Practical 7 - Second Language Acquisition: Balari Oriana - Martínez Rocío

1. PRACTICE II, DIDACTICS OF ELT. Prof. ADJUNTO REGULAR Estela N. Braun.
Teacher Assistants: Prof. Vanesa Cabral and Prof. Johana Herran.
PRACTICAL 7: Module II
Young children acquiring/learning languages
STUDENTS’ NAMES: ​Balari Oriana, Martínez Rocío
1. How can principles of SLA help teachers.
Your beliefs about how children learn languages will strongly influence how you
teach them. If you want to be a good teacher, you need to be well-informed about
the physical, emotional, conceptual and educational characteristics of children.
Principles of second language acquisition help teachers since they have come up
with useful information that can be taken into account when standing in front of
diverse classrooms, each of them with students of different ages, different learning
techniques, and going through different cognitive stages or processes.
2. Explain the Critical Age Period Hypothesis.
Until the age of 9, our brain has the 2 hemispheres together and their functions are
not clearly divided and specialized. Once we reach that age, lateralization happens
(both hemispheres separate and each of them fulfills specific tasks) and it leads to a
loss of brain plasticity. This process makes the acquisition of a new language (L2)
more difficult, since our brains tend to compare the target language with the mother
tongue; or if we have never been exposed to any human language until that age, it is
likely that we never acquire an L1.
3. What is telegraphic speech? Provide examples.
Speech is called telegraphic when articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs (function
words, in general) are left out. The thing is that even though only content words are
used, the word order reflects syntactic awareness. That is to say, a two-year-old kid
may not use auxiliary verbs in his/her utterances, but his/her phrases will show that
he/she perfectly understands the language in use (which word should be placed first

2. and which one later in order to convey the correct meaning).
For example:
➔ Kiss baby (represents an imperative sentence: “go and kiss the baby”)
➔ Baby kiss (means either a kiss from a baby or that a baby kissed someone)
Children will perfectly know when to use each phrase or sentence because of their
understanding of the language.
4. What is the relevance of the order of acquisition of morphemes?
The order of acquisition of morphemes is really useful for teachers when they plan
the syllabus. Having this order in mind helps to know what to expect of learners,
what to teach first, and what takes more time to process.
5. Indicate and explain with examples the stages for Negation and Questions.
Stages in the development of ​negation​ in the acquisition of English:
★ Stage 1​:
Negation is expressed by the word ​no​.
➔ For example​: - ​No​ cookie.
- ​No​ comb hair.
★ Stage 2​:
Longer utterances. The subject of the sentence may be included.
➔ For example​: - ​Daddy no​ comb hair.
Sentences expressing rejection or prohibition often use ​don’t​.
➔ For example​: - ​Don’t​ touch that!
★ Stage 3​:
Forms of negative other than ​no appear, such as ​can’t ​and ​don’t​. These
sentences are more similar to the correct English pattern of attaching the negative
to the auxiliary or modal verb. But these forms do not vary for different persons or
tenses yet.
➔ For example​: - I ​can’t​ do it.
- ​He don’t​ want it.
★ Stage 4​:
Children begin to attach the negative element to the correct form of auxiliary
verbs.
➔ For example​: - You ​didn’t ​have supper.
- She ​doesn’t​ want it.
But they may still have difficulty with some other features related to negatives.

