The theories we have learned
There are three major approaches of first language acquisition---the behavioristic approaches, the nativist approaches and Functional approaches. there are two major models of second language acquisition----the monitor model and the universal grammar model.
一、 First is Behavioristic approaches.
Behavioristic approaches hold that children come to the world without any preconceived notions about world or about the language, and then they are shaped by their environment and slowly conditioned through various schedules of reinforcement. Behaviorism is a theory of psychology, which states that human and animal behavior should be studied in terms of physical process only.
There are three basic ideas about learning which are conditioning, habit formation, and the importance of ‘environment’.
Conditioning
Learning is seen as a question of developing connections between events. The process of developing connections is called conditioning. Operant conditions refers to conditioning in which the organism emits a response, or operant without necessarily observable stimuli; that operant is learned by reinforcement. According to skinner, verbal behavio , like other behavior, is controlled by its consequences. When consequences are rewarding, behavior is maintained and it increased in strength and frequency. If consequence are punishing, or there is a lack of reinforcement entirely, the behavior is weakened and extinguished.
Habit formation
Learning is a important process of habit formation. The behaviorists attached importance to physical event. Skinner divided habit formation into some parts to learn more easily. When the behavior to be learned was complex, it might be broken down into small parts, and each part can be taught at one time, until eventually the whole complex behavior is build up.
The importance of the ‘environment’
The ‘environment’ here is used in a very wide sense to refer to anything external to the organism, such as an event or a situation, or event another person. In behaviorism, the environment is very important.
1． How it produced?
The behaviorism developed in the early period of 20th century. There are four behaviorists who have made great contributions to it. They are Ivan Pavolov, Jone Watson, Edward Thorndike, and Burrhus Skinner.
His most known experiment with dos shows that some stimulus may elicit a desired response after many repetitions. A previous neutral stimulus has acquired a response that was originally elicited by another stimulus. This is called classical conditioning. He thought that learning process consisted of the formation of associations between stimuli and reflexive responses. Edward Thorndike built his theory on the work of Pavolov by extending it from extremely controlled laboratory situations to somewhat naturalistic situations involving learning through trail and error. This type of conditioning was called instrumental conditioning. John Watson is called the father of behaviorism, because he coined the term ‘behaviorism’. Watson adopted the conditional reflex principles of Pavlov and assigned greater importance to the utility of scientific methods and to the value of conditioning principles for the explanation for all learning. From many experimental observations of animals and child learning he concluded that the more frequently or recently a stimulus-response bond occurs, s-r connections are more likely to be established. Skinner is also a main representative of behavioristic approach. He published his behavior of organism in 1983 and made himself one of the leading behaviorists in USA. His well known experiment ‘skinner boxes’ is so famous. He brought up ‘operant conditioning’ which made behaviorism get one step forward.
2. What are the contributions they have done in language learning?
It led to theories of learning which explained how an external event caused a change in the behavior of an individual without using concepts of any kind of mental behavior.
3. Criticisms on behavioristic theory in language acquisition
Chomsky hold some ideas which opposite to behavioristic approach. He argued that human behavior is considerably more complex than animal behavior. Language behavior is so specific to humans that it could not be explained by animal behavior. There are some main criticisms as follows:
1. The behavioristic theory in language learning failed to explain the abstract nature of language as a system and viewed language learning only as acquiring concrete linguistic forms and structure. It overemphasized the importance of performance and totally ignored the acquisition of competence as the key to successful L1 acquisition.
2. It didn’t adequately account for children’s ability to acquire language and creative of language. In L1 language acquisition, children often create their own linguistic rules.
3. It failed to interpret the children’s acquisition of complexity of meaning and communicative functions of language.
4. What we can learn from it ?
According to behaviorists, language learning is seen as the formation of habits. Learning a language is like learning to type, to ride a bicycle or to carry out any of the other routines that we characterize as habits. In this view, human beings were exposed to numerous stimuli in their environment. In skinner’s view, language learner can only be studied through observation of the world around the language user, that is, through observation of external factors. One of the most important external factors is the language utterance that children used in the daily life frequently. If a child imitates the language of his environment to consider degree, imitation is a strong contributing factor in the language learning process.
