At the same time, it will be remembered that children react very consistently to the deep structure and the communicative function of language, and they do not react overtly to expansions and grammatical corrections as in the "nobody likes me" dialogue quoted above. Such input is largely ignored unless there is some truth or falsity that the child can attend to.Thus, if a child says "Dat Harry" and the parent says "No, that's John" the child might readily self-correct and say "Oh, dat John.” But what Landes and others showed is that in the long run, children will, after consistent, repeated models in meaningful contexts, eventually transfer correct forms to their own speech and thus correct "dat" to "that's."

   The importance of the issue lies in the fact that it is clear from more recent research that adult and peer input to the child is far more important than nativists earlier believed. Adult input seems to shape the child's acquisition, and the interaction patterns between child and parent change according to the increasing language skill of the child. Nurture and environment in this case are tremendously important, although it remains to be seen just how important parental input is as a proportion of total input.

Discourse

A subfield of research that is occupying the attention of an increasing number of child language researchers, especially in an era of social con-structivist research, is the area of conversational or discourse analysis. While parental input is a significant part of the child's development of conversational rules, it is only one aspect, as the child also interacts with peers and, of course, with other adults. Berko-Gleason (1982: 20) described the perspective:

While it used to be generally held that mere exposure to language is sufficient to set the child's language generating machinery in motion, it is now clear that, in order for successful first language acquisition to take place, interaction, rather than exposure, is required; children do not learn language from overhearing the conversations of others or from listening to the radio, and must, instead, acquire it in the context of being spoken to.

     While conversation is a universal human activity performed routinely in the course of daily living, the means by which children learn to take part in conversation appear to be very complex. Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) proposed that conversations be examined in terms of initiations and responses. What might in a grammatical sentence-based model of language be described as sentences, clauses, words, and morphemes, are viewed as transactions, exchanges, moves, and acts. The child learns not only how to initiate a conversation but how to respond to another's initiating utterance. Questions are not simply questions, but are recognized functionally as requests for information, for action, or for help. At a relatively young age, children learn subtle differences between, say, assertions and challenges. They learn that utterances have both a literal and an intended or functional meaning. Thus, in the case of the question "Can you go to the movies tonight?," the response "I'm busy" is understood correctly as a negative response ("I can't go to the movies"). How do children learn discourse rules? What are the key features children attend to? How do they detect pragmatic or intended meaning? How are gender roles acquired? These and other questions about the acquisition of discourse ability are slowly being answered in the research (see Holmes 1995 and Tannen 1996).

     Much remains to be studied in the area of the child's development of conversational knowledge (see Shatz & McCloskey 1984, and McTear 1984 for a good summary). Nevertheless, such development is perhaps the next frontier to be mastered in the quest for answers to the mystery of language acquisition. Clearly there are important implications here, as we shall see in the next chapter, for second language learners. The barrier of discourse is one of the most difficult for second language learners to break through. 

                                   * * *

  A number of theories and issues in child language have been explored in this chapter with the purpose of both briefly characterizing the current state of child language research and of highlighting a few of the key concepts that emerge in the formation of an understanding of how babies learn to talk and eventually become sophisticated linguistic beings. There is much to be learned in such an understanding. Every human being who attempts to learn a second language has already learned a first language. It is said that the second time around on something is always easier. In the case of language, this is not necessarily true. But in order to understand why it is not, you need to understand the nature of that initial acquisition process, for it may be that some of the keys to the mystery are found therein. That search is continued in the next chapter as we compare and contrast first and second language acquisition.

In the Classroom: Gouin and Berlitz—The First Reformers

  In the second of our series of vignettes on classroom applications of theory, we turn the clock back about a hundred years to look in on the first two reformers in the history of "modern" language teaching, Frangois Gouin and Charles Berlitz. Their perceptive observations about language teaching helped set the stage for the development of language teaching methodologies for the century following.

