UNIT 1 LANGUAGE LEARNING AND

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Structure
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 What is Language Learning?
1.3 What is Language Acquisition?
1.4 The Process of Language Development
1.5 Vygotsky and Language Acquisition
1.6 Let Us Sum Up
1.7 Suggested Readings
1.8 Answers

1.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit you should be able to:
 Identify the different ways in which learners learn and acquire language;
 Explain how language learning takes place and how language develops and
grows in stages; and
 understand the major theories of language learning and development.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
For quite a long time our understanding of language teaching-learning did not
regard learning of language from the learners’ point of view. It was assumed
that the teacher teaches and the learner learns. Whatever the teacher ‘gives’
to the learner, the learner takes in, and then produces it as language output.
It was largely during the twentieth century, with the growth of research in areas
of psychology, linguistics and also the biological sciences, insights into language
learning grew to create a progressively better understanding both of the nature
of language itself and the nature of learning.
In the course of this unit we will look first at views on learning and subsequently
the views on acquisition, culminating in ideas on language development. We will
refer to the major scholars who have researched in the area.

1.2 WHAT IS LANGUAGE LEARNING?

Acquisition happens as a natural process, learning in an instructed more formal
situation. One way of approaching this question is to equate language learning
with all other kinds of learning. Learning anything can be regarded as a change
in the behaviour pattern, so that a human being can do something, whether
it is to walk, or ride a bicycle, or tie shoe-laces, or speak. As the need to 73
The Nature of Language communicate with others is a very basic need for every person, learning how
Learning
to speak a language is a crucial form of behaviour for humans. And understanding
how humans learn language is easier when we observe behaviour rather than
inner states of mind or attitudes which we can’t observe.
Environment plays a very important role in influencing all kinds of behaviour,
whether verbal or non-verbal. The sense-organs of humans and animals are tuned
to receiving many kinds of stimulus from the outer world. These lead to
responses, which may sometimes be involuntary, such as a reflex action, (like
salivation at the sight of food, or knee jerking, or blinking) or it may be voluntary
— that is, the organism responds consciously. There is a connection between
the sense organs. A baby watches the way the mother’s lips move to utter
a sound and hears the sound. It moves its lips in the same way to utter the
same sound. Basic imitation thus becomes a form of learning. Then the same
sound is heard with the same movement and repeated again and again. In this
way, the behaviour is reinforced. This forms an observable and predictable
behaviour pattern. From the very beginning, a set of habits is formed. When
many sounds are heard and repeated, they form set of speech sounds that are
the first steps in language learning.
Patterns of stimulus-response (also represented as the equation S>R) form
the basis of the explanation of learning that has been given by the school of
Behaviourist psychology.

Learning as Conditioning
Classical Conditioning: The Russian psychologist, Pavlov, was the first to
formulate conditioned response (or CR) principle. This principle stems from the
possibility of exploiting natural tendencies of an organism to respond in specific
ways to stimuli, a stimulus being anything which elicits or calls forth a response
of observable behaviour. Salivating of the dog at the sight of food, jerking of
the knee in response to a tap below the knee, blinking in response to a flash
of light, are all natural reflexes or responses present without prior learning. These
are referred to as unconditioned reflexes (UR) in the sense that they are inborn
or spontaneous.
According to the classical conditioning theory, if a second stimulus is frequently
presented just before or simultaneously with the unconditioned stimulus, then
this second stimulus presently comes to elicit the same response. This second
stimulus is then referred to as a conditioned stimulus (CS), in the sense that
the organism’s reaction to it has to be conditioned or learned.
In the now famous Pavlovian experiments, a dog was presented food and it
responded by salivating (UR). Then each time that the food was presented a
bell was sounded (CS). Eventually the bell elicited the response of salivation.
Diagrammatically this can be represented like this:
STIMULUS RESPONSE
FOOD (UNCONDITIONED) SALIVATION
FOOD +BELL SALIVATION
BELL - (CONDITIONED) SALIVATION

