Instituto Superior Josefina Contte

Profesorado de Ingls
Didctica Especial 1
Mayo de 2014

SEQUENCE OF FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND

LEARNING VIEWS
By Elisa Amelia Gallino Yanzi

Understanding how people acquire and learn their mother tongue and the
foreign language helps teachers in the foreign language classroom. Explanations have
changed much in the last 60 years. The most important and influential views have
come from different schools of psychology: behaviourists, innatists, interactionists,
and others. All of them have produced accurate but partial explanations of how people
acquire and learn their mother tongue and foreign languages.

BEHAVIOURIST VIEW. Skinner (1957)

According to behaviourists, language is formed by vocabulary and grammar. All
learning, whether verbal or non verbal, takes place through a habit formation process:
learners receive language input from their environment and positive reinforcement for
their correct repetitions and imitations and thus habits are formed. Behaviourism
emphasizes repetition in the form of drills, accuracy and the avoidance of errors.
Nowadays, linguists recognize that imitation and practice are important
stages in the acquisition and learning of a foreign language but just at the starting
level. Behaviourism could not explain childrens creative use of language: the
acquisition of complex grammatical structures and lexical relationships.
Methods:
1. Audio-lingual
2. PPP: Presentation, Practice and Production

INNATIST or NATIVIST VIEWS. Chomsky 1959

Children are born with the special ability to discover themselves the
underlying rules of a language system, that ability is called Universal Grammar (UG) 1.
For Chomsky, language acquisition is very similar to the development of walking:

Chomsky, 1959
1

Instituto Superior Josefina Contte

Profesorado de Ingls
Didctica Especial 1
Mayo de 2014

SEQUENCE OF FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND

LEARNING VIEWS
By Elisa Amelia Gallino Yanzi
children will walk when they are mature enough to do so, provided reasonable
freedom is given. Innatism was developed as a reaction to behaviourism.
Innatists state language is formed by vocabulary, grammar and FUNCTION.
Innatist view was another step in the right direction towards the description
of how languages are acquired. But they omitted considering the importance of
communication with real people in real time. Social interactionists criticized
Chomskys emphasis on the structures of language because other more personal and
social aspects of language use were not taken into account.

Creative Construction Hypothesis. Stephen Krashen (1982)

Chomsky focused his research work on the learning of the mother tongue.
Stephen Krashen used innatist theories to explain how foreign languages are learned
and developed the CREATIVE CONSTRUCTION HYPOTHESIS.
The Creative Construction Hypothesis states that learners are thought to create
mental representations or pictures of the language being learned.
They are five hypotheses:
1.

The acquisition-learning hypothesis: adults foreign language learners

acquire the language when they engage in meaningful interactions in
second language in much the same way children acquire their mother
tongue, without paying attention to form. It has to do with fluency and
the communication of meaning. They learn the language by means of
a conscious process of study: attention to form and correction of
mistakes. It has to do with accuracy.

2.

The monitor hypothesis: the acquired language system is responsible for

the intuitive use of language, while the learned system acts as a
monitor. It provides the models necessary for the mind to contrast the
produced language with the correct model already acquired or learned
and decide on the accuracy of the production.

Instituto Superior Josefina Contte

Profesorado de Ingls
Didctica Especial 1
Mayo de 2014

SEQUENCE OF FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND

LEARNING VIEWS
By Elisa Amelia Gallino Yanzi
3.

The natural order hypothesis: language rules are acquired in a

predictable sequence. Certain grammatical structures are acquired
before others in first language acquisition and there is a similar natural
order in SLA:

-ing -> Aux ->Irregular ->Regular Past

Plural -> article -> past - 3rd Sing.
4.

The comprehensible input hypothesis: languages are acquired through

comprehensible input. If the input contains forms and structures just
beyond the learners previous language, acquisition and learning will
occur: L+1.

5.

The affective filter hypothesis: languages are acquired in relaxed

supportive atmosphere. Tense atmospheres full of anger, anxiety or
boredom stop the acquisition process.

Methods:
1. Communicative Language Teaching:
2. Task-Based Learning:
3. The Natural Approach:

HUMANISTIC APPROACH. Maslow (1968)

Our society is becoming more and more aware of the need of developing the
cognitive and the affective areas of our students and of the important role of the
school for promoting good human relationships and cognitive growth in a supportive
atmosphere.
Humanistic education also supports the idea that learning is directly influenced
by how learners feel about themselves: the better students feel about themselves and

Instituto Superior Josefina Contte

Profesorado de Ingls
Didctica Especial 1
Mayo de 2014

SEQUENCE OF FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND

LEARNING VIEWS
By Elisa Amelia Gallino Yanzi
others, the more likely they are to achieve. Cecil Patterson suggested that the purpose
of education should be developing self-actualizing persons: human beings functioning

at their fullest capacity that are responsible and who understand and respect others
and themselves.
What about learning English? If students learning a foreign language are
engaged in developing personal and social values, a deep knowledge of their way of
being and positive feelings about themselves and their peers, the learning of a foreign
language will become meaningful and a positive road towards self-actualization.
Maslow (1968), a humanistic psychologist, considered the satisfaction of
psychological needs of vital importance for the learning process. Those needs were
organized in a pyramid so as to make the rank of priorities evident:
1.- Deficiency (or maintenance) needs: biological or psychological ones.
2.- Being (or growth) needs: fulfilment of individual potential development.