3. ➔ For example​: - I ​don’t​ have ​no​ more candies.
Developmental stages through which children learn to ask ​questions in
English:
★ Stage 1​:
Questions are single words or simple two- or three -word sentences with rising
intonation.
➔ For example​: - Cookie?
- Mummy book?
But they may also produce some correct questions because they have learned them
as chunks.
➔ For example​: - Where’s Daddy?
- What’s that?
★ Stage 2​:
Children use the word order of the declarative sentence, with rising intonation.
➔ For example​: - You like this?
- I have some?
Also, they continue to produce the correct chunk-learned forms.
★ Stage 3​:
Gradually, children notice that the structure of questions is different and begin to
produce questions that match the adult pattern.
➔ For example​: - ​Can​ I go?
- ​Are​ you happy?
This stage is called ​‘fronting’ because, from the child’s perspective, questions are
formed by putting something - a verb or a question word - at the ‘front’ of a
sentence, leaving the rest of the sentence in its statement form.
➔ For example​: - ​Is​ the teddy ​is​ tired?
- ​Do​ I ​can​ have a cookie?
- ​Why you don’t ​have one?
- ​Why you catched​ it?
★ Stage 4​:
Some questions are formed by subject-auxiliary inversion.The questions resemble
those of ​stage 3​, but there is more variety in the auxiliaries.
➔ For example​: - ​Are​ you going to play with me?
Children can even add ​do ​in questions in which there would be no auxiliary in the
declarative version.
➔ For example​: - ​Do​ dogs like ice cream?

4. We may find inversion in ​yes/no ​questions but not in ​wh​- questions. Children seem
able to use either inversion or a ​wh​-word, but not both - unless they are ​formulaic
units -.
★ Stage 5​:
Both ​wh- ​and ​yes/no ​questions are formed correctly.
➔ For example​: - Are these your boots?
- Why did you do that?
- Does Daddy have a box?
Negative questions may still be a bit too difficult.
➔ For example​: - ​Why did​ the teddy bear ​can’t​ go outside?
Even though performance in most questions is correct, when ​wh​-words appear in
subordinate clauses or embedded questions, children overgeneralize the inverted
form that would be correct for simple questions.
➔ For example​: - Ask him why can’t he go out.
★ Stage 6​:
Children are able to correctly form all question types.
There is also a predictable order in which ​wh​-words emerge (Bloom 1991).
1. What.
2. Where and who.
3. Why.
4. How and when.
6. What does “reconstructing language” mean?
Reconstructing language means gradually build new and more elaborate
constructions.
7. What does the use of recasting allow children to do?
Many times, during English classes, children answer or make comments
using their mother tongue. But in order to help children learn the new language, we,
as teachers, need to ​recast in English what they have said to us using their mother
tongue. Recasting does not only function by repeating what the children said in
his/her mother tongue in the target language, but also saying correctly a word after
the child has said it wrong. In this way, teachers do not tell the child that what he/she
said was wrong, but you provide him/her with the correct version. In fact, recasting is
a feature of caretaker talk that can help learners acquire and develop a new

5. language naturally.
8. What is the importance of motherese or caretaker speech? What are the
implications for ELT?
Motherese or caretaker speech is the act that mothers (in the L1) and
teachers (in both the L1 and the L2) perform to encourage babies or young children
to speak the target language. At first, they talk a lot more than children do, providing
them with a wide but simple range of vocabulary and grammatical structures. When
they do so, kids look at their adult models so as to make sense of what they are
saying. Later on, when they feel confident enough, they try to imitate them and
pronounce some of the words they have uttered. This is essential in ELT since the
teacher may represent the only instance in which the child can have English input.
Also, if he/she is able to create a secure and supportive environment in the
classroom that gives the child confidence to try out the language, he/she may help
the learner to acquire new language naturally.
9. Explain the cartoon images in terms of the theory read.
The cartoon images sum up several concepts we have been dealing with in
class. First of all, it clearly shows how children learn a language. First, he/she comes
up with general syntactic rules (mainly through morphemes) and tends to
overgeneralize them, i.e, they tend to use this type of rules even when it is not
correct to do so. The fact that such a young child is speaking in the past is not
coincidence, since this tense is one of the easiest for children to acquire. Finally, the
mother is recasting her daughter, i.e, she is not correcting her explicitly but repeating
what her child had said saying the word correctly. This is a joke since the little girl did
not understand what her mother was trying to do and got angry with her because she
thought she was trying to get credits for the drawing she had made.