Hi Whizzes!

Welcome to Part 3 of our series on the Six Principles of Language Acquisition! Here we go! 

Principle 3 

Language Acquisition is Constrained by Internal and External Factors

The externals are easier to understand:

• Quality and Quantity of Input
• Environment
• Amount of Communicative Opportunities

It's the internals which throw me and everyone else for a loop. You've probably tried to acquire a non-native tongue before, in a classroom setting. After even one week, I bet, you began to see who was FAST and who seemed to have a ton of bricks between themselves and the language. Why would this be so? If all of you have had the exact same exposure, in the exact same context, to the language? Internal Factors, folks. 

Enter my friend Elizabeth Morland Grace de Jones--who by the time she died at 102 years old had lived in Lima more than half her life. She spoke perfect Spanish, with a perfect British accent. ‍ 

No amount of time or input could erase it. 

Bonkers. 

Internal Factors, folks (apparently the phrase of the day! Found you!). 

To constrain means to restrict in scope, extent, or activity, or to compel someone or something toward a particular course of action.

Some basics about Second Language Acquisition

Language Acquisition is Slow and Piecemeal

We’ve all seen ads telling us: “Learn to speak Chinese in just thirty days!” Is this possible? No.A person can learn to perform certain functions in Mandarin in thirty days but would have tremendous difficulty actually speaking it. A mental representation and the basic aspects of language are pretty much in place by age seven, when a child has spent around 15,000 hours with their first language. Also, by age seven language acquisition is not complete. Ok, that's the SLOW part. Now the PIECEMEAL part. 

In addition to being slow, neither first nor second language learners get a ‘particular thing’ all at once.  Learners don’t first learn present tense, then past, then future – they learn them all simultaneously.‍  

Which, yes lovely folks, is why when a human is in a language class where the instructor is ticking off things like Present Tense, DONE, Past Tense, DONE, Pluscuamperfect, DONE...you're in for a wild ride into the ether or non-learning. 

Wanna watch the most hilarious SNL skit on what most Spanish classes are like? Here ya go. My friend Heber sent it to me. 

The most hilarious part about that skit (for me) is that when the people who actually speak Spanish take over, they're doing it all wrong too--no folks, you DON'T need to learn the alphabet in a language class. When was the last time you went up to someone and said something like:

"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP."

Exactly.

But, what comes next is even more fascinating: 

Learners Come to (implicitly) Know More About Language Than They Have Been Exposed To

!!!!!!!!         !!!!!!!

Everyone knows that in English we can contract want to to wanna, so that I want to go becomes I wanna go. But, we would never say Who do you wanna fire Susie at the meeting? We must say Who do you want to fire Susie at the meeting? If you are a native or non-native speaker of English – did you ever learn this? Did anyone teach you? No. So, how do we come to know what is not possible? Something happens in our brain that organizes and constrains language without us learning this from the environment or explicitly.  

Almost all L2 learners fall short of native-like competency and ability.

If we took 100 learners with the relatively same experience and time acquiring another language, we would find considerable variation in ‘how far’ each person has gotten and ‘how good’ that person is with the language. The research is not clear on why non-nativeness seems to be the norm – but the most likely answer is degree of exposure – when and how can an L2 learner get 15,000 hours of exposure? And remember, that amount is the amount a seven-year-old child has, and we all know how seven-year-olds speak.

Internal Factors

So, something compels language acquisition towards a particular course of action (definition of constrain). Something compels -ing to be acquired before past tense in English. Something compels ser to be acquired before estar in Spanish. Something compels learners to develop knowledge of impossibility and ungrammaticality. This is what it means for acquisition to be constrained by internal factors.

There is a theory that posits that language is special, that it is not learned like anything else. It is called Universal Grammar, called UG (no...not the UGGLY boot brand) for short. Here is the theory:

• Language is unique to humans and, as such, is a result of genetic predisposition.
• There are universal properties of language that all human languages must obey.
• Languages, no matter what they are, are restricted to those properties provided by UG.
• The properties of language contained in UG are specific to language and are not shared by any other cognitive system (vision, reasoning).

External Factors

Before the 1970s, almost everyone believed that learners acquired language through study, memorization, rote practice, and purposeful intervention from teachers. Some people still believe this. However, a major discovery of second language research in the 1970s was the critical role of input: language that learners hear or see in a communicative context.

As long as the purpose of the first or second language learner is to understand a message, then the language the learner is exposed to qualifies as input.

Thus, language acquisition is a BYPRODUCT of learners attempting to comprehend language during communication.

This does not mean comprehension guarantees acquisition. Nothing does. It simply means that comprehension is a requirement for acquisition.

Why input and not study+practice? UG and the general learning mechanisms can operate only on data contained in input.

One external factor that affects acquisition is quantity of input a learner receives – the greater the exposure the more opportunities for acquisition.

Then there is quality. Good input must be comprehensible. Incomprehensible language is just noise. Good input can have some or all of these qualities: be engaging, important, entertaining, compelling and have a purpose.

Then there is interaction. Research suggests that input that is part of interaction may be better than input that is not. That is, input is better when someone is talking with a learner, not at a learner.

Remember, that interaction does not necessarily mean the learner is talking – a head nod, a frown, thumbs up or down, all of these count as interaction, negotiation and communication.

That's all, folks. Oh no, INTERNAL FACTORS, FOLKS. THAT'S THE PHRASE OF THE DAY. 

My question today is:

Have you ever met anyone who lived in a country for multiple decades and spoke that country's native language with a HEAVY non-native accent? Tell me about them! 

Constanza Ontaneda

your own personal Language Acquisition Witch