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A somewhat more complicated and more widely applicable learning theory is Language Learning and
Language Acquisition
termed operant or instrumental conditioning. These principles were largely
developed by the American psychologist Skinner and represent to some extent
a break from the classical stimulus-response models described above. Skinner
proposes two kinds of responses − elicited and emitted. Responses elicited by
known stimuli he calls respondents; responses emitted without direct reference
to known stimuli he calls operants. The operant is postulated as more significant
in human learning than the respondent (cf. Skinner, 1938). These responses are
called thus because they operate on the environment.
B.F. Skinner experimented on rats to show that responses can even be given
without reference to the direct stimuli, and result in change in behaviour.
In his experiment a rat was placed in a dark box with a lever. Each time the
lever was pressed, a food pellet dropped. Initially the rat presses the lever
accidently as it moves around the box. Then when it realizes that on pressing
the lever it gets food, it learns to ‘operate’ by pressing the lever, thus obtaining
food. When the rat now presses a lever, for example, it has changed the state
of the environment by its response or operant. The objective of the operant-
conditioning procedure is simply to increase the frequency of the response
— so that the rat presses the lever more often. On the basis of this type of
animal behaviour, Skinner defined the notion of reinforcement. If a certain action
repeatedly leads to a positive or negative result, the odds of recurrence or non-
recurrence of this action will increase. Skinner speaks of positive reinforcement
if the action recurs more frequently, and negative reinforcement if the action
is not repeated.
In classical conditioning, the reinforcement is correlated with the stimuli. In
operant conditioning on the other hand, the reinforcement is correlated with
the response. When an operant has been emitted naturally, it is reinforced by
reward, i.e., the naturally emitted desired behaviour is reinforced.
The cry of a child when it is hungry stimulates the mother to give it milk that
satisfies its hunger. After some time this behaviour is reinforced and the response
is applied to other things that the child wants. The first stimulus in the baby
is hunger, leading to a response such as crying. The baby’s crying is a stimulus
for the mother, whose response is to get milk. Certainly the first stimulus-response
patterns are based on satisfaction of instinctual needs such as hunger, or warmth.
As wants increase, the child may also use other responses such as gestures.
These may elicit desired responses and the pattern will get reinforced, but if
the desired response is not obtained, the reinforcement will get weak, or will
be negative i.e. the behavioural pattern will not be formed. Therefore, the pattern
of reinforcement through reward is an important aspect of how environmental
conditions affect behaviour.
The linguist Bloomfield, who was also a behaviourist, explained this process
in the context of language. Language learning is also a pattern of stimulus and
response. Bloomfield suggests that a stimulus ‘S’ from the external world gets
a response in the form of an action, e.g. if a person is hungry and sees an
apple, this is the stimulus ‘S’. If the person then takes the apple and eats it,
this is the response ‘R’. If, however, the person says ‘I am hungry, I want
the apple’, this is a speech response ‘R’ to the stimulus ‘S’. It may also be
a verbal stimulus ‘S’ for another person, who may then respond by an action
of getting the apple, ‘R’, or respond by speech ‘R’. Speech stimuli are thus 75
The Nature of Language substitute stimuli, substituting for the action. But they are equally a form of
Learning
behaviour. Like other kinds of behaviour, verbal behaviour also follows a pattern
of stimulus and response leading to habit formation through repetition and
reinforcement.
To a large extent, this is useful in understanding language learning. The physical
and social environment plays a big role in triggering the patterns of stimulus
and response. Many speech sounds uttered in the immediate environment of
the learner are observed by the learner to elicit encouraging responses from
others. When the learner also imitates the same sounds and produces similar
sounds, and gets similar encouragement, the pattern is reinforced. Encouragement
is often in the form of actual reward or encouraging speech. Surely the delight
on the parents’ faces when the child first speaks and says ‘Papa’ or ‘Mama’
is a response infinitely valuable for the child, as it will reinforce the association
between speech and parental approval which in turn leads to more parental
attention and the child will be convinced that these forms of behaviour will enable
her to change other people’s behaviour towards herself, and the world around
her.
Learning is conditioning. Is it conscious? Can we say that repetitive behaviour
is conscious or merely habit driven? If a person is constantly repeating the same
responses to a given stimuli, how does that person manage to speak words
or sentences that she has not heard before? Perhaps a simple stimulus-response
pattern works in early stages of learning, given the importance of reward and
encouragement, but does learning remain mechanical at all times? Is it different
for children and adults? Is learning the same for a second language as it is
for the first language? Explaining language as conditioned behaviour may not
answer all these questions as language in humans attains much more complexity
than animal behaviour.
Check Your Progress 1
1 Pick out about five key words from the text that describe the behaviourist
point of view.
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2 Which of the following is supported by the ideas given above? Tick the
correct statements.
i Learners learn by imitating that which they receive as stimulus.
ii Reinforcement of a stimulus leads to conditioning.
iii Conditioning does not imply a change in behaviour.
iv Speech stimuli are a form of behaviour.
v Learning is dependent on rewards and punishment.
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 Language Learning and
1.3 WHAT IS LANGUAGE ACQUISITION? Language Acquisition

