LEARNING ACTIVITY 1.2

SUBJECT:ENGLISH TEACHING PRACTICUM

JORGE ALEXANDER FLORES BENAVIDES

Age and Acquisiton

Neurological considerationsChild is neurological assigning functions little by little to one side of the brain or the other , of course languageThe significance of accentThe acquisition of authentic control of phonology of foreign language supports the notion of a critical period

Most of the evidence indicate that people beyond the age of puberty do not acquire what has come to be called authentic pronunciation of the second language

The critical period hypothesis

Right- Hemispheric participationThe role of right hemisphere in the acquisition of second language is active in early stages, later this will be defined as “Strategies” of acquisition

AGE PERIOD DEVELOPMENTAL ADVANCE

19 to 24 months Possess 10 to 20 consonants + sufficient phonetic ability to learn many new words.

25 to 36 months Continued growth in phonetic inventory, along with vocabulary and syntax.Stuttering is often first noticed atabout this age

3 to 4 years Almost all vowels are mastered by this age, along with a number of consonants.

4 to 6 years Closing in on phonemic mastery, with the exception of fricative (noise) sounds. Teeth fall.

6 to 9 years Phonemic mastery typically completed, but refinements in speech production continue.

9+ years Speech development is complete, but developmental changes can be observed(E.G., Voice change in adolescence)

Human cognition develops rapidly throughout the first sixteen years of life

and less rapidly thereafter

*Sensorimotor stage ( birth to two ) *Preoperational stage ( ages two to seven) *Operational stage ( ages seven to sixteen) *Concrete operational stage ( ages seven to eleven) *Formal operational stage ( ages eleven to sixteen)

PIAGET CONSIDERATIONS

According to Piaget at age of eleven a person become capable of abstraction, formal thinking, concrete experience and direct perception. Also hemisphere lateralization is considered because as the child matures into adult, the left hemisphere which controls analytical and intellectual functions become more dominant than the right hemisphere.

Also Piagetian notion of EQUILIBRION defined as “progressive interior organization of knowledge in a stepwise fashion, so language interact with cognition to achieve equilibrium.

Cognitive considerations

Affective considerations

Human beings are emotional creatures. The affective domain includes many factors: Empathy, self-steem, extroversion, inhibition, imitation, anxiety, attitudes, etc.

Self-esteem is a term used in psycohology  to reflect a person’s  overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth.

Attribution theory There are four factors related to attribution theory that influence motivation in education

•    Ability •   Task difficulty •     Effort •     Luck 

Linguistic consideration

Bilingualism Children learn two languages simultaneously by the use

of similar strategies. • Coordinate bilingual- is a person who learn a

language in such separate context and have two meaning systems.

• Compound bilinguals.- is a person who learn a language in context, who have one meaning system from which both language operate

Interference between first and second language Research confirms that that the linguistic and cognitive processes of second language learning in young children are in general similar to first language processes.

Order in learning Children learn second language using creative constructions process just as they do in their first language but adults have bee shown to be superior learners on at least several planes, literacy, vocabulary, pragmatics, schematic knowledge and even syntax.

Interference in Adults Adults learning a second language manifest some types of errors found in children learning their first language, but first language may be more readily used to bridge gaps that adult learner cannot fill by generalization within the second language but it can be a facilitating factor, and not just an interfering factor.

 Brown (1994)makes the distinction between trait anxiety the permanent predisposition to be anxious and state anxiety as the feeling that is experienced in relation to some particular situation

ANXIETY

Empathy

the ability to put oneself in another's shoes, is also predicted to be relevant to acquisition in that the empathic person may be the one who is able to identify more easily with speakers of a target language and thus accept their input as intake for language acquisition (lowered affective filter).