     In his The Art of Learning and Studying Foreign Languages (1880), Frangois Gouin described a painful set of experiences that finally led to his insights about language teaching. Having decided in midlife to learn German, he took up residency in Hamburg for one year. But rather than attempting to converse with the natives, he engaged in a rather bizarre sequence of attempts to "master" the language. Upon arrival in Hamburg he felt he should memorize a German grammar book and a table of the 248 irregular German verbs! He did this in a matter of only ten days and then hurried to "the academy" (the university) to test his new knowledge. "But alas!" he wrote, "I could not understand a single word, not a single word!" Gouin was undaunted. He returned to the isolation of his room, this time to memorize the German roots and to rememorize the grammar book and irregular verbs. Again he emerged with expectations of success. "But alas!"—the result was the same as before. In the course of the year in Germany, Gouin memorized books, translated Goethe and Schiller, and even memorized 30,000 words in a German dictionary, all in the isolation of his room, only to be crushed by his failure to understand German afterward. Only once did he try to "make conversation" as a method, but because this caused people to laugh at him, he was too embarrassed to continue. At the end of the year, having reduced the Classical Method to absurdity, Gouin was forced to return home, a failure.

     But there was a happy ending. Upon returning home Gouin discovered that his three-year-old nephew had, during that year, gone through that wonderful stage of child language acquisition in which he went from saying virtually nothing to becoming a veritable chatterbox of French. How was it that this little child succeeded so easily in a task, mastering a first language, that Gouin, in a second language, had found impossible? The child must hold the secret to learning a language! So Gouin spent a great deal of time observing his nephew and other children and came to the following conclusions: Language learning is primarily a matter of transforming perceptions into conceptions. Children use language to represent their conceptions. Language is a means of thinking, of representing the world to oneself. (These insights, remember, were formed by a language teacher more than a century ago!)

     So Gouin set about devising a teaching method that would follow from these insights. And thus the Series Method was created, a method that taught learners directly (without translation) and conceptually (without grammatical rules and explanations) a "series" of connected sentences that are easy to perceive. The first lesson of a foreign language would thus teach the following series of fifteen sentences:

I walk toward the door. I draw near to the door. I draw nearer to the door. I get to the door. I stop at the door.

I stretch out my arm. I take hold of the handle. I turn the handle. I open the door. I pull the door.

The door moves. The door turns on its hinges. The door turns and turns. I open the door wide. I let go of the handle.

The fifteen sentences have an unconventionally large number of grammatical properties, vocabulary items, word orders, and complexity. This is no simple Void la table lesson! Yet Gouin was successful with such lessons because the language was so easily understood, stored, recalled, and related to reality.

The "naturalistic"—simulating the "natural" way in which children learn first languages—approaches of Gouin and a few of his contemporaries did not take hold immediately. A generation later, largely through the efforts of Charles Berlitz, applied linguists finally established  the  credibility  of such  approaches  in  what  became known as the Direct Method.

  The basic premise of Berlitz's method was that second language learning should be more like first language learning: lots of active oral interaction, spontaneous use of the language, no translation between first and second languages, and little or no analysis of grammatical rules. Richards and Rodgers (1986: 9-10) summarized the principles of the Direct Method:

1. Classroom instruction was conducted exclusively in the target language.

2. Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught.

3. Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded progression organized around question-and-answer exchanges between teachers and students in small, intensive classes.
4. Grammar was taught inductively.
5. New teaching points were introduced orally.
6. Concrete vocabulary was taught through demonstration, objects, and pictures; abstract vocabulary was taught by association of ideas.
7. Both speech and listening comprehension were taught.
8. Correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized.

  The Direct Method enjoyed considerable popularity through the end of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. It was most widely accepted in private language schools where students were highly motivated and where native-speaking teachers could be employed. To this day, "Berlitz" is a household word; Berlitz language schools are thriving in every country of the world. But almost any "method" can succeed when clients are willing to pay high prices for small classes, individual attention, and intensive study. The Direct Method did not take well in public education, where the constraints of budget, classroom size, time, and teacher background made the method difficult to use. Moreover, the Direct Method was criticized for its weak theoretical foundations. The methodology was not so much to be credited for its success as the general skill and personality of the teacher.