Take the example of grammar. A learner may be made conscious of the rules
of grammar and be told that these must be learnt and remembered. This usually
takes place in a formal context, such as the classroom. On the other hand,
a learner may understand a grammatical rule without being told about the rules,
or without attention being drawn to them. In acquisition, there is a cognitive
grasp of the underlying structures. This happens in a natural manner, thus it
is best to call it acquisition rather than learning.
The understanding of language acquisition began with an idea which was very
different from the behaviourist view of language as conditioned learning. As
mentioned earlier, one of the questions that the behaviourist view could not
answer was that learners begin to speak language structures that they have not
heard before. How does that happen? It was Noam Chomsky who gave an
explanation for this: human beings have an inborn capacity to acquire language,
by means of which they can generate infinite utterances. The human brain is
‘ready’ for language, in the sense that when children are exposed to speech,
certain general principles for discovering or structuring language automatically
begin to operate. This is called the Language Acquisition Device (LAD).
It works at a subconscious level, and includes knowledge about the nature and
structure of human language, which may be universal. With its help, the learner
makes hypothesis about language and tests it with the input s/he receives.
Chomsky calls it competence, which is the internal knowledge of rules, and
distinguishes it from performance, which is the actual use of this knowledge
in speech or writing.
These ideas about language acquisition came to be called mentalism, as
opposed to language learning as external behaviour which the behaviourists had
emphasized. Some of the important aspects of language acquisition are that it
takes place over a period of time in which the language develops not through
imitation but through an internal process of rule-making by the learner. This
is shown through the deviations that we find in the language of children. If child
language learning were a form of imitation, the child’s language would be exactly
the same as the adult’s. But this is not so. It means that the child is following
an internal pathway in acquiring the language. Moreover, these deviations have
been found to be systematic. We can view them as a part of the acquisition
process.
Some examples of this are: when they acquire English, children use the regular
form of the past tense — e.g. telled, goed, etc., instead of what the adults
speak i.e. told, went, etc. This shows that the children are over generalizing
the irregular form from the regular form of these verbs — that is, they are
assuming that all verbs will have ‘ed’ at the end to mark the past. The fact
that most children at an early stage in the acquisition of English make this
overgeneralization proves that it is systematic. Similarly, the use of the plural
is over generalized e.g. mouses, mans, etc. While adults use a lot of function
words like articles, children do not use them at early stages of acquisition. This
conclusively proves that acquisition follows a path of hypothesis-forming,
deviation and rule-construction which is a mental ability and not imitative
behaviour.

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The Nature of Language Check Your Progress 2
Learning
1 Try to think of some deviations that you have found in children’s language
as distinct from adult language. Note them down here.
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2 What is LAD? How does it operate?
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1.4 THE PROCESS OF LANGUAGE

DEVELOPMENT
While some things about the learning of language can be understood by the
explanations provided earlier, further understanding of the process of language
development is needed. It is clear that language acquisition is not present at
birth, but takes place through development of interaction between the external
world and the internal mental processes of the learner.
Firstly, there are cognitive processes taking place in the mind of the learner.
The psychologist Piaget explained the developmental stages as those that involve
a child’s logical reasoning and other conceptual capacities. These are reflected
in the child’s use of language, and they enable the child to discover structures
in the language that it receives from the environment. Further, another psychologist
Vygotsky explained that these capacities are constantly expanding and modifying
the input and are in turn modified and expanded by the language already acquired.
Thus cognitive, social and language acquisition skills develop together.
Piaget considered the following stages in the interaction between the child and
her environment: the assimilation stage, when the child absorbs the stimulus
from the environment, and responds with the responses it has already acquired;
then it reorganizes its own thinking to develop new patterns of responses. There
is an interaction between what Piaget calls the old and new schemata in the
child’s cognition.
Piaget then elaborated on the next stage, that of accommodation, in which
the schemata are more fully reorganized. According to him, the stages through
which children pass in their cognitive development are “the sensori-motor, from
birth to about 24 months, when children understand their environment by acting
on it, by touch and sight, assimilating different things from their environment.
They are not able to deal with abstract concepts at this stage. Then, at the
pre-operational stage, from around two to seven years, children develop a
symbolic system, becoming familiar with concepts such as number, time,
categories, and visual complexities. At this time, they can deal with images,
drawing and painting and letters of the alphabet. At the next stage, the concrete
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operational stage (seven to eleven years), children can perform many more Language Learning and
Language Acquisition
mental operations and are able to conceptualize. At the formal operational
stage, (eleven years and after), they can make inferences, deductions and deal
with abstract concepts. These developments are linked to and often reflected
in language acquisition, though the stages are not exactly parallel. A lot depends
on individual abilities and on the kind of input which is provided by society
and environment.
Following from the above, it can be said that there is an acquisition order: first,
the simplified structures are understood and acquired, and then the elaboration
of the code takes place. Research done by Slobin has resulted in formulating
‘acquisition principles’ or ‘operating principles’, as follows:
i. Meaning:
Children look for clear cues for underlying meaning: The full form is used before
the reduced or compressed form, showing that the full meaning is important
for the child. For example, the child prefers ‘the book which he read’ rather
than ‘the book he read’, or ‘I would’ rather than ‘I’d’.
i i . Modifications:
Children look for changes in the form of words: Children assume that words
are modified systematically, to bring about changes in meaning. A test was done
to see what children acquiring English do when given two words: ‘wug’ and
‘gutch’, pointing to pictures of two animals. When shown two of the first, the
children said ‘wugs’, while when they were shown two of the second, they
said ‘gutches’. This shows an awareness that they could understand the principles
on which the two words were being modified. However, they may overgeneralize
when faced with exceptions to the rule. So they might add ‘es’ to all similar
looking words — house, mouse, louse, etc.
iii. Order:
Children look for the order of words, example: prefixes and suffixes. Children
follow consistency, that there is an order of parts of words within words and
order of words within sentences. Children in the developmental stage of learning
English rarely misplace the elements like ed talk, toy the. Of course, they may
acquire the articles at a later stage, so at an earlier stage they may say simply
toy rather than the toy, but they would not acquire it as toy the.

