Theories of First and Second

Language Acquisition

Education 453:10
 Four General Profiles of Students
 Balanced bilingual

 Monolingual/literate in native language

 Monolingual/preliterate in native language

 Limited bilingual
 Balanced Bilingual
 Maria is a tenth grader who was
born in Guatemala. She moved
to Toronto in second grade.
Before coming to Canada, she
was a good student and learned
to read and write in Spanish.
When she began school in
Canada, she was placed in a
bilingual classroom where she
received some native-language
support before transitioning into
English instruction….
 Balanced Bilingual
 Duplicating this experience is the goal of English
second language teaching
 Individuals who are balanced bilingual are
influenced by their environments and personal
motivation
 Their language competencies are constantly
evolving and interacting
 Their working vocabulary is twice as large as
monolingual individuals even when they begin
school. 1000 x 2
 Monolingual Literate in Native
Language
 Rahul is a recent immigrant in grade seven. He
has grade-level academic ability in his native
language but speaks very little English. Because
he has lived outside Canada for thirteen years,
certain cultural knowledge presents difficulties
for him. Rahul is quite shy and does not seek
help readily. He has excellent social and
academic language skills in his native language
and has studied English for a few years, but his
proficiency is limited.
 Monolingual Preliterate in Native
Language
 Mai’s family came from Vietnam. They do not
have a strong support system in Nova Scotia.
Mai is a third-grader who mainly speaks
Vietnamese. Mai is one of two ESL students in a
rural school in Sheet Harbour. She is a
nonreader in English and struggles with the
simplest words. Her spoken English is quite
limited when she interacts with students and
teachers in class. The members of her family
have not been able to provide literacy
experiences for her at home in either
language…
 Limited Bilingual
 Björg from Iceland (Hafnarfjörður) Icelandic is
his first language and Icelandic and English are
the languages he wants to improve upon and
learn.
“Halló My name is Björg .I´m turning 18 this
october. I realy wood like to talk to some one
that is learnig icelandic or English so pleas
contact me….
http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/Learn/Icela
ndic.asp
 Limited Bilingual
 Luisa is a friendly 15-year old who sits quietly in
class as if she understands everything. When
written assignments are given, she writes down
the assignment and begins work. Her writing,
however, is illegible, and her spelling is
extremely poor. Spanish is her first language,
although her family speaks a mix of English and
Spanish at home. Luisa can converse quite well
in both languages, but for some reason has not
made academic progress in either language.
 How Do We Teach Them?
Research has shown that students acquire
second language in stages in a similar
fashion to how they acquired their first
languages
(Krashen and Terrell, 1983)
 The Natural Approach
 Stephen Krashen’s theory of five stages
has influenced the entire field of ESL
teaching

 Students have more receptive ability than

expressive ability during early stages
 Stage 1: Preproduction
 Students are not ready to produce
language
 Teachers communicate with gestures and
actions (Total Physical Response – Asher,
1982) while students develop vocabulary
 Stage 2: Early Production
 Students speak in one or two words, short
phrases, and have a working vocabulary
of 1000 words; they can answer who,
what, where questions
 Teachers encourage students to build
receptive vocabulary and to produce
vocabulary they already understand
 Stage 3: Speech Emergence
 Students are ready for increased English
language development

 Teachers teach curriculum content using

native language support as necessary
 Stage 4: Intermediate Fluency
 Students have developed improved
conversational skills and increased academic
skills depending on their age and level of literacy
in a native language

 Teachers still provide native language support in

language arts because students’ ability to
understand and complete academic tasks in
English may lag behind
 Stage 5: Advanced Level
 Students continue to need to have their
English skills refined to further develop
their academic skills

 Teachers need to recognize gaps in

academic ability and provide students with
specific learning strategies
Iverson
 Considerations for ESL Teaching
 The importance of academic background
and school experience increases
exponentially with the age of the student

 Most teachers have a “theory” of first

language development that influences
their teaching
 Theory 1: Behaviorist
(B.F. Skinner)
 Language is learned through imitation and
habit formation; learning language is a
process that involves input, imitation, and
habit formation through repetition

 Children imitate the language they hear in

the language environment and receive
positive reinforcement
 Implications for ESL learning
 Second language learners learn to
pronounce the sounds and words in
English in the same way as they learned
to utter the sounds of their first language –
through imitation
 They may have difficulty recognizing and
producing some of the sounds in English
and have an accent (th, v, w, l, r)
 PROBLEM: embarrassed to speak
 Theory 2: Innatist
(Noam Chomsky)
 Children learn language because it is in
their nature to do so

 An innate predisposition for language

learning enables children to discover the
patterns or conventions of language based
on the basis of the language in their
environment
 Implications for ESL learning
 ESL learners listen to the English spoken
around them and subconsciously seek
patterns, test validity of the patterns by
reproducing them in their own speech, and
over an extended period, modify their
patterns in response to feedback

 PROBLEM: overgeneralization,
interlanguage patterns, fossilization
 Theory 3: Interactionist
(Lev Vygotsky, Krashen)
 Children’s language development results
from the interaction between the learner
and language environment, assisted by
innate cognitive processes
 Adults tend to address young children
using modified input; strong contextual
support with communication as the
purpose, scaffolding, zone of proximal
development (Vygotsky)
 Implications for ESL teaching
 ESL learners need interaction with proficient
speakers of English; they need modified or
comprehensible input to make sense of the
language (Krashen)
 Learners need background knowledge in the
subject area to relate to the context and the
language level of the lesson must not be too far
above the learner’s current level
 Learners then need to be given opportunities to
produce meaningful output and receive
feedback.
 Theories of Second Language
Acquisition
 Stephen Krashen’s 5 main hypotheses

 Jim Cummin’s contribution: an expert in

second language acquisition among
school-aged students
 Krashen 1: The Acquisition
Learning Hypothesis
 There is a distinction between second
language acquired through natural
communication and second language
learned formally
 Implicit idea: students learn best through
modeling and practice, not overt correction
by the teacher
 Krashen 2: Natural Order
Hypothesis
 Individuals learn a second language in a
predictable order
Krashen 3: Monitor Hypothesis
 Individual learners internalize the rules of
the second language and use these to
monitor their own errors before and after
language production.
 Krashen 5: Input Hypothesis
 Language learners progress from one
developmental stage to the next, so
teachers need to know/assess the level of
students’ functioning and respond
accordingly with a greater or lesser degree
of curriculum support
 Krashen 5: Affective Filter
 A positive affective (stress free) learning
environment will enhance language
learning
 Jim Cummins Contribution
(1986)
 The linguistic interdependence model:
cognitive-academic skills learned in the
native language will transfer to the new
language (English) and that such skills are
interdependent across languages
 Communicative Demands
 Communicative tasks: English listening,
speaking, reading and writing may be
easier or more difficult for ESL learners
depending on the task itself
 Cummin’s Conclusions
 Students with limited English skills often achieve
communicative competence more rapidly than
academic competence
 Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills
(BICS) are achieved within two years of
immersion in an English language environment
 Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency
(CALP) at age appropriate levels requires at
least five years
 Bilingual Education
 Bilingual education can accelerate
language acquisition and enhance
academic achievement because it is:
 The foundation for second language learning
 An important tool for learning
 An important component of personal and
cultural identity