UNIT 1: LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN EARLY

CHILDHOOD: BASIC CONCEPTS

The Spanish Act 2/2006 of 3rd May, known as LOE, has meant a significant advance in
the implementation of English as a second language (L2) in preschool education.
Teaching English to very young learners is a challenging task but it will be
compensated by the enormous acquisition ability and innate learning that preschoolers
still have from learning their mother tongue (L1). This is a great advantage if we use
the right didactic resources.

Every human being, since the very first days of his life, has a natural ability to learn the
language of the linguistic community where he lives. It is an innate ability to acquire the
mother tongue.

Let´s see the most important stages in children´s acquisition of English as a mother
tongue:

STAGES IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Age Acquisition
0-5 months -They emit gurgles
-They produce sounds related to pleasure and pain (laughs,
cries, moans...)

6-12 months - They understand negations

- They emit babbles
- They pronounce words like“papa” and “mama”
- They try to communicate by signals
- They try to repeat some sounds.
- They say the first word
12-18 months - They respond to simple questions with non-verbal language
- They use one or two words to refer to an object or person
- They try to imitate simple words
18-24 months - They pronounce all vowels and the consonants m, n, p ..
- Vocabulary consists of 50 words
- They can ask for some food and drinks ( bread, water..)
- They emit animal sounds
- They start to combine words and use pronouns
2-3 years - They use space prepositions ( in, under, on ....)
- They know the personal pronouns
- They use descriptive words
- Vocabulary consists of 250-900 words
- They use elaborate sentences of three or four words
- They are able to respond to simple questions
- They use the plural and the regular past verb forms
3-4 years - They use all phonemes but still problems with l, r, ch, y
- They use consonants in all word positions
- They describe ordinary objects
- They enjoy using language
- They can repeat whole sentences
4-5 years - They can understand complex questions
- Vocabulary consists of 1.500 words
- They can use the irregular past forms of some verbs
5 years - They can understand 2.000 words
- They distinguish the temporal sequence
- They can establish a conversation with competence
- They produce very long sentences
- They use their imagination to invent stories
- They describe objects with precision

This language acquisition of the mother tongue (L1) is unconcious, it is repeated in a

natural way. Some of the mechanisms involved are still under study, but some of them
are repeated when the individual learns a second language (L2).

Children are born with an innate capacity for acquiring language. This is known as
“Language Acquisition Device”. It gives children a means of processing the speech in
the environment so that they can construct its underlying system. If there is a special
language-learning capacity and if this capacity declines at about the age of twelve, this
is obviously significant in helping to explain why second language learning (unlike first
language learning) is often unsuccesful. If there is no such “critical period” for language
learning the causes for failure must be in other psychological factors or in the nature of
the learning situation.

We will analyse the four basic components in the mastery of a language (phonological,
morphological, semantic and syntactic components) when young children try to learn a
second language.

Phonologically, preschoolers have a higher ability to perceive sounds rather than to

produce them correctly, in exactly the same way as native children. Moreover, they try
to simplify the pronunciations of some sounds, especially those that do not exist in the
mother tongue. In preschool education, the teacher´s discourse should be slow and
emphasized by numerous pauses and intonation curves. The aim is to draw the
children´s attention to the most significant elements in the discourse to help to the
understanding of the message.

Morphologically, the first thing that is learnt about the English language is the
progressive form mark –ING and later the –S of the plural forms and the possessive
genitive. As regards the use of the past forms, children learn the irregular forms earlier
than the regular forms.

Semantically, children that learn new vocabulary in L2 tends to overgeneralise, they try
to use the same word to refer to different concepts due to lack of vocabulary.
(“ANIMALS” for dogs, hens, cats, horses....).

Syntactically, children start referring always to the present time. Overtime and with
much practice they will construct syntactic structures referring also to the past and
future. This is because children concentrate on the communicative aspect of the
language, not on the grammatical structures. Negative and interrogative sentences will
be learnt gradually.
The early speech of children is often described as “telegraphic”. This is because it
lacks inflections and many of the articles and prepositions. Here are some examples
taken from a stage when children are already joining two words to form an utterance:

“more page” (asking an adult to continue reading)

“sweater chair” (indicating where the sweater is)

It is clear that the situation play an important role in conveying the meaning. Even at
this stage, we can see that children use the language creatively, since they use utterances
which they can never have actually heard.

A learner of English ( as a first or second language) has learnt a rule for forming plurals.
This lets him predict that a noun can be made plural by adding “s”. However, when he
says “We saw two mouses” he has overgenerlised the rule, since “mouse” is an
exception to it. The correct form is “mice”.

