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Theories of first language acquisition and second language acquisition
Language acquisition theories
Language acquisition theories
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I am a 23 year old, male, first generation Hmong-American descendent. Hmong is my native language. In this case study, I will explore Second Language Acquisition (SLA) key concepts through my personal testimony as a second language learner in America. Student’s History and Linguistic background in First language When I turned eight, I discovered that English was an essential tool in my life, and no longer resent from it. As a Hmong child to three siblings and a single mother, it is tradition for a male descent such as me to firmly hold onto my roots. After my parents were divorced, my family lived in poverty. My mother spoke in broken English, and she had trouble finding ways to meet our needs. We were very limited to education. My siblings …show more content…
I began showing interest in the English language because I wanted to make new friends at school. Metaphorically speaking, I believe that language is the key to unlock communication. Because of this intrinsic motivation, I started allowing the English language to soak in my brain. My acceptance in English began to show through the number of friends that I made at school. At the time of learning English, one of my biggest barriers was trying to comprehend whole sentences. I had an extremely difficult time understanding the connection between words when placed in a sentence. Communication was definitely a struggle that I faced in elementary school. I picked up meaning simply by listening to words that I was familiar with. I was very limited in English. The words I remembered using the most were, “yes,” “no,” “paper,” “pencil”, “broke,” “sharp,” “restroom”, “okay,” “don’t know,” and “go play.” I did not attempt to deliver full sentences unless I was assigned to read a passage from a …show more content…
She mentioned that children between the ages three and seven could acquire any language better than an adult. For a long time, I was convinced that the reason why I could not acquire English well enough was due to age barrier. However, this is just a theory, and it is called Critical Period Hypothesis. Based on the key concept Critical Period hypothesis, the only advantage between a child and an adult is the motivation to acquiring language. An adult would feel more pressure to quickly acquire a language versus a child who would feel less pressured to do so. The difference is the method of instruction by two different teachers teaching at two different approaches. Language can be acquired by using the basic principle of BICS - first listening and then imitating the language. Learning the accent of another language can be more difficult for adults to acquire because their mind is nearly reaching a maturity state, which the brain might become complacent or used to the accent of the first language. Therefore, it may be hard to acquire another accent as adult. The real advantage between the age differences is the ability for a child to pick up the accent of a language better than an adult, because a child spends most of their time listening to their nurturer. It may be more difficult for an adult to spend all their time listening to their teacher without investing
“Standard English was imposed on children of immigrant parents, then the children were separated from native English speakers, then the children were labeled “inferior” and “ignorant” (Hughes 70) because they could not speak Standard English. In addition to feeling inferior about their second language skills, these students also felt inadequate in regard to speaking their own mother tongues” (qtd in Kanae)
“By 2050, it is [predicted] that half of the world will be more or less proficient in [English].” (Gerdes 37). Being an Asian-American, specifically Hmong in the United States, there has been a rise in the usage of English rather than our native language Hmong among the new generation; those who were born in the United States. Many are not fluent in Hmong, without keeping the language, elders are unable to pass down their knowledge of the Hmong culture to their children.
The Hmong people, an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam and Laos, greatly value their culture and traditions. The film “The Split Horn: Life of a Hmong Shaman in America” documents the seventeen year journey of the Hmong Shaman, Paja Thao and his family from the mountains of Laos to the heartland of America. This film shows the struggle of Paja Thao to maintain their 5000 year-old shamanic traditions as his children embrace the American culture. Moreover, the film shows that one of the major problems refugees like Paja Thao and his family face upon their arrival to the United States is conflict with the American medical system. Despite the dominant biomedical model of health, the film “The Split Horn” shows that
Initially, when the refugees and their children first arrived in America, primarily California but also Minnesota and Wisconsin, the American educational system identified Hmong children as LEP and placed them in English as a Second Language classes. Very few schools offered academic programs to integrate Hmong students into the society of the school and those that do, have not had any flourishing success. Due to the resulting segregation, both socially and academically, the teaching methodology for these students suffered; become haphazard and improvised. During the initial years of integration, there were very few Hmong bilingual teachers. Hmong students were placed in classes based on an expectation that they would not go on to a higher education and that their ma...
The Hmong culture is firmly rooted in their spiritual belief of animism, ancestral worship and reincarnation. These beliefs connect them to their sense of health and well-being. They view illness as having either a natural or a spiritual cause. A spiritual cause results in a “loss of souls” or is an action or misdeed that may have offended an ancestor’s spirit (California Department of Health Services, 2004, Purnell, 2013, p. 317). The soul escapes the body and may not be able to find its way back home. The Hmong also believe that a combination of natural and supernatural cause’s results in illness, and spells or curses, violation of taboos, accidents, fright, and infectious disease are other causes for illness (Centers for Disease Control
There’s a long-standing argument that most people resort to when discussing whether or not children are better suited to acquire a language over adults. The “critical period hypothesis” argues, “that children are superior to adults in learning second languages because their brains are more flexible.” (McLaughlin 2) This argument is true to some extent, however, experimental research has found that adolescents and adults are able to acquire languages better based on their controlled environment. Children, on the other hand, are better able to grasp a better understanding of the pronunciation of languages compared to adults. (McLaughlin
The Hmong Culture of South Asia is a very interesting ethnic group. Between 300,000 to 600,000 Hmong live in Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. About 8 million more live in the southern provinces of China. Since the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Hmong refugees from Southeast Asia have settled in Australia, France, Canada, and the United States. The largest Hmong refugee community lives in the United States with a population of about 110,000. The U.S. Department of state has tried to spread Hmong refugees out across the country to reduce the impact on any one region. Because Hmong families tend to be large in numbers, the community grows rapidly.