二. Second theory is the Nativist approach.
The Nativist held fundamental assertion that language acquisition is innately determined, that human beings are born with an innate or internalized system that Chomsky stressed the active contribution of the child and minimized the importance of imitation and reinforcement of language. He assumed that LAD probably consisted of three elements---linguistic universals, a hypothesis-making device, and an evaluation procedure. According to Chomsky, learning consists not of forming habits but of acquiring rules. David Mcneill describe LAD as consisting of four innate linguistic properties: 1. the ability to distinguish speech sound from other sound in the environment. 2. the ability to organize linguistic events into classes which can later be refined.3. the knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system is possible and that other kind are not. 4. the ability to engage in constant evaluation of the developing linguistic system so as o construct the simplest possible system out of the linguistic data that are encountered.
Lenneberg emphasized the biological foundations for Chomsky’s innateness hypothesis. He proposed that language is ‘species-specific’ behavior are biologically determined. He suggested that children are born with a hierarchy of linguistic categories and the basic grammatical relations.
1. How it produced?
The failure of behavioristic views on first language acquisition caused researcher to choose generative theories on the other end of the theoretical continuum, and to look for clearer explanations of the mystery of language acquisition.
The clash of views in which Children learn language came to climax at the end of the 1950s with two publications, skinner’s verbal behavior and Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s book. The first issue Chomsky addressed is the creativity of language. According to Chomsky, children do not learn and reproduce a large set of sentences, but they routinely create new sentences that they have never learnt before. Children are able to master the complexity of abstractness of linguistic rules very quickly and efficiently. Chomsky claims that children have an innate faculty which guides them in their learning of language.
2. What are the contributions they have done in language learning?
Chomsky gives a number of reasons why this should be so. Among the most important of these reasons is the ease with which children acquire their mother tongue. He claims that it would be little short of a miracle if children learnt their language in the same way that they learn mathematics or how to ride a bicycle. This, he says, is because :
1. Children are exposed to very little correctly formed language. When people speak, they constantly interrupt themselves, change their minds, make slips of the tongue and so on. Yet children manage to learn their language all the same.
2. Children do not simply copy the language that they hear around them. They deduce rules from it, which they can then use to produce sentences that they have never heard before. They do not learn a repertoire of phrases and sayings, as the behaviourists believe, but a grammar that generates an infinity of new sentences.
3. Criticism
Innate “language acquisition” belittled the effect of environment on children's language acquisition. And the hypothesis has never been confirmed hence. The generative rules that were proposed under the nativistic framework were abstract, formal, explicit, and quite logical. yet they dealt with the very deepest level of language. Besides, they failed to account for the functions of language.
4. What have you learned from these theories？
Rod Ellis (1985) summarized mentalist views of L1 in the following points:
1. Language is a human-specific faculty.
2. Language exists as an independent faculty in the human minds. Although it is a part of the learners’ total cognitive apparatus, it is separate from the general cognitive mechanisms responsible for intellectual development.
3. The primary determinate of L1 acquisition is the child’s language acquisition device, which is genetically endowed and provides the child with a set of principles about grammar.
4. The acquisition device atrophies with age.
5. The process of acquisition consists of hypothesis-testing, which means that the grammar of the learners’ mother tongue is related to the principles of universal grammar.
三． Functional approaches
1. How are these theories produced?
Functional approaches developed in 1960s. In this time generative rules was proposed which was abstract, formal, explicit, and logical. The representatives of functional approaches are Bloom, Piaget, and Slobin. In this period language began to see that language was one aspect of the cognitive and affective ability to deal with the world and with self, that language could not be considered separately from the cognitive and affective framework, and that linguistic rules written as mathematical equations failed to capture that complicated facet of language :meaning.
