Characteristics Of A First And Second Language ...

Over the past decades, a variety of approaches have been proposed to explain the phenomenon of language acquisition. These models were influenced by variety of disciplines and research directions, such as cognitive psychology, linguistics, etc.; therefore, the models relate to linguistic development in various ways. One of the most striking differences between the approaches is the perception of the place of heredity and environment in the process of acquiring language, but as we shall see each approach gives them a different weight and importance. In this paper we describe three approaches to acquire first and second language: Behaviorism, Innatism and Social-interactionist. During the work we will try to understand the characteristics of each approach; how they differ from each other; advantages and disadvantages; and what aspects from each theory that we should combine in our class. Behaviorism By the end of the fifties of the twentieth century, it was widely believed that children learn their mother tongue by imitating and practicing the speech of their parents and people in their environment till it becomes a habit. Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner, the founders of this approach, argue that the language is learned behavior in a similar way to learning other behaviors and it done by mechanisms of conditioning classical and operant. Classical conditioning is the relation between a natural response and stimulation, so the most important factor in thisShow MoreRelatedHow Languages Are Learnt3034 Words   |  13 PagesLecture 1 How languages are learned? 1. Popular views about language learning. 2. How children learn their first language: a) the behaviorist position; b) the annalist position; c) the â€Å"critical† period hypothesis; d) the interactionist position. Every few years new foreign language teaching methods arrive on the scene. New textbooks appear far more frequently. New methods and textbooks may reflect current developments in linguistic/applied linguistic theory or recent pedagogical