By the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century, the use of the Direct Method had declined both in Europe and in the United States. Most language curricula returned to the Grammar Translation Method or to a "reading approach" that emphasized reading skills in foreign languages. But it is interesting that in the middle of the twentieth century, the Direct Method was revived and redirected into what was probably the most visible of all language teaching "revolutions" in the modern era, the Audiolingual Method (see Chapter 3). So even this somewhat short-lived movement in language teaching would reappear in the changing winds and shifting sands of history.

TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

[Note: (I) individual work; (G) group or pair work; (C) whole-class discussion.]

1. (G) In a small group, discuss why it is that behavioristic theories can account sufficiently well for the earliest utterances of the child, but not for utterances at the sentence and discourse level. Do nativistic and functional approaches provide the necessary tools for accounting for those later, more complex utterances?
2. (G/C) If you can, with a partner, try to record on tape samples of a young child's speech. A child of about three is an ideal subject to observe in the study of growing competence in a language. Transcribe a segment of your recording and see if, inductively, you can determine 
   some of the rules the child is using. Present your findings to the rest of the class for discussion.
3. (I) Review the sections that dealt with Universal Grammar. Is it some thing different from the nativists' concept of LAD?
4. (G) In a group, look at the two samples of speech on pages 31 and 32 (one by a five-year-old, and the other by a professional golfer). Identify what you would consider to be "performance variables" in those transcripts. Then, try to reconstruct an "idealized" form of the two monologues, and share with other groups.
5. (C) Competence and performance are difficult to define. In what sense are they interdependent? How does competence increase? Can it decrease? Try to illustrate with non-language examples of learning certain skills, such as musical or athletic skills.
6. (G) In a group, recall experiences learning a foreign language at some point in your past. Share with others any examples of your comprehension exceeding your production abilities. How about the reverse? Share your findings with the rest of the class.
7. (I) Name some forms of language and some functions of language. In your own experience learning a previous foreign language, did you experience any difficulty with the latter?
8. (C) In what way do you think Gouin reflected some ideas about language and about language acquisition that are now current more than a hundred years later? Would the Series Method or the Direct Method work for you as a teacher? Discuss pros and cons.

SUGGESTED READINGS

     Carroll, David W.  1994. Psychology  of Language.  Pacific  Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.

     Holzman, Mathilda. 1998.    The Language of Children. Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Most of the topics covered in this chapter are given full treatment in these two textbooks, which survey issues in first language acquisition.

     Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow and Company.

Steven Pinker's book hit the best seller list a few years ago. It offers a wealth of information for the lay reader on such topics as child language acquisition, innateness, thought and language, and linguistics in general.

     Cook, V. and  Newson, M.  1996. Chomsky's   Universal  Grammar: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.

     Saleemi, A.  1992.  Universal  Grammar and Language  Learnability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

These two books provide introductory surveys of research on Universal Grammar. They are more readable than the technical research studies themselves, which are often difficult to comprehend without a substantive background in linguistic theory.

     Bickerton, Derek.   1981. Roots  of Language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma Publishers.

Derek Bickerton's book, which focuses principally on the topic of creolization, also outlines his theory of bioprogramming mentioned in this chapter.

     Diller, Karl C. 1978. The Language Teaching Controversy. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers.

A summary of Francois Gouin 's language learning experiences and his Series Method can be found in this survey of language methodology.

LANGUAGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE: JOURNA ENTRY 2

[Note: See pages 18 and 19 of Chapter 1 for general guidelines for writing a journal on a previous or concurrent language learning experience.]

• As you learn(ed) a foreign language, did you feel any of the learning was due to a "knack" you had for it? Think of some examples to illustrate either the presence or the absence of some ability to pick up the language.
• Is your class focused more on the forms of language than the functions? Illustrate with examples.
• Go through the issues discussed in this chapter and ask yourself if, in your foreign language class, you have had opportunities to understand and to speak, to imitate the teacher, to practice discourse and conversation?
• Consider how children learn their first language and figure out inductively (before you go on to Chapter 3) what some of the child's "secrets" are that enable them to acquire a language seemingly efficiently.

