Chapter 1: The Concept of Language
In order to teach English to young learner, we must first understand the foundation on
how the language works.
Language is a complex system for creating meaning through socially shared
conventions (Halliday, 2006). In other words, we have decided together as a society
that whatever combination of sounds that comes out of our mouths are either
meaningful or not.
Sounds form words; and words form sentences.
The Four Cueing Systems
The organization of language is made possible through the four cueing systems
1. The phonological system (sound system of language)
2. The syntactic or structural system (arrangement of words in sentence)
3. The semantic system of language (meaning)
4. The pragmatic system of language (social and cultural use of language)
L1 and L2
L1 is the first language that a person acquires in their life. It is also known as the
mother tongue or native language. In most situations, the L1 is determined by the
person‟s surroundings. Therefore factors such as the language commonly used in the
surrounding environment and the parent‟s L1 will guide the person to follow the same
language. For example the L1 for South Koreans will most probably be Korean.
L2 on the other hand refers to the 2nd language of the person. This language is often
learned after the 1st language and it often depends on the environment as well. If it is
used widely; then it will become common enough among the individuals to be used as a
2nd language. In Malaysia, English is officially made as the 2nd language of the country.
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Language Acquisition
For the most part, the first language of an individual does not have to be learned
extensively through formal education. Instead it is acquired naturally from the
environment. Acquisition is a process of learning, developing and forming habits.
The stages in grammar acquisition
According to a study by Brown (1973), the grammar morphemes and structures are
acquired in the following order:
1. Present progressive –ing (running)
2. Plural –s (books)
3. Irregular past forms (went)
4. Possessive -„s (daddy„s hat)
5. Copula (am/is/are)
6. Articles (a/an/the)
7. Regular past –ed (walked)
8. Third person singular simple present –s (he runs) Auxiliary be„ (He is coming)
Theories of language acquisition
Behaviourist Theory: Say what I say
B.F. Skinner said that language is behaviour and just like any other behaviour, it is
learned. According to him language behaviour is the production of correct responses to
stimuli through reinforcement.
The quality and quantity of the language that the child hears, as well as the consistency
of the reinforcement offered by others in the environment, would shape the child„s
language behaviour.
In other words from the perspective of behaviourist, a child acquires a language
through behaviour reinforcement. These reinforcements can come from:
imitation (word-for-word repetition)
practice (repetitive manipulation of form)
feedback on success (positive reinforcement)
habit formation
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For example, by repeatedly saying the word “ma” and “pa” to a child we are in a way
enforcing the child to practice the word through imitation. Another example is when a
child says the word cat while pointing at one and the parents showing a happy reaction
to it. The positive reaction is seen as a reward which reinforces the behaviour.
According to B.F. Skinner a child will be able to learn and develop language better and
faster if there is a reward as the reinforcement to the learning process.
However, the behaviourist theory does not address the fact that children can learn and
create sentences without any imitation or practice. Let us say for example a child is
made aware of past tense forms; specifically regular verbs which end in –ed. The child
in an effort to refer to the past may add –ed to the end of every verb without any
practice.
Hence, behaviourism does not give credit to children‟s ability in picking out patterns and
then generalize or overgeneralize to new contexts. They are able to create new forms
or new words without extensive behaviour reinforcement.
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Nativist theory: It‟s all in your mind
Compared to behaviourism which suggests that children learn language through
behaviour reinforcement, nativist believes that human are biologically programmed to
gain knowledge. It was suggested by Chomsky that similar to other biological functions
such as breathing and blinking, children are biologically programmed for language.
Furthermore, it is believed that the environment makes only basic contribution. The
child discovers for themselves the language system from the exposure to natural
language. This theory comes from the fact that human is unique where we are the only
kind that is capable of studying language.
In addition, behaviourism believes that LAD plays an important role in children‟s
language learning and development. LAD is an imaginary black box that contains all the
principals which are universal to all human languages. Therefore with LAD, children only
need access to samples of a natural language, which serve as a “trigger” to activate the
device.
Simply put LAD means that the knowledge is there already in your mind but it requires
activation from structures of the language in the environment. For instance, once
exposed to basic grammar such as singular and plural, a child is able to apply this on all
of their language structure. LAD addresses the issue that was present with the
behaviourist theory of language learning in which a child is capable of producing
language and sentence structure without outside influence.
