Some instrumental factors in L1 Learning
Interaction of child and context
- Input
- Comprehension
- Repetition and modeling
- Turn-taking
- Ability to distinguish between “self” and “other,” means and ends, cause and effect (semantics?)
- Low affective filter
- Ability to distinguish sounds in their environment, between “speech” and “other,” and later between happy, angry, friendly sounds.
- Practicing melody, rhythm, rhyme as they learn their language’s system of phonology and cadence/tone.
- Social contact, enabling child to move from labeling to conversation, which involves exploring underlying organizing principles of language
Manipulate factors of successful FLA to apply to SLA
- Tailor oral and written comprehension exercises to adults’ level and cultural/experiential background
- Provide ample comprehensible input
- Play games that involve repetition, rhythm and rhyme
- As discussed in Group Dynamics, foster relationship-building within group to reduce affective filter to more childlike levels
“Legs-up” that adult learners have in L2/n
- Our ability to think “beyond the here-and-now,” using abstract concepts
- Our knowledge of basic grammatical principles (e.g. “this is a noun,” negatives, etc.)
- For literate individuals and those who understand the alphabet in question, the ability to study the written word
- With our various interests and experiences, there may be more ways to engage us, with stories and lessons and exercises that appeal to us as more developed humans
- Positive transfer from the first language to the second language. [Snow]
- Greater vocabulary
That is: Cognitive ability and metalinguistic awareness.
In Snow’s article there are encouraging words: “…age groups 12-15 and adult made the fastest progress during the first few months of learning Dutch and that at the end of the first year the 8-10- and 12-15-year-olds had achieved the best control of Dutch. The 3-5-year-olds scored lowest on all the tests employed. These data do not support the critical period hypothesis for language acquisition.” However, at that time they were still studying Genie and finding her progress encouraging … so that was a long time ago. In the study, there was no formal instruction. I couldn’t tell why they postulated the results came out this way.
References:
- Children’s Language & Learning (2nd edition). Judith Wells Lindfors (University of Texas, Austin, 1980) [readable, full of examples]
- The Critical Period for Language Acquisition: Evidence from Second Language Learning. Catherine E. Snow and Marian Hoefnagel-Hohle (University of Amsterdam, 1978)
- V2 in first-language acquisition: early child grammars fall within the range of universal grammar. Natascha Muller. [Skimmed but not used.]
- Bootstrapping mechanisms in first language acquisition. Barbara Hohle [Not used either]