Foua and Nao Kao believed that the reason a Hmong person would fall ill, was because a “dab” had stole their soul. Doctors in Merceds didn’t understand this concept and that is why Lee’s felt many Hmong patients didn’t have good health outcomes. I got the impression that many of the individuals involved in the care of Lia and her family, put up a wall before they even entered the situation. There was a blatant lack of communication and understanding about the Hmong values and beliefs, which lead to ineffective care for Lia. Both the Lees and the American doctors were doing what they believed was best. Unfortunately, the cultural barriers that were created between these two groups didn’t allow for many positive outcomes. Preconceived notions
Johnson and Newport used 46 native Chinese or Korean second language learners of English who were students and faculty members at an American university. The subjects were presented together because of their native languages dissimilarity to English and lack of difference in the results of two groups. The subjects' ages differentiate between 3 and 39, when they first arrived in the US and they had lived in the target language culture for between the age of 3 and 26. According to their age of arrival in the US, t...
AK is an ELL student in Mrs. Tobin’s fourth grade classroom. AK is nine years old. He was five years old and entering Kindergarten when his family moved to the United States of America from Macedonia. This means he’s been in the country for four years and he has received all of his formal schooling here in the United States. According to his teacher, AK’s parents are very involved in his education and they seem to be very intelligent, well-educated individuals. AK’s mother only speaks English to AK at home, but she has a very distinct accent, which does affect some of her pronunciation of English words. AK’s grandmother also live with him, and she only speaks Macedonian. This allows AK to maintain his native language, while still learning and using the English language at home. I believe his family has found a balance between the languages used in his home that will greatly benefit AK in the long run.
Children acquire their native language, which fall within a wide range of languages, at a very early stage of development. During development, a child begins to show signs of verbal communication, usually starting out as cooing, babbling, recognizable words, and later two or more word sentences. This occurrence is also seen in the development of second languages. Second language acquisition is the study of how second languages are typically developed. The process of acquiring our native language is very similar and influential to the development of a second language. The development of a second language has become increasingly popular throughout the world. Today more people are growing up with appropriate resources to acquire a second language, which can be seen from the vast numbers of bilingual individuals.
The critical period hypothesis has long been under investigation. The question here is simple: does it really exist? And if it exists, to what extent does it affect second language proficiency? Many studies seem to have proven that the critical hypothesis exists because apparently no adult after puberty has been successful in achieving native-like proficiency. On the contrary, some believe that there is no reason for such hypothesis because some late learners have been able to attain a native-like fluency.
Wilder Penfield and Lamar Roberts first introduced the idea that there is a “critical period” for learning language in 1959. This critical period is a biologically determined period referring to a period of time when learning/acquiring a language is relatively easy and typically meets with a high degree of success. German linguist Eric Lenneberg further highlights Roberts and Penfield’s findings and postulated the Critical Period Hypothesis in 1967. According to the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), certain biological events related to language development can only happen in the critical period. During this time, the brain possesses a degree of flexibility (ability and ease of learning a language) and becomes lateralized (assignment of language functions becomes concrete – either in the left or right hemisphere) (Marinova-Todd, S; Marshall, D & Snow, C. 2000 9-10). This critical period lasts from childhood through the onset of puberty (usually at around 12 years of age). Once this period is over, it is more difficult to learn a language because language functions in the brain have become concrete. This hypothesis can be seen with the case of Genie, a woman who was isolated from human interaction and language up to the age of 13. By the time she was rescued, she was well after the critical period for language acquisition, and as such, she did not have a full command of the English language. Had she been rescued before the age of 13, she may have had more linguistic capability. However, this accounts for firs...
The hypotheses put primary importance on the comprehensible input (CI) that language learners are exposed to. Understanding spoken and written language input is seen as the only mechanism that results in the increase of underlying linguistic competence, and language output is not seen as having any effect on learners' ability. Furthermore, Krashen (1982) claimed that linguistic competence is only advanced when language is subconsciously acquired, and that conscious learning cannot be used as a source of spontaneous language production. Finally, learning is seen to be heavily dependent on the mood of the learner, with learning being impaired if the learner is under stress or does not want to learn the language (S. Krashen, 1978,
English as a foreign language is relatively an easy language to learn. It is simple and quick for most learners to reach intermediate level, as the basic grammatical structures are direct, and the vocabulary is simple and often has traces in students’ first languages and this is one of the reasons why English has become popular language and extended to be a common language among most countries all over the world. However, when students move to a higher level, it becomes quite difficult. Hinofotis and Baily (1980, pp. 124-125) notes that “up to a certain proficiency standard, the fault which most severely impairs the communication process in EFL/ESL learners is pronunciation”, not vocabulary or grammar.