Third Answer

EQ: What is the most important factor in language acquisition for a non-native speaker.

• Proximity of a persons native tongue to the family group of his or her target language is the most important factor in language acquisition for a non-native speaker.
• When languages are in the same family group they share lexicon making lexical acquisition faster. For example German and English are in the same language family (Germanic) and they share words like: Wanderlust, Blitz, Kindergarten
• When languages are in the same family group they share similar syntax. For example Spanish and French are both part of the same language family and therefore have similar syntax like: Subject Verb Object to emphasize the object
• Language family groups can cause positive or negative transfers between the native language and the target language. For example if a Chinese man were trying to speak a Germanic language using Chinese syntax the transfer would be negative. If the same man used his Chinese syntax to speak Cantonese the syntax transfer would be negative.
• The closer a target language is to a persons native tongue the faster they will be able to acquire the target language.

March Post

          I am continuing my mentor ship with Frau Tsia at Mt. Sac helping out and observing the German II class. Frau Tsia is also the German teacher at Claremont High School. She asked me if I would be able to help her create the program for her up and coming Gartenfest German poetry recitation. I accepted the assignment because it would be a good way to look at work of high school students. Up until this point I have really only seen L2 acquisition class work of college students. For the program I helped proof read and format the program. The program contained all the poems that were to be recited in both German and English. My main job besides formatting was to make sure that the German matched the  English. I was able to relate my work doing the proof reading to my possible third answer to my essential question which is language family proximity to ones native tongue. There were a lot of positive and negative lexical transfers within the translations. A lot of the negative transfers had to do with false cognates between German and English. A false cognate is a word that sounds like another word, but has a different meaning. The most frequent false cognate in the translations was the German word "will" (Which means to want to so something) to the English word "will" (Which means that one is going to do something). The Gartenfest occurred on March 13th and my mentor was kind enough to put my name on the program (Pictured Above).

Fourth Interview

Blog 17: Fourth Interview

1. What were your intrinsic motivation to learn your L2?

2. What were your extrinsic motivations to learn your L2?

3. Which motivation intrinsic or extrinsic was most motivational to you?          Why?

4. Did you have any motivation due because you wanted to assimilate into       your target languages society?

5. With the languages you have learned were there any that shared a             language family? If yes/no how did this help or hinder your L2                   acquisition?

6. In what ways did age of acquisition affect the learning of your L2?

7. What were the differences for you between learning a language before     puberty than after puberty?

8. Why do you believe some grammatical concepts were harder to learn        than others?

9. Why do you believe it is harder to learn a language after puberty?

10. How does proximity to the target language speaking group aid to              language acquisition?

11. How did language affect transition from one culture to another?

12. What helps you code switch between languages?

13. What language do you think in and how does that affect your oral              communication?

14. As an immigrant how did assimilation come into play when you were          learning your new countries language?

15. Is one's grammatical judgement better in languages that they learned        at an earlier age?

16. Approximately how long does it take to develop grammatically                    judgement? 

17. How beneficial are lexical transfers between languages that are in the      same language family? 

18. How beneficial are syntactical transfers between languages that are in      the same language family? 

19. What benefits does drill memorization methods have in SLA?

20. What language acquisition method benefited you the most? Why?

February Post

This Tuesday I started my new mentorship at a German II course taught at Mt. Sac. I really enjoyed being there the first day and speaking with the students. In the German II class the students will be learning how to speak in the past tense which is a major and complicated part of second language acquisition especially in the German language. The first day was mainly review and introduction. The students reviewed how to create statements and questions. I sat on the side and took notes about how the students spoke. I noticed a lot of directly translated syntax from English to German. Students would use English syntax to form German sentences. This helps support my third answer to my EQ is language family proximity. This transfer of syntax would be helpful if German syntax was similar to English syntax, but since it's not the syntax gets in the way of language learning. If they were similar it would be greatly beneficial to the leaner and would speed up the acquisition process.

Advisory Meeting #2

What is the most important factor in second language acquisition for a non-native speaker?

The most important factor in second language acquisition for a non-native speaker is motivation because if someone is not motivated they will never successfully master a language.

• Without motivation one will not put time into acquiring a second language. If someone doesn't have a reason to  learn Finnish they will most likely not be able to master the language.

• The most motivational things are love and money. If someone is told that if they learn Finnish they will be paid 1 million dollars they will most likely start learning Finnish.

• If someone enjoys learning a language that is motivation in itself. If one finds the Finnish language beautiful then they will also want to speak it on their own accord.

Sources: 5,10

Motivation plays a key factor in whether or not a second language is successfully mastered. 

Independent Component 2 Approval

1. For my independent component two I think I will interview bilinguals and ask them about their language learning experience. Then I will create a report on those interviews and see how my answer compares to theirs. The interview questions will contain my essential question and background questions for the interviewee

2.  I will have recorded evidence of the interviews, transcripts of each interview, and a in depth report to post on my blog. I will also post the interviews on my blog as they occur.

3.  It will help me explore how different second language hypotheses compare to bilinguals actual second language acquisition experience. I can also help me either back up or discredit other answers to essential question.

Independent Component 1

L)I, Lara McConnaughey, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.

The books and articles that were assigned to me in the ENG 323 Language Acquisition class helped me complete the component. These include: How Languages are Learned, The Power of Reading, Cardenas, Krashen

I took ENG 323 Language Acquisition, a class taught at Cal-Poly by my mentor Karen Russikoff. Th course included class on MW from 4:00PM-5:50PM. The class had an independent essay, a group assigned report,  many hours of independent reading and several tests.

Here is a description of the class:

I) This class is an upper division course which means that one needs at least 70 units of college credit to take the course. 70 units is basically Junior standing in college. This class is taken by mostly English majors and is required in order to obtain an English major or minor. The youngest person in the class (besides me) was 10 years old. The class included a group report which I have attached on the left side of my blog. This report took over 30 hours of work to complete. I also learned the full IPA (International Phonetics Alphabet) for English and can write and read the IPA.

I got a B+ in the class which I am pretty proud of because as I said before it is an upper division class and I didn't take the prerequisite. 

A) My independent component gave me all of my foundation for this project. The entire class was based on what my topic is all about. When I first started doing research on this topic I was geared mostly toward the computational side of linguistics and how utilizing computers can help us better understand languages and learn languages. When I was taking this class it made me realize before I can study language acquisition using computers I must understand how languages are acquired in general. This class introduced me to second language acquisition theories, methods, and terminology. For example I learned about the critical period hypothesis and how it pertains to second language acquisition and pronunciation. Learning this actually gave me the foundation for my first answer. I believe without this class I wouldn't have been able to come up with a good essential question or first answer.