1.5 VYGOTSKY AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

While Chomsky and Piaget primarily concentrated on the cognitive aspect,
another dimension was added by Vygotsky,
According to Vygotsky, all fundamental cognitive activities including language take
place in a matrix of social history. He believed that cognitive skills and patterns
of thinking are not determined by innate factors but are the product of the
interaction between the individual and the socio-cultural institution in which the
individual grows up. Consequently, the history of society in which a child is
reared, and the child’s personal history are crucial determinants of the way in
which an individual would think (Murray Thomas 1993).

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The Nature of Language One important tenet in Vygotsky’s theory is the “zone of proximal development”.
Learning
The zone of proximal development is the difference between a child’s capacity
to solve problems on his/her own and his/her capacity to solve them with
assistance. The actual developmental level refers to all the functions and activities
that a child can perform on his/her own independently, without the help of anyone
else. However, the zone of proximal development includes all the functions and
activities that a child can perform only with the assistance from someone else.
This person who helps the child could be any adult and even a peer. Vygotsky’s
zone of proximal development has implications for language teachers. One of
them is that the social environment of the learner plays a role in determining
how the child will learn how to think because according to Vygotsky thought
and language are interconnected.

Vygotsky believed that an essential feature of learning is that it awakens a variety

of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when the child
is interacting with people in his/her environment and cooperating with his/her
peers.

Therefore, when it comes to language learning, the authenticity of the environment

and the affinity between its participants are essential elements to make the learner
feel part of this environment. These elements are rarely predominant in
conventional classrooms. (source: http://www.sk.com.br/sk-vygot.html)

Comprehensible Input

Although Vygotsky and Krashen come from entirely different backgrounds, the
application of their theories to second language teaching has some similarities.
It is now understood that language acquisition is meaning oriented and
communication oriented. Language is acquired not when the input is repeated
several times, but when that input is understood, when the learner understands
what it means and can make use of it. Stephen Krashen, one of the researchers
in language acquisition, has called it comprehensible input. A learner gets a
lot of input from the outside world, but only that input gets acquired which
is comprehensible to the learner. According to Krashen, there is a monitor in
the learner’s mind which helps in monitoring the input and makes use of it vis-
a-vis the knowledge which has already been acquired, leading to an output.
The “monitor” is constrained by three factors: ‘time’, ‘focus on form’ to modify
the output, and ‘knowledge of rules’. The monitor allows the learner to self-
correct, using the acquired knowledge in production. Thus, the monitor helps
to modify, improve upon or correct the acquired system for better accuracy.
Something that is crucial to the working of the monitor is the affective filter,
which, when it is raised, allows the input to be understood. If it is lowered,
it prevents input from being understood. Factors like stress and anxiety can
lower the affective filter. Therefore a stress-free environment is essential
for language acquisition.

