Imagine a baby learning words for the first time from immediate family members a
ID: 3471347 • Letter: I
Question
Imagine a baby learning words for the first time from immediate family members and close relatives. Picture a group of adolescents preparing for an exam in a second language. Envision adults using language-learning software before travel to a foreign country. Consider the effects of biology and environment on language acquisition in these examples.
Compare the ease of learning one’s native language as a child to the acquisition of a second language as a teenager or an adult. Do some individuals pick up new languages more easily than others? Do some children acquire language skills more readily? What might answers to these questions indicate as to the contributions of biological and environmental factors to language acquisition?
For this Discussion, select one biological and one environmental factor that influence native and second language acquisition. Consider how each factor might influence both native and second language acquisition.
With these thoughts in mind:
Post a description of the biological and environmental factors that you selected.
Then explain how each might influence native and second language acquisition.
Provide examples to support your response.
Explanation / Answer
The development of language is determined by factors in both the person's neurobiological make-up as well as his environment.
The first few years of life is the critical time in which the individual acquires a first language (usually the native language), when presented with adequate stimuli. If language input does not occur during these first few years of life, the individual will never achieve a full command of language
The language capability develops inhuman beings is the maturity of the brain. As the brain becomes more complex, the role that learning plays in the acquisition and refinement of social and communicative skills becomes increasingly significant.
The relative maturation levels of the human brain at birth are significantly different from its maturation levels during later infancy. The more immature the brain, the greater its flexibility is in what can be learnt by a developing organism.
Therefore, it is easier to acquire a language when the individual is a baby in comparison to when he is an adult.
The ease of learning a native language is much higher than the ease of learning a second language; however, a child is more capable of picking up more than one language than an adult.
However, we must consider the two important factors which influence the acquisition of language:
For this discussion, we take an example:
‘X’ is a baby, who has a comfortable house, loving and caring parents, and is well provided for - her parents are very well off. She lives in a town where they only speak English. The baby is very healthy and happy, however, she is suffering from an illness which hinders her hearing abilities.
Environmental Factors:
Biological Factors:
Deafness will cause problems with understanding spoken language or other auditory cues. It will, in turn, affect speech development. But X's parents, being well off, can afford advanced technology, to get X the required help, which can cure her deafness, and allow her to hear and hence grasp language. As soon as she will be able to hear, she will start acquiring the language spoken around her by her parents and other family members, and slowly her speech will develop and she'll have a better grasp over the language.
So we can see, that though her biological factors were limiting her abilities of language acquisition, her environmental factors helped her cope up. If we look carefully, her environment has a lot of elements which affects her abilities of acquiring more than one language. As a child she will have more ease than an adult while acquiring a second language, however, she won't be able to acquire it unless she goes to a school where they have a second language as a subject, becuase other than that, she wont learn much by socialising with the immediate people around her, since they only use one language, i.e. English- hence her immediate environment also decides how much or if at all she will acquire a second language.