BABY TALK NUR SARTIKA PUTRI ( 0743042028 )

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

(SLA Assignment)

Name      : Nur Sartika Putri

NPM      : 0743042028

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY

BANDAR LAMPUNG

2011

Second language Acquisition

According to Krashen, language acquisition refers to the process of picking-up a language, i.e. a process of a development of ability in a language by using it in natural, communicative situations.

Some terminology will be encountered in the discussion of second language acquisition. Among others are: native language, target language, second language acquisition, foreign language learning.

1.      Native language (NL): this refers to the first language a child learns. It is also known as the primary language, the mother or the L1.

2.      Target language (TL): this refers the language being learned

3.      Second Language ACQUSITION (SLA): this is common term used for the name of the field. It refers to the learning of another language after the native language has been learned. Sometimes the term refers to the learning of a third ot fourth language.

Brown (1980:17) says that every one of us has witnessed the remarkable ability of children to communicate. A small babies, children babble coo and cry and vocally or non vocally send an extraordinary number of messages and receive more massages. As they reach the end of their first year, specific attempts are made to imitate words and speech sounds heard around them. And about this time, they utter their first “words”. At around 18 months of age, these words have multiplied significantly and are beginning to appear in combination with each other to form two-word and three-word “ sentences” which are usually called as “telegraphic” utterances –such as “all gone milk,” bye-bye daddy.” Gimme toy,” and so forth.

A good example of this phenomenon was given by W.R Miller(1963) in phonological development:” recently a three year old child told me her name was Litha. I answered Litha? No, litha.”Oh lisa .”Yes, Litha.” The child apparently understood the contrast between s and th , even though she could not produce the contrast herself. This is well known as “lag” between comprehension and production. We also know that even adults understand more vocabulary than they ever use in speech and also perceived more syntactic variation then they actually produce.

According Brown certain, typical patterns appear in child’s language . fo example it has been found that young children who have not yet mastered the past-tenses morpheme tend to learn past tenses first as separate items (walked, broke, drank) without knowledge of the difference between regular and irregular verbs. Then around the age of 4 or 5 they begin to perceive a system in which the-ed morpheme is added to a verb, and at this point al verbs become regularized (branked, drinked, goed).

Children are known as “good imitators”( Brown,1980). Two types of imitation behaviorist assume one type of imitation that is surface structure imitations, where a child repeats or mimics the surface string, attending to a phonological code rather than a semantic code. It is the level of imitation that enables an adult to repeat random numbers or nonsense syllables or to mimic unknown languages. According to Brown (1980) the earliest stages of child language acquisition may manifest a great deal of surface imitation, because the baby may not posses the necessary semantic categories to assign “meaning “to utterances. But as the child perceives the importance of the semantic level language, he attends primarily to the meaningful semantic level,i.e the deep structure of language. in fact the imitation of the deep structure of language can literally block his attention to the surface structure, therefore on the surface structure, he becomes poor imitator. Let’s have a look at the following conversation:

Child    : Nobody don’t like me.

Mother : No say “ nobody likes me”

Child    : Nobody don’t like me.

(eight repetitions of the this dialogue)

Mother : No, now listen carefully: say “ nobody likes me”

Child    : oh!Nobody don’t like me

How frustrated both mother and child are! for the mother was attending to a rather technical, surface grammatical distinction. However the child sought to derive some meaning value. At the end, the child understood some sort of surface distinction between what he was saying and what this mother was saying and made what he thought was an appropriate change.

Bloom (1976:37)noted that “ an explanation of language development depend upon an explanation of the cognitive basses of language : what children know will determine what they learn about the code for both speaking and understanding messages” according to Piaget,

1. the overall cognitive development of a child is an the result of his interaction with his environment
2. his interaction is accompanied with complementary interaction between the child’s developing perceptual cognitive capacities and his linguistic experience
3. What the child learns about language is determined by what the child already knows about the words. Dan Slobin (1971) advocates (1) that in all language, semantic learning depends on cognitive development and (2) that sequences of development are determined more by semantic complexity than by structural complexity.

