Lesson 1

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Lesson 1, first language acquisition 
Ao final desta aula, você será capaz de:
1. Reconhecer as diferentes etapas do processo de aquisição de língua materna;
2. perceber as principais abordagens que buscam explicar esse processo;
3. analisar as principais abordagens que buscam explicar o processo de aquisição de língua estrangeira.
Introdução
Nesta aula vamos estudar as diferentes etapas do processo de aquisição de língua materna, bem como as principais abordagens que buscam explicar como essa aquisição acontece.
How do We Learn our Mother Tongue?
Even though people do not usually take time to think about it, learning how to communicate in a language is an amazing accomplishment. We might not think about it consciously, but we do share in the pride and happiness of parents when their babies utter their first words. How do they do it? How can they learn not only words, but whole sentences that make sense? How do they develop this knowledge?          
This is the topic of our first lesson.
First Language
Our first language is the language we learn from birth. It’s also known as native language, mother tongue or simply L1. If a child learns more than one language at the same time, this child will have two native languages and will be called bilingual.
According to Lightbown & Spada (1999):
“One remarkable thing about first language acquisition is the high degree of similarity which we see in the early language of children all over the world. The earliest vocalizations are simply the involuntary crying that babies do when they are hungry or uncomfortable. Soon, however, we hear the cooing and gurgling sounds of contented babies, lying in their beds looking at bright shapes and colors around them.”[1: to speak in a soft, gentle, or loving way.][2: (of babies) to make a happy sound with the back of the throat]
These authors go a little further and say that as children progress in their language learning, there are predictable developmental sequences or stages they follow, some of which are related to their cognitive development. Let’s talk a little bit about these patterns now.
Developmental sequences
Developmental sequences might be related to children’s cognitive development or, on the other hand, they might be “determined more by the gradual mastery of the linguistic elements for expressing ideas which have been present in children’s cognitive understanding for a long time” (LIGHTBOWN & SPADA, 1999).
In order to help you understand it better, consider the use of the temporal adverbs:
(yesterday, tomorrow, last month, the following day, etc.…)
Children will only be able to use these adverbs adequately when they develop an appropriate understanding of time, that is, when they develop cognitively.
Grammatical Morphemes
According to some studies (Brown, 1973;  de Villiers, Peter & Jill, 1973), there is a certain order of morpheme acquisition in English. The researchers who carried out the study claim that the order of acquisition is the same, but the rate of acquisition usually differ from child to child.
Next is part of list of the grammatical morphemes studied:
present progressive - ing (Mommy running)
plural - s (two books)
irregular past forms (Baby went)
possessive 's (daddy’s hat)
copula (Annie is a nice girl)[3: /ˈkɑː.pjə.lə/ specialized a type of verb, of which the most common is "be", that joins the subject of the verb with a complement: In the sentence "You smell nice", "smell" is a copula.]
articles ‘the’ and ‘a’
regular past - ed (She walked)
third person singular simple present - s (She runs)
auxiliary ‘be’ (He is coming)
The researchers argue that by the time children master the morphemes at the bottom of the list, they can accurately use the ones on the top. However, the opposite is not true.
Negation
According to Bloom & Lahey (1978), when it comes to negation, children learn its functions before they learn the grammatical rules to express them. That means they learn to deny, reject, disagree with, and refuse something and only after that they learn how to do it accurately.
The researchers observed the following four stages of development:
Stage 1 - The use of the word ‘no’, either alone or as the first word in an utterance.
e.g. No go. No cookie. No comb hair.
Stage 2 - Subject is included and the negative is placed just before the verb.
e.g. Daddy no comb hair.
Stage 3 - Negative words such as ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t’ are included. At this point, the negative words do not vary these forms for different persons or tenses yet.
e.g. I can’t do it. He don’t want it.
Stage 4 - Attachment of the negative element to the correct form of the auxiliary and modal verbs.
e.g. You didn’t have supper. She doesn’t want it. 
At this point, children may still have difficulty with negatives:
e.g. I don’t have no more candies.
Negation
When it comes to question formation, according to Bloom and Lahey (1978) there is also a predictable sequence of acquisition. The researchers claim that children follow six stages in learning how to form questions in English:
Stage 1 - The use of single words or simple two or three-word sentences with rising intonation.
e.g. Cookie? Mommy book?
Stage 2 - Use of the word order of declarative sentences. e.g You like this? I have some? With wh-questions, the question word is placed at the beginning.
e.g. Why you catch it?
Stage 3 - Use of an auxiliary verb at the beginning of a sentence.
e.g. Is the teddy tired?
At this stage, they may overgeneralize and produce sentences like: Do I can have a cookie?
Stage 4 - Use of subject-auxiliary inversion.
e.g. Do you like ice cream?
At this point, they might not invert wh-questions and might produce sentences like: Where I can draw them?
Stage 5 - Combination of both operations.
e.g. Why can he go out?
Stage 6 - When wh-words appear in subordinate clauses or embedded questions, children might overgeneralize the inverted form.
e.g. I don’t know why can’t he go out.
According to the authors, by the age of four most English-speaking children are able to produce questions which are both grammatical and appropriate. However, they might slip back to an earlier stage once in a while.
You had an overview of the acquisition sequences for some grammatical morphemes, negatives and questions. As you could see researchers have considerable knowledge of children’s language development. However, when it comes to knowing how this development takes place, the answer is not so straightforward. 
This is the topic of our next section.
First Language Learning – Some Theoretical Approaches
Over the past decades, there have been three main theoretical approaches that attempt to explain the acquisition of a native language. They are:
 