2. What are the contributions they have done in language learning?
It was proposed that the cause of language development depends directly on the nature of the linguistic system and on the nature of those aspects of language that might be universal and represented in an innate, predetermined program for language learning. Evidence began to accrue to support a different hypothesis which emphasized the interaction of the child’s perceptual. and cognitive development with linguistic and events in his environment.
In recent years, it become quite clear that language functioning extends well beyond cognitive thought and memory structure. The functional approaches put emphasis on the function of language. The followers of the approach believe that language is one manifestation of general development, one aspect of the cognitive and affective ability to deal with self. Language is not something you could extract and detach from your cognitive and affective framework and consider separately.
3. What are the criticisms to it?
4. What have you learned from the theory?
According to Piaget, he thought that what children learn about language is determined by what they already know about the world. Language ability never developed earlier than cognitive ability. It is functional invariants that the central part of language acquisition. In Slobin’s idea, he suggested that language acquisition occurs in the same order with the development of the child.
Slobin provided a more detailed explanation of the language acquisition process. Language development is paced by the growth of the conceptual and communicative capacities, operating in connection with innate schema of cognition.
There are many types of models about second language learning. Second language learning refers to any language that is learnt subsequence to the mother tongue.
四. The monitor model
The Acquisition –Learning Hypothesis is the fundamental of all the five hypotheses. Language acquisition is a subconscious process. Language acquires are not usually aware of the fact that they are acquiring language, but are aware of the fact that they are using the language for communication. Learning is a conscious process. We use to using the term to refer to conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing its rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them which is explicit learning. But Krashen held that second language learning should be an implicit, informal and natural learning.
The second hypothesis is the monitor hypothesis. It states that learning has only one function---to serve as a Monitor and, hence to alter the output of the acquired system. The Monitor, a device for watching the learner’s output, is thought to edit and make corrections of the acquired system before or after the utterance is actually written spoken. This hypothesis implies that conscious learning plays a limited role in L2 performance. Conscious knowledge of rules does not help acquisition but only enables the learners to “polish up” what has been acquired through communication. There is much variability in the language production of foreign language learners.
The third hypothesis is the Natural Order Hypothesis. The main idea is that language rules are acquired in a predictable order. The principle source of evidence for the Natural Order Hypothesis comes from the ‘morpheme’ studies. The significance of the Natural Order Hypothesis is that there is no necessity to discover an order in unconscious language acquisition.
The Input Hypothesis is central to Krashen’s model of acquisition and is a supplement to the Nature Order Hypothesis. The Input Hypothesis proposed that humans acquire language in only one way—by understanding messages, or by receiving ‘comprehensible input’.
The last one hypothesis --- Affective-filter Hypothesis.
Krashen explained the question that why not everyone is successful in learning language. He said that learners had not received comprehensive input in sufficient quantities. He argued that comprehensive input was a necessity but not a sufficient condition for successful language acquisition.
1. How are these theories produced?
The most influential theory on the second language learning process is Monitor Model. It was proposed by Stephen Krashen in 1970s and developed in 1980s. he put forwards some famous hypothesis which are Acquisition –Learning Hypothesis, Monitor Hypothesis, Nature Order Hypothesis, Input Hypothesis and Affective-filter Hypothesis.
2. What are the contributions they have done in language learning?
3. Criticism of Monitor Model
The Monitor Model has great contributions to language study, but it has also some criticism. The main criticisms are as follows:
(1)The Acquisition –Learning Hypothesis
It met two major questions: whether learning can become acquisition and whether adults can acquire a language as children do. The distinction between subconscious and conscious learning has been hotly disputed. Wu Dinge argued that acquisition –learning theory contradicted itself in some ways and has faulty concepts. Acquisition and learning, in fact, can not be separated from each other in the whole process of second language learning. On the contrary, they permeated each other and merge with each other.