 
 
 
 
 
 

CHAPTER 3

AGE AND ACQUISITION

The increased pace of research on first language acquisition in the last half of the twentieth century attracted the attention not only of linguists of all kinds but also of educators in various language-related fields. Today the applications of research findings in first language acquisition are widespread. In language arts education, for example, teacher trainees are required to study first language acquisition, particularly acquisition after age five, in order to improve their understanding of the task of teaching language skills to native speakers. In foreign language education, most standard texts and curricula now include some introductory material in first language acquisition. The reasons for this are clear. We have all observed children acquiring their first language easily and well, yet individuals learning a second language, particularly in an educational setting, can meet with great difficulty and sometimes failure. We should therefore be able to learn something from a systematic study of that first language learning experience.

   What may not be quite as obvious, though, is how the second language teacher should interpret the many facets and sometimes conflicting findings of first language research. First language acquisition starts in very early childhood, but second language acquisition can happen in childhood, early or late, as well as in adulthood. Do childhood and adulthood, and differences between them, hold some keys to language acquisition models and theories? The purpose of this chapter is to address some of those questions and to set forth explicitly some of the parameters for looking at the effects of age and acquisition.

DISPELLING MYTHS

The first step in investigating age and acquisition might be to dispel some myths about the relationship between first and second language acquisition. H.H. Stern (1970: 57-58) summarized some common arguments that cropped up from time to time to recommend a second language teaching method or procedure on the basis of first language acquisition:

1. In language teaching, we must practice and practice, again and again. Just watch a small child learning his mother tongue. He repeats things over and over again. During the language learning stage he practices all the time. This is what we must also do when we learn a foreign language.
2. Language learning is mainly a matter of imitation. You must be a mimic. Just like a small child. He imitates everything.
3. First, we practice the separate sounds, then words, then sentences. That is the natural order and is therefore right for learning a foreign language.
4. Watch a small child's speech development. First he listens, then he speaks. Understanding always precedes speaking. Therefore, this must be the right order of presenting the skills in a foreign language.
5. A small child listens and speaks and no one would dream of making him read or write. Reading and writing are advanced stages of language development. The natural order for first and second language learning is listening, speaking, reading, writing.
6. You did not have to translate when you were small. If you were able to learn your own language without translation, you should be able to learn a foreign language in the same way.
7. A small child simply uses language. He does not learn formal grammar. You don't tell him about verbs and nouns. Yet he learns the language perfectly. It is equally unnecessary to use grammatical conceptualization in teaching a foreign language.

   These statements represent the views of those who felt that "the fit language learner was looked upon as the foreign language teacher's dream a pupil who mysteriously laps up his vocabulary, whose pronunciation, spite of occasional lapses, is impeccable, while morphology and syntax, instead of being a constant headache, come to him like a dream" (St( 1970: 58).The statements also tend to represent the views of those who were dominated by a behavioristic theory of language in which the first language acquisition process was viewed as consisting of rote practice habit formation, shaping, overlearning, reinforcement, conditioning, association, stimulus and response, and who therefore assumed that the second language learning process involves the same constructs.

   There are flaws in each view. Sometimes the flaw is in the assumption behind the statement about first language learning, and sometimes it is in the analogy or implication that is drawn; sometimes it is in both. The flaws represent some of the misunderstandings that need to be demythologized for the second language teacher. Through a careful examination of those shortcomings in this chapter, you should be able, on the one hand, to avoid certain pitfalls, and on the other hand, to draw enlightened, plausible analogies wherever possible, thereby enriching your understanding of the second language learning process itself.

   As cognitive and constructivist research on first language acquisition gathered momentum, second language researchers and foreign language teachers began to recognize the mistakes in drawing direct global analogies between first and second language acquisition. Some of the first warning signals were raised early in the process by the cognitive psychologist David Ausubel (1964). In foreboding terms, Ausubel outlined a number of glaring problems with the then-popular Audiolingual Method, some of whose procedures were ostensibly derived from notions of "natural" (first) language learning. He issued the following warnings and statements: