connectionism: This theory can be explained by the ability that children have to

acquire links and connections between words and phrases and the situations in

which they occur. That is, they associate what they hear or see with the

words/phrases that represents them.

6. What are the main limitations with Behaviorism and Innatism?

Behaviorism does not provide a satisfactory explanation for the more complex

grammar acquired for the children. That is, the creation of new forms or the

uses of words cannot be explained just for the imitation and practice of what

they have heard from adults.

In case of Innatism, one limitation is the fact that complex syntax can be

discover by children innate mechanism. Other point is the hypothesis that

language is separate from other aspects of cognitive development.

7. What is the Critical Period Hypothesis? What is evidence in favor and against

it?

Critical Period Hypothesis proposes when a child are not exposed to language

in infancy and childhood will never acquired language if these deprivations go

on for too long. With regard to the text, it is difficult to find evidences for or

against it. However, it has a few natural experiments where children have been

isolated from language and, thus, the innatist perspective based on evidence

for a critical period.

8. What’s the difference between Simultaneous and Sequential Bilinguals?

Simultaneous Bilinguals refers to children who learn more than one language

from earliest childhood. Otherwise, Sequential Bilinguals are those who learn

another language later.

9. What’s Subtractive and Additive Bilingualism?

Proposed by Wallace Lambert (1987), Subtractive Bilingualism is related to the

loss of one language on the way to learning another that could bring negative

consequences for children relationships. Therefore, a possible solution for this

case is the Additive Bilingualism. That is, the maintenance of the home

language while the second language is being learned.