Other studies have shown that the comprehensible input that a child can make
use of is of a structured kind. Adults talk to children in a simpler language
than they do to other adults. The mother talks in a simplified way to the child,
a special language which is known as ‘motherese’. De Villiers and De Villiers
summarized the differences between adult language and the language spoken
with children as follows:
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Level of Difference in Characteristics Language Learning and
Language Acquisition
Phonological: Altered tone: higher pitch, exaggerated, clear articulation, slower
speech, more pauses
Syntactic: Shorter utterances, less complex, less embedded, less broken
sentences, repetition, more content words, fewer function words, more questions,
more imperatives
Semantic: Limited vocabulary use, concrete referents, less abstract items, limited
range of semantic relations
These differences are evident when adults and children interact, as adults
(particularly mothers) are mostly conscious of the child’s limited knowledge and
range, and try to make language easier for the child to comprehend. It is
significant that imperatives abound in adult-child language, as children are mostly
being asked to follow instructions, and discouraged if they don’t. However,
children also overhear normal adult language, and perhaps they can comprehend
that, since they sometimes show evidence of such language in interactions. Thus
distinguishing between different kinds of input is not always easy or uncomplicated.
Some items in language seem simple but are acquired late, while others might
be acquired early, for instance, in English, the past tense and subject-verb
agreement are parts of the grammar that are acquired late.
Check Your Progress 3
1 From the above discussion, what do you understand of the difference
between Chomsky’s, Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s approach? List the differences.
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2 What are the functions of the ‘monitor’ in language acquisition?
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3 From the explanations regarding language learning and acquisition, think
about the difference between learning and acquisition, and explain it in your
own words.
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1.6 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit we have distinguished between language acquisition and language
learning and acquainted you with the major learning theories of the twentieth
century.
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The Nature of Language These include the Behaviourist Learning Theories, the Mentalist/Cognitivist and
Learning
Procedural Approach, the Developmental Interaction Approach, Vyogotsky’s
Zone of Proximal Development and Krashen’s Monitor Model.
It is essential for an English teacher to understand these theories/approaches
because they have influenced second language acquisition theories as well as
teaching methodologies. Also, all these theories give an insight into the language
learning process of the learner, so to that extent it helps you understand your
student better.

1.7 SUGGESTED READINGS

Chomsky, N. (1959) ‘Review of B, F. Skinner, Verbal Behaviour’, Language
35, 26-58.
Clark, H. and Clark, E. (1977), Psychology and language: An Introduction
to Psycholinguistics. New York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
De Villiers, J. and De Villiers, P. (1978), Language Acquisition. Harvard
University Press.
Krashen, S. (1976), Formal and Informal Linguistic Environments in
Language Learning and Language Acquisition, in TESOL Quarterly 10, 157-
168.
Piaget, J. (1926). The language and thought of the child. English ed. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Skinner. B.F. (1957), Verbal Behaviour, New York, Copley Publishing Group.
Slobin, D. (1973), Cognitive Prerequisites for the Development of Grammar
in Ferguson and Slobin, Studies of Child Language Acquisition, New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Van Deer Veer, R. and Valsiner, J. ed. (1994), The Vygotsky Reader, Oxford:
Blackwell.

1.8 ANSWERS
Check Your Progress 1
1 Imitation, reinforcement, conditioning, stimulus-response, repetition, habit-
formation
2 (i), (ii) and (iv) are correct, (iii) and (v) are not correct.
Check Your Progress 2
1. Do it yourself.
2. LAD is the language acquicition device which is innate to all normal
childern. It is argued that children are born with an innate capacity for
language development. The human brain has an innate ability to learn
language. When a child is exposed to speech, certain general principles

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 for structuring language operate automatically against which it tests the input Language Learning and
Language Acquisition
s/he requires. The principle constitutes the child’s LAD.
Check Your Progress 3
1. Chomsky and Piaget were interested in the cognitive aspects of learning,
and in the case of Chomsky specifically language learning. Vygotsky on
the other hand believed that all fundamental cognitive activities including
language take place in a matrix of social history. He believed that cognitive
skills and patterns of thinking are not determined by innate factors but are
the product of the interaction between the individual and the socio-cultural
institution where the individual grows up.
2. According to Krashen, the acquisition system initiates utterance, while the
learning system performs the role of the ‘monitor’ or the ‘editor’. The
‘monitor’ acts in a planning, editing and correcting function when three
specific conditions are met: that is, the second language learner has sufficient
time at his/her disposal, he/she focuses on form or thinks about correctness,
and he/she knows the rule.
3. Acquisition refers to the mastery of language as a result of exposure.
Learning, on the other hand, refers to mastery of a language through
conscious study of the second language.

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