The errors themselves are the PRODUCT OF LEARNING. Learners´errors need not
be seen as signs of failure. On the contrary, they are the clearest evidence for the
learner´s developing systems and can offer us insights into how they process the data of
the language. Errors have traditionally been regarded as signs of failure. Now, however,
we realise more clearly that they represent normal stages in the development of
communicative skills. We can adopt a less negative attitude towards errors. In some
activities, for example, a teacher may decide to be selective in the errors which he
corrects. In other activities, he may decide to avoid correcting the forms of the language
at all, if this would interfere with the learners´concentration on the communication of
meanings. In general, learners can feel less anxiety about producing errors and teachers
can respond to them with more tolerance, with beneficial effects on the classroom
atmosphere and on the motivation for all concerned.

Learning a second language is a slow process that responds to mechanisms in the

psycological and mental development of the individual. There are some theories or
hypothesis about second language acquisition, according to Krashen:

Language acquisition takes place in an unconcious way, when the person concentrates
in the meaning intended, more than in the correct form. Language learning, on the other
hand, takes place when a second language is learnt in a concious way, using
grammatical rules. It is the acquisition of a language, not the learning, that allows a
complete linguistic competence. (acquisition-learning hypothesis)

But sometimes, the acquisition of a language may be corrected and modified by getting
to know the grammatical rules of the foreign language. The rules act as a monitor or
corrector. (monitor hypothesis)

The grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable sequence. Some of them are
acquired before others. (natural order hypothesis)

The acquisition of language takes place when a structure (input) presents information
that is slightly superior to that which is already mastered. It is important to introduce
sufficient imput in the language classroom to allow for language acquisition. Children
should be exposed to the second language as much as possible (input hypothesis)
The situation of learning a second language in an artificial context generates an anxiety
in the learner that produces an affective filter, that prevents him from learning. The
teacher should reduce that filter by motivating the students. (affective filter hypothesis)

The speech which people address to children usually differs from that which they
address to adults. It is typically simpler in structure and more limited in vocabulary,
contains more repetition, and is more closely related to the immediate situation. The
language is therefore easier to understand and the child has more opportunity to
organise it and remember it. Similarly, the nature of the speech addressed to second
language learners is an important factor in influencing how well they learn. Exposed to
a comprehensible, not too complex input, the learner´s natural acquisition mechanisms
can operate. This could explain why children are often more successful than adults in
natural learning situations: because their minds are simpler and more oriented towards
the here-and-now, they are exposed to speech which is simpler and more
comprehensible.

FACTORS WHICH INFLUENCE SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING

INTELLIGENCE
There is a link between general intelligence and second-language learning ability. A
school learner´s average grades in all school subjects are often a good means of
predicting how good he would be at language learning.

LANGUAGE APTITUDE
Success in second language learning is related not only to general cognitive ability, but
also to a more language-specific set of learning abilities called “language aptitude”.
These abilities are:
- The ability to identify and remember sounds.
- The ability to memorise words.
- The ability to recognise how words function grammatically in sentences
- The ability to induce grammatical rules from language examples.

Intelligence and language aptitude have generally been found to correlate best with the
more “academic” language skills (reading and grammar). Attitude and motivation, on
the other hand, seem to be linked especially with the ability to use language for
interpersonal communication.

PERSONALITY
People with an outgoing personality may enjoy certain advantages, since they are less
inhibited. An extrovert person is especially suited to second language learning.

MOTIVATION
In second language learning, motivation is a crucial force. There are two basic kinds of
motivation: integrative and instrumental.
A learner with integrative motivation has a genuine interest in the second language
community. He wants to learn their language in order to communicate with them more
satisfactorily and to gain closer contact with them and their culture.
A learner with instrumental motivation is more interested in how the second language
can be a useful instrument towards gaining a necessary qualification or improving
employment prospects.
It is clear that the two kinds of motivation do not exclude each other: most learners are
motivated by a mixture of both reasons.

AGE

For many people, children can learn a second language better than adults. Children from
immigrant families have learnt the language of their new community with native or
near-native proficiency, whereas the adults always show traces of foreignness. Studies
reveal that children are superior in acquiring pronunciation skills and are often quicker
than their parents at learning a new language.
The most common explanation is that there is a “critical period” during which the brain
is flexible and language learning can occur naturally and easily. Since this period ends
around puberty, adolecents and adults can no longer call upon these natural learning
capacities. The result is that language learning becomes an artificial, laborious process.
However, there are studies which provide strong evidence that older learners have not
lost all their capacities for natural language learning. It is just that they rely too much on
“learning” whereas children are content to let “acquisition” take its proper course.

Preschool children maintain all the mechanisms that they have used and are still using
to acquire their mother tongue so they have a special ability to acquire the second
language in a natural way.

Intelligence

Language
Age aptitude

FACTORS

Motivation Personality