Universidade Federal do Cear

Centro de Humanidades
Departamento de Letras Estrangeiras
Teorias e Princpios de Aquisio de Segunda Lngua
Aluna: Dborah Monnise Conrado

Questionnaire 1

Use Chapter 1 from Lightbown and Spadas 2006 How Languages are
Learned to answer the questions below.


1. What are Developmental Stages?

According to the text, they are related to children's cognitive development. The
discovery of language occurs into their first three years old, in which they pass
through some stages that are "cooing", "babbling", "telegraphing" and "word
and syntax".

2. Whats the first stage of acquisition of negation in English

At this stage, children usually use the word 'no' to express the negation. It can
be all alone or as the first word in the speech.
e.g: No. No cookie. No comb hair.

3. What are the latest wh-word questions to be acquired by children in English?

The wh-questions 'how' and 'when' are the latest to be acquired when it has a
better understanding of manner and time by the children.

4. What is acquired in pre-school and school years?

In pre-school years, children continue to learn vocabulary and develop
metalinguistic awareness. In addition, they are able to use language in a social
environment. Although, abilities acquired at the pre-school years expand and
grow, children in school years develop more sophisticated metalinguistic
awareness. Other point is the vocabulary growth that depends mainly how
much children read. Furthermore, children develop the acquisition of language
registers and learn how this can differs in a variety of 'forms'. For example, the
written language differs from the spoken language.

5. What is the basic premise (the explanation of how language is acquired) of
Behaviorism, Innatism, Interactionism and Connectionism?

Behaviorism: With regard to this theory, children acquire language by the
imitation and practice of sounds and patterns produced around them. However,
the reproducing of what they heard added to their environment will provide an
important role to achieve a successful communication.

Innatism: According to this perspective, the language acquisition is innate and it
is developed as well as other biological functions. For Chomsky, language
acquisition is very similar to the way that children learn to walk, for example.

Interactionism: Here, researchers believe that the language acquisition is
related to the ability children have to learn from experience. That is, it depends
of interactions with the people and object around them.

Connectionism: This theory can be explained by the ability that children have to
acquire links and connections between words and phrases and the situations in
which they occur. That is, they associate what they hear or see with the
words/phrases that represents them.

6. What are the main limitations with Behaviorism and Innatism?

Behaviorism does not provide a satisfactory explanation for the more complex
grammar acquired for the children. That is, the creation of new forms or the
uses of words cannot be explained just for the imitation and practice of what
they have heard from adults.
In case of Innatism, one limitation is the fact that complex syntax can be
discover by children innate mechanism. Other point is the hypothesis that
language is separate from other aspects of cognitive development.

7. What is the Critical Period Hypothesis? What is evidence in favor and against
it?

Critical Period Hypothesis proposes when a child are not exposed to language
in infancy and childhood will never acquired language if these deprivations go
on for too long. With regard to the text, it is difficult to find evidences for or
against it. However, it has a few natural experiments where children have been
isolated from language and, thus, the innatist perspective based on evidence
for a critical period.

8. Whats the difference between Simultaneous and Sequential Bilinguals?

Simultaneous Bilinguals refers to children who learn more than one language
from earliest childhood. Otherwise, Sequential Bilinguals are those who learn
another language later.

9. Whats Subtractive and Additive Bilingualism?

Proposed by Wallace Lambert (1987), Subtractive Bilingualism is related to the
loss of one language on the way to learning another that could bring negative
consequences for children relationships. Therefore, a possible solution for this
case is the Additive Bilingualism. That is, the maintenance of the home
language while the second language is being learned.