This is the conversation Alif with her old sister……

Alif                   : “ Akso!!!”

Sister                :  “ Opo Dek? “

Alif                    : “ Mam Akso!”

Sister                : “ Opo To?”

Alif                   : “ Akso akso!”

Sister                : “ Oh Alif Gelem Maem Bakso To?”

Alif                   : “ He Lem…”

Sister                : “ Yo wes sono celuk bakso ne!”

Alif                   : “ Akso akso… ni…..!!!!” ( Call bakso owner )

Bakso Owner   : “Arep bakso dek?”

Alif                    : “ Akso, Ji “

Bakso owner     : “ Nggo sopo?”

Alif                    : “ Ayip “

Bakso Owner    : “ Yo wes tunggu sek yo… “

Alif                   :

Bakso Owner   : “Ki bakso ne, arep di dleheh neng ngendi?”

Alif                    : “ Tu… eja…!”

Bakso owner     : “ Neng ngendi?”

Alif                   : “ eja!”

Bakso owner     :” oo meja kae to, yowes”

Alif eat bakso alone but

Alif                   :” Huah huah huah edes edes… ecap ecap….”

Sister                : “opo to lif… oalaaaahhh kepedesan yo, kene tak dulang..”

Alif                    : “nyoh!!!!  Ecap!!!”

Sister                : “  nggo kecap to?.. sak titik wae yo “

Alif                    : “ he eh”

Explanation:

That the conversation child (3 years old) with his sister (20 years old) and bakso owner. This conversation shows that the children in that age have not use complete sentences. He still use very simple sentence, even he have not able to use perfect word. Like in the sentence AKSO formerly Bakso Owner and his sister didn’t understand what he talking about. Bakso Owner and his sister needs his repetition to catch and understand. Even when the child repeats again he still uses uncompleted word. When the child answers the question that gives them he only answers that in one or two word only. He has not able to answer in complicated sentence. In this age children have not active to ask some questions to someone. He only asks simple questions and answer question in simple.

If we observe children speaking for the first time, we will find it very fascinating. One of the amazing things is that language emerges at about the same time in children all over the world.( Aitcison,2008). Why do childrren normally begin to speak between their eighteenth and twenty-eight month?

Surely it is not because all mother on earth initiate languge training at that time. There is, in fact no evidance that any conscious and systematic teaching of language takes place, just as there is no special training for stance or gait.(lenneberg, 1967:125)

Languge may be set in motion by a biological click, similiar to the one which causes kittens to open their eyas when they are a few days old, chrysalies to change into butterfliesafter several weeks, and human to become sexually mature at around 13 years of age. However, until relatively recently few people had considered language within the framework of biological maturation.

From 5 or 6 months onwards it can “ bable “ a number of sound needed in speech, before the age of 18 months children utter few words. They have to wait for some biological trigger. The “trrigger” aperas to be connected with brain growth.two-words utterences which are usually regarded as the beginning of “ true language” begin just as a massive activity in brain growth slows down.

When one says that direct teaching is a failure. People smile and say, of course-whoever tries to teach a child to speak? Yet many parents often without realizing it, try to persuade their children to imitate them. They do this in two ways:

1.      By means overt correction

2.      By means of unconcious expansions.

Correction which ties in with a child’s linguistic level may be more useful than we once assume. What is being claimed here is that practice alone cannot account for language acquisition. Children do not learn language simply by repitition and imitation.

Table 1: Simplified idea of child’s progress in Languge Development.

Language stage	Beginning age
Crying	Birth
Cooing	6 weeks
Babling	6 months
Intonation pattern	8 months
One-word utterences	1 year
Two-word utterences	18 months
Word inflections	2 years
Question, negatives	2 ¼ yaers
Rare or complex constructions	5 years
Mature speech	10 years

(Adapted from aitchison, 2008:80)