(2)Monitor Hypothesis
His three conditions for use of the monitor was under fierce attack. The first condition ‘time’ was questioned by the results of a study of Hulstijn and Hulstijn . The second condition for use of the Monitor, focusing on form, is also problematic. In several studies, subjects were asked to focus on form and to correct their spelling and grammar mistakes in writer composition. The third condition is also challenged by Hulstijn and Hulstijn. In his study, the subject’s rule assessed in an interview, did not related to how much subjects gained in performance from focus on form and absence of time pressure.
(3)The Nature Order Hypothesis
There are both methodological issues and the difficulty of extending the results of the morpheme studies to incorporate the claims of the Natural Order Hypothesis.
(4)The Input Hypothesis
Susan M. Gass criticized the Input Hypothesis and states that the hypothesis itself is not specific as to how to define levels of knowledge. Another difficulty is that the comprehensive is the only causative variable in second language acquisition
(5)Affective-filter Hypothesis
There were something vague and unexplored in the Affective-filter Hypothesis. There were many questions which can not be answered.
4. What have you learned from the theory?
五. The Universal Model
The UG refers to the language faculty built into the human mind consisting of principles and parameters, that is, the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are element or properties of all human language. There are two parts in this model—structure- dependency principle and the parameter. The structure-dependency principle states that language is organized in such a way that it crucially depends on the relationships between elements in a sentence. In fact, structure-dependency can therefore be put forward as a universal principle of language: whether elements of the sentence are moved to form passives, questions, or whatever, such movement takes account of the structural relationship of sentence rather than the liner order of the words.
The next part is parameter. It has many other rules which differ between languages. The example of parameter is head parameter, which specifies the position of the head in relation to its complement within phrases for different languages. The head parameter deals with the way in which phrases themselves are structured. Each phase has a central element, we call it head.
The UG model claims that the principles and parameters are built into the mind and learners do not learn them because their mind will automatically impose them on any language they meet.
1. How it produced?
The American linguist Chomsky proposed the ‘Universal Model’ in 1980s. it was used to explained how second language are learnt, chiefly by those who study language from a linguistic perspective.
2. What are the contributions they have done in language learning?
Among theories of language acquisition, Universal Grammar (UG) has recently gained wider acceptance and popularity. Though noted among L2 acquisition theories, the defenders of UG are not originally motivated to account for L2 acquisition, nor for first language (L1) acquisition. However, UG is more of an L1 acquisition theory rather than L2. It attempts to clarify the relatively quick acquisition of L1s on the basis of 'minimum exposure' to external input. The logical problem of language acquisition, according to UG proponents, is that language learning would be impossible without 'universal language-specific knowledge.
3. Criticism
Some researchers questioned the role that UG has played in SLA. The UG-based approach has left untouched a number of areas which are central to our understanding of the L2 learning process. first, linguistically, this approach has in the past been almost exclusively concerned with syntax. Even if recent interest in phonology, morphology and the lexicon should redress the balance somewhat, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse are excluded. Second, the UG approach has been exclusively concerned with the developmental linguistic route followed by learners when learning an L2.The social and psychological variables which affect the rate of learning process are beyond its scope and therefore ignored. A further controversy surrounds the issue of whether all the principles and parameters are present in the mind to start with, or whether they come into being over time.
4. What can we learn from it?
The UG model of language provides an explanation for why children manage to learn the relative ordering of heads and complements in such a rapid and error-free fashion. It has been very useful to research into L2 acquisition. First, it has been very useful as a sophisticated tool for linguistic analysis, enabling researchers to formulate well-defined hypothesis which could then been useful in tested in empirical work. This powerful linguistic tool has been useful in describing not only the first language of learner. Second, it can be used to explain the facts about L2 acquisition. UG has also enabled L2 researchers to draw up a principled view of language transfer –linguistic influence.
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