putri & rizka- age, apptitude & other things

8/13/2019 Putri & Rizka- age, apptitude & other things

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Second Language Acquisition

Age, Aptitude, and Other Things

Presented by:

Putri Lamubra BaraRizka Hartati

1(Group 5 Putri & Rizka)


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Age is not a stand-alone for factorinfluencing second language acquisition

but merely one of a cluster of contextualand developmental factors that maymake acquisition more difficult formature learners.



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Language learning involve biological,

psychological and social factors.

Biological factors are the mechanismsevery body make us of, they are general

cognitive procedures.

Psychology more concerned with individual

differences we are interested in.

Social factors, clearly external, contextual

features.



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Adults and teenies learn more quickly than the kids, specifically

in morpho-syntax and in vocabulary acquisition Given similar conditions, however, the kids will soon overtake

both groups in terms of ultimate attainment.

Some studies support the notion of a criticalagefor morpho-syntactic learning.

Kids and teenies seem to be better to imitate than adults.

Person who contact L2 as kids or teenies are more likely todevelop good pronunciation and suprasegmental skills.

Moreover, in terms of ultimate achievement: the earlier youstart, the better.

This has led to the Critical-AgeHypothesis (may be age 6) fororal production.

However, other studies suggest that adults certainly canachieve near-native oral skills. The evidence therefore suggestsa sensitive, rather than a critical age for production skills.

Communicative fluency tends to co-vary with length ofcontact, but accuracy doesnt

Age and L2 acquisition

Some Substantive Findings :



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The term critical age for language

acquisition refers to a period of time when

learning a language is easy and typically

meets with a high degree of success.

Once this period is over, at or before the

onset of puberty, the average learner is less

likely to achieve native like ability in thetarget language.



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There are four types of explanationavailable, which may well overlap. Inother words, they are mutually exclusive.

They are:1. The neurological2. The cognitive-developmental

explanation

3. The modified input explanation4. The social environmental explanation.



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1. The neurologicalIt invokes a biological development called lateralizationwhereby the two hemispheresof the brain begin to take over specific jobs.Before this period of lateralization, the brainsworkings are apparently much more flexibleand diffuse.

2. Cognitive-developmental

Once this cognitive development has been

achieved, then it is not possible to gothrough the same language learning stepsonce more, because cognitive andconceptual structure already exist.



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3. The modified input

Children certainly up to the age of six are addressed in

particular way, they are talked to using a particular

register, and this might make it particularly easy forthem to perceive, notice, imitate, memorize and learn

relevant features of that input.

4. The social environmental

There is the social or environmental explanation, which

says that children are not yet as tied into the

surrounding social system. School and society have not

yet labelled and classified them, and put them into

appropriate little drawers



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Basic question: Why do some learners learn asecond/foreign language quickly while others with thesame opportunities fail?

SLA acknowledge that there are individual differencesin L2 acquisition. These differences are psychological.Ellis (1985) categorized these differences into: personal

and general factors.



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Language aptitude refers to the potential that

a person has for learning languages. It is a

natural ability for learning an L2.

Aptitude marks the degree to which you are

likely to be relatively successful in learning a

second or foreign language.



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1. Phonetic/phonemic coding ability

2. Grammatical sensitivity

3. Rote learning ability

4. Inductive learning ability

(Group 5 Putri & Rizka) 11


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Carroll argues that aptitude can betaken as a capacity that enhances

the rate and ease of learning.Aptitude tests therefore provide aprediction of rate of learning.

(Group 5 Putri & Rizka) 12


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(Cummins 1979)

Cognitive/ Academic Language ProficiencyC A L P

As opposed to

Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills

B I C S



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CALP refers to the specific literary language

that is required in academic communication. Knowledge of the less frequent vocabulary

of English as well as the ability to interpretand produce increasingly complex written

(and oral) languages. BICS refers to the language that students for

casual, face to face communication

The ability to carry on a conversation in

familiar face to face situations. It involves theuse of high-frequency words and simplegrammatical constructions.



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putri & rizka- age, apptitude & other things

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