- Behaviorism
- Innatism
- Interactionism
We are going to present each one of them briefly in this class and develop this discussion in class 2.
Behaviorism
Behaviorism is a psychological theory which was founded by J.B. Watson and supported by Leonard Bloomfield and J.F Skinner, among others. According to this theory, children learn their native language mainly through the imitation of people around them, in a process that involves rewards and practice.
In other words, this theory states that whenever a child is successful in imitating the sounds or speech patterns of his/her mother tongue, he/she is praised by people around and gets lots of affection from them, that is, the child’s behavior is positively reinforced. This would motivate the child to continue with the behavior that evoked so much positive attention to him/her.
Traditional behaviorists understood language as a ‘conditioned behavior’. Therefore, language learning would follow some steps:
 
Imitation → Repetition → Memorization 
→ Controlled drilling → Reinforcement.
Innatism
The innatist view, which was proposed by the American linguist Noam Chomsky, was a challenge to the established behaviorist theoriesof the time. It stated that language is an innate capacity, that is, children are born with a natural ability to learn a language.
                                           
Chomsky internalizes the concept of language and demonstrates how important it is to understand the human cognitive apparatus.
Interactionism
The interactionist position holds that language development results from the interaction between the linguistic environment and the child’s innate capacities.
In addition, interactionists believe that language acquisition is a process “similar to and influenced by the acquisition of other kinds of skill and knowledge, rather than as something which is largely independent of the child’s experience and cognitive development” (Lightbown and Spada, 1999).
We have just had an overview of the three main theoretical approaches to language learning. In our next lesson we are going to discuss these theories further.
Proposed activity
Now it’s time to practice a little about what you study in this class. For this, discuss the following statement:
“A small child simply uses language. He does not learn formal grammar. You don’t tell him about verbs and nouns. Yet he learns the language perfectly.” (Brown, 1994)
Nesta aula, você:
Reconheceu as diferentes etapas do processo de aquisição de língua materna;
Aprendeu sobre as principais abordagens que buscam explicar esse processo;
Conheceu as principais abordagens que buscam explicar o processo de aquisição de língua estrangeira.
Próxima Aula
Na próxima aula, você vai estudar:
Fazer uma revisão do conteúdo das aulas anteriores