: Eva Cano Fernández
: Language phenomena in second language acquisition Between-language competition and reverse transfer
: Universidad Pontificia Comillas
: 9788484688976
: Biblioteca Comillas. Educación
: 1
: CHF 6.20
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: Schulpädagogik, Didaktik, Methodik
: English
: 84
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Bilingualism is nowadays a global reality. In Spain, over a million and a half Primary School students follow a bilingual curriculum, which has brought about a change of paradigm with regard to the teaching of English as a foreign language. In fact, alongside and as a result of the MEC-British Council bilingual project of 1996, different parallel initiatives have arisen over the years which have consolidated the gradual implementation of bilingual English-Spanish teaching, as well as the teaching of certain academic content in English through the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach. In view of this reality, this work sheds light on the main linguistic phenomena which require our attention in bilingual educational contexts where there is strong between-language competition. Among them, it is worth highlighting the acquisition of foreign languages and second languages, the cognitive and metacognitive processes present in the bilingual brain, multilingualism, interference and reverse transfer, fossilisation and language attrition. All this knowledge will enable bilingual educators to adapt their teaching strategies to achieve a correct use of English and Spanish, as well as to maximise the acquisition of content in both languages, especially in contexts where the L1 and the L2 are used interchangeably.

Bilingualism is widespread in Spain, with over a million primary students in bilingual programs. This work explores key linguistic phenomena in bilingual education, like language acquisition, cognitive processes, and interference, to improve teaching strategies.

Chapter 1. LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Chapter 1
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

1. Evolutionary biology and cultural evolution

The origins of human language have long been a subject of debate among linguists, sociologists and psychologists. At present, the most plausible view is that, in essence, human language responds to an innate instinct, unique to our species. From this perspective, it is argued that the complex task of acquiring a language is facilitated by the existence of specific language knowledge which babies have at birth. This knowledge enables children to speak and understand their native language fluently in their first three to four years of life, regardless of their culture or living conditions.

But, what is it exactly that babies know at birth? Noam Chomsky has given an answer to this question: babies are born with the faculty of language and with an underlying universal language structure which he calls «universal grammar» (UG) (Chomsky, 2000, p. 18). It is a strictly human ability, biologically predetermined, which consists of two types of components: a set of general «principles», innate and abstract, which determine the possible combinations in human languages, and a set of «parameters», which allow interlinguistic variation, that is to say, variation devices which enable languages to differ from each other within very precise limits (Chomsky, 2000, pp. 62-63).

Language uniqueness must have some biological basis. In this sense, Fitch (2000) states that humans count on a unique productive speech apparatus, a vocal tract with a very unusual structure which enables humans to produce a wide variety of discriminable sounds. This view fits in well with Chomsky’s «argument from the poverty of the stimulus» (1980). According to him, humans possess a highly structured language-specific mental faculty which works as an acquisition device prefiguring language features. He understands language acquisition as «the growth of cognitive structures along an internally directed course under the triggering and partially shaping effect of the environment» (1980, p. 34). Pinker and Bloom (1990) support this argument and add that human language results from the Darwinian theory of natural selection.

However, this view only accounts for part of the explanation of language evolution. Language acquisition is a flexible process of social learning in a specific culture (Paradowski& Bator, 2016). As Kirby (1999) puts it, humans observe the lin