However, nativist theory emphasizes too much on the natural ability to learn language
without much consideration on the environment. Without external influence and
correction, a child may end up using wrong sentence structures which if not corrected
can lead to fossilization.
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Interactionist theory: Learning from inside out
Unlike behaviourism and nativism, this theory considers that language development is
impacted by both the environment as well as the natural learning ability of children. The
main contributor towards language learning is more from the environment, although it
is recognize that the human brain is a powerful learning mechanism.
Interactionist theory see language acquisition as similar and influenced by the
acquisition of other kinds of skill and knowledge, rather than something that is largely
independent of the child„s experience and cognitive development.
Language Development
The development of language among children all over the world is quite similar. The
stage in the development of the child‟s first language is predictable and related to their
cognitive development.
The stages of Language Development
1. Cooing
A child is able to produce the vocalization such as “gaga” or “woo”. They will also
respond to sound through smile and eye contact. At this stage they are developing
an increase control over their vocal chords.
2. Babbling
In this stage, a child is making more noise than usual and is able to produce bilabial
sounds such as “ma”, “pa” and “va”. The sounds are not meant as a response and
have no meaning because the child is simply experimenting. Hence, sometimes the
sound is produced spontaneously without any prompt. Although all babies babble,
they are influenced by the patterns, timing, intonation, consonant and vowels that
occur most frequently in their parent language.
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3. Holophrastic
A child is able to produce single words and answer every question simply.
Interestingly, a single word can represent a variety of different sentences. For
example, the word “susu” can mean that the baby wants milk; or they want to show
it to you; or they are asking where the milk is.
Furthermore the word no at this stage is actually meaningful to the child and they
are able to assign name to person, object and places.
4. Telegraphic stage
At around 2 years old, a child is able to express his or her feeling into minimum
words which are usually two to represent a whole sentence. At 30 months old the
child is starting to understand and acquire the rules of syntax which is they are able
to arrange words correctly.
Additionally, they can demonstrate the ability to build relations with two words
Semantic Relations Examples
Agent + Action Mama sit
Agent + Object Papa car
Action + Object Eat Mango
Action + Location Go kampong
Object + Location Cat floor
5. Later multiword stage
This occurs after three years old and the development is very rapid at this stage.
The child is no longer limited to just two words and is able to produce sentences of
various lengths and complexity.
In addition to this, the child will start to use more function words such as
determiner, preposition and conjunction. For instance they will now say “the cat”
instead of just “cat”
Other form of syntax emerges at this stage such as wh- questions and negative
sentences.
Teaching English for Young Learner
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Language Learning
As mentioned early on, languages are acquired naturally for most individual from their
surroundings. However the process can be accelerated by learning the language
through study or being taught.
In language learning, there are different kinds of knowledge that must be considered:
Receptive knowledge – to understand what is spoken / written
Memory – to recall when needed
Conceptual knowledge – to use it with the correct meaning
Phonological knowledge – to hear the word and to pronounce it acceptably on its
own and in phrases and sentences.
Grammatical knowledge – to use in a grammatically accurate way; to know
grammatical connections with other words
Collocation knowledge – to know which other words can be used with it
Orthographic knowledge – to spell it correctly
Pragmatic knowledge – to use it in the right situation
Connotation knowledge – to know its positive and negative associations; to know
how it is associated with related words
Metalinguistic knowledge – to know explicitly about the word. E.g: its grammatical
properties.
Language socialization framework
Observations from parent-child interaction show that there are pattern to language
learning and exposure in which parents tend to modify the language that they use with
their child.
This situation is called child-directed speech. The modifications to language include:
- Phonological modification: a slower rate of delivery, higher pitch, more varied
intonation
- Syntactical modification: shorter, simpler sentence patterns, frequent repetition,
and paraphrase.
- Limited conversation topics: e.g., the ‗here and now„ and topics related to the
child„s experiences
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Apart from these modifications, the conversational give and take and feedback play an
important role for children in learning the language. In essence, there must be
someone who responds to the child. Having someone who can have one on one
interaction and adjust the language to their level of comprehension is crucial in
language development.
Impersonal sources of language such as television or radio alone are not sufficient for
children to learn the structure of a particular language. Once children have acquired
some language, however, television can be a source of language and cultural
information.
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