Article+Reflections+by+Yun+Ding


 * Article: Pinter 2006, chapter 2, Learning the First Language at Home and School **


 * Summary of the article ** : Pinter provides an over-all view of the differences and similarities between first and second language acquisition. Pinter argues that by looking at the learning process of one’s mother-tongue, language teachers can benefit from various angles such as the order to acquisition and the speed of learning. Moreover, he compares how children’s languages are used at school and home. All in all, this article tries to integrate the natural learning process of one’s first language into the learning curriculum of second language learning.


 * How are child learners different from adults ** : I agree with the significant different learning points mentioned by Pinter. According to Pinter, child language learner tend to learn the language without questions such as “why are there regular and irregular verbs?”, this happens not because they ignore the grammar but they simply do not have the linguistic competence to be aware with such cases. They learn the language holistically which means they do not pick on the abstract terms, they acquire the language and in most cases, they won’t be able to explain why certain rules are used, but if asked, they show comprehension. By contrast, adult language learners do learn the language, they focus on the grammar and are able to figure out the reasons behind the usages. Compare with child learner, they certainly have more resources, for example they could recognize the differences between their first language and the target languages weather it is a subject-verb-object structure or subject-object-verb. This ability allows adult learners to make clever guesses in some contexts.


 * How is the first language acquired ** : Catherine Snow’s research in 1972 suggests that mothers tries to use simple and modified utterances when talking to their babies. Such inputs have irreplaceable impact on children’s first language acquisition. Moreover, mothers often use baby-talk in their speech which is a way to imitate babies’ voice; this kind of input builds interaction between both parties. Another approach is from Noam Chomsky, an important contemporary figure in linguistics. Noam Chomsky is famous with his Universal Grammar (UG) theory which postulates that every human being is equipped with the ability to learn language, it is in our brain. He gave an example which states “when a baby is born into an English-speaking environment, his or her UG helps the baby to recognize that English is a language where the word order is typically SVO (subject, verb and object) rather than VSO,” (p.20).


 * The achievements of the first five years**: Pinter discusses that “In English, children progress from one-word utterances (such as mummy, daddy) to two-word (mummy go) and three words (where mummy gone) utterances.”(p.20). Furthermore, there are exceptions to this statement; however, in general this is the typical path of acquiring. Like learning all other skills, the flow of language learning starts with the easy ones and then continue with advanced concepts, for example, the word “get” have different meanings when used in various contexts, children learn the rules one by one, starts with the basic usage. In addition, children at this age are extremely creative. Although they have limited resources, but this did not stop them being creative. As an example given by Pinter, one child called a cactus a “hedgehog” because he had learnt the word “hedgehog”. By the age of five, child has the control of the fundamental grammar in their mother-tongue, however, this does no mean that they can communicate freely with strangers, what they have acquired so far are mostly family talks.


 * The influence of school on first language development**: language use at home and school is far different from each other. At home, child is familiar with context, the communicators are parents, siblings or grandparents, in other words people who the child knows. Even if the child does not complete his or her sentence, with experiences, their parents would perform the right respond. Moreover, parents scaffold their children wrong utterances. As school, a new environment, teachers do not know the students, communication is necessary to get everybody understood. Moreover, children go through a formal instruction of their first language, in which they might have to re-learn some words in terms of meaning and correctness. When it comes to subject matter, they have to alter their language as to different subjects.

Reference: //Pinter, A. (2006) Teaching Young Language Learner. Oxford: OUP//