Instituto Superior Josefina Contte

Profesorado de Ingls
Didctica Especial 1
Mayo de 2014

SEQUENCE OF FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND

LEARNING VIEWS
By Elisa Amelia Gallino Yanzi

He also stated that life has to have some meaning and contain experiences of
joy to make it worth being lived.

Agreeing with Maslow, Robert Valett thought that humanistic programmes should
be built upon the assessment of students needs. Valett categorized childrens needs
in six areas:
1. Physical security: food, clothing, shelter, good health.
2. Love: attention, encouragement, praise, physical contact, warmth, support.
3. Creative expression: promoting sensory capacities, gaining pleasure in
expressing oneself creatively, exploring new ways of exploring oneself.
4. Cognitive mastery: achieving competence in certain basic skills.
5. Social competency: acceptance and interactions with peers, getting to know
and relate to peers better.

Instituto Superior Josefina Contte

Profesorado de Ingls
Didctica Especial 1
Mayo de 2014

SEQUENCE OF FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND

LEARNING VIEWS
By Elisa Amelia Gallino Yanzi
6. Self- worth: strengths stressed and weaknesses played down.

Valett thought that, in order to be self- worth, all the other needs should be
satisfied.
Carl Rogers (1969), a therapist who shared and contributed to humanistic
principles stated that human beings have a natural potential for learning. That
potential will develop when the subject matter is relevant to the learners needs and
interests and when it involves active participation of those learners.
The humanist teacher is a facilitator that favour participatory and discovery
methods rather than learning parrot-fashion everything the teacher says. The
humanistic teacher is concerned with both, the child's academic and affective (or
emotional) needs.

Second language educator GERTRUDE MOSKOWITZ (1978) stated that the key
objective of a humanistic second language activity is to help build rapport,
cohesiveness and caring to help students to be themselves, to accept themselves
and to be proud of themselves
Learning tips:
1. Students need to cooperate and rely on one another in order to be successful.
2. Teachers must constantly guide students towards cooperation because that
takes time and need training in a confident supportive atmosphere.
3. Cooperative learning implies empathy, acceptance and tolerance for others.
4. Constructive nonjudgmental feedback is essential.
5. Students should share power in deciding on instructional matters.
6. The development of collaborative skills should be combined with the
development of language skills.

Gertrude Moskowitz wrote an excellent book where she put theory into action.

Instituto Superior Josefina Contte

Profesorado de Ingls
Didctica Especial 1
Mayo de 2014

SEQUENCE OF FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND

LEARNING VIEWS
By Elisa Amelia Gallino Yanzi
Methods
1- Total Physical Response:

SOCIAL-INTERACTIONIST VIEWS. Bruner 1983

In the 1970s and 1980s developmental psychologists emphasized the

importance of social factors in the acquisition or learning of a foreign language.
Language develops out of an interaction between the linguistic environment and the
childrens innate capacities for producing language. The complexity of the language
adults use with children is modified: slow speaking, with a higher pitch, more varied
intonation, shorter and simpler sentence patterns, frequent repetition and paraphrase.
The topics of conversation are often reduced to the childs immediate environment,
the here and now. When children make grammar mistakes, adults usually repeat the
content of a child utterance, but they do so with a grammatically correct sentence.
To the interactionists, what is important is the conversational give-and-take in
which the adult intuitively responds to the clues the child provides as to the level of
language he or she is capable of processing. They have demonstrated that the innate
device supported by Chomsky, needed the help of an adult in order to function and
called this help the Language Acquisition Support System or LASS. Bruner said there
needed to be an active interplay between an

innate tendency for active social

interaction and language learning (LAD) + a social support component provided by

other speakers, especially adults (LASS). The partner with whom the child interacts
provides a structure or framework which Bruner referred to as scaffolding.
Vygotsky (1930s ) thought that the child is surrounded by a socio cultural
context that plays a great influence on their development: learning leads

Instituto Superior Josefina Contte

Profesorado de Ingls
Didctica Especial 1
Mayo de 2014

SEQUENCE OF FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND

LEARNING VIEWS
By Elisa Amelia Gallino Yanzi
development and that the semiotic mediation becomes the primary vehicle of human
cognitive growth.
Semiotic mediation means the use of symbols and signs, PRINCIPALLY
LANGUAGE, deriving from the socio-cultural environment that helps people
understand the world. He thought that learning plays a decisive role in the cognitive
development of individual human beings and on the development of culture and called
the theoretical construct that enables this process the zone of proximal development.

THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT. (Vygotsky 1978).

The zone of proximal development is a key concept in the Vygostkian theory; it
distinguishes between what a child can do on its own, according to its cognitive
development and what a child can do with the help of an adult or more capable peer.
In related concepts, Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) introduced the concept of
SCAFFOLDING, making an analogy with the building of an architectural structure. In the
same way, helpers remove the support given to students as the students move closer
to being able to do the task independently.
Vygotsky has emphasized the importance of the influence of more expert
people in the construction of the ZPD but nowadays, the influence among partners
with the same level of competence and understanding is considered as decisive in the
development of the learning process.
The concept that peers can help one another learn was supported by Johnson
who in 2002 called that effect POSITIVE INTERDEPENDANCE and originated the
COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE APPROACH TO LEARNING. This position serves/supports
student-centred perspectives on education.

Language acquisition can be considered a jigsaw which

parts are each of these views. They provide very useful
insights but partial explanations.
8

Instituto Superior Josefina Contte

Profesorado de Ingls
Didctica Especial 1
Mayo de 2014

SEQUENCE OF FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND

LEARNING VIEWS
By Elisa Amelia Gallino Yanzi