home & school learning

Differences between L1 & L2 learning | Jerry Talandis Jr. | June 8th, 2002

Hello out there. This is Jerry, from Japan. Long time no message.

I'm doing TYL now, so this message is for anyone doing this module, or anyone just interested in the question. Here it is:

What do you see as the major differences between L1 learning in the home environment and L2 learning in a classroom situation?

I know, this is a big question, but I thought I'd throw it out there. My anwer is based mostly on the reading I did in Lightbrown and Spada 1999 (How Languages are Learned).Regarding young learners, I'd say the biggest difference between learning L1 and L2 are the basic conditions of learning. For example, children learning at home have ample "freedom to be silent." Kids are allowed to speak whenever they want, whenever they are ready. In a classroom, they often have to talk when the teacher wants them to. In addition, kids at home learning their first language can take all the time they need and are constantly exposed to the target language. This is obviously not true at a school, where kids can hear the L2 only a little while each week. Another difference deals with corrective feedback. Kids get a lot more of that in a classroom than at home, I think. The type of feedback also varies. At home, usually its errors of meaning that are corrected, but at school, students also get a lot more feedback regarding word choice errors.

I live in Japan and teach a lot of kids privately. The ONLY time they get exposure to English is that 45-minute slot with me each week. That is a laughably short amount of time to pick up another language. For me, then the greatest difference in learning L1 and L2 is the amount of exposure kids get to the L2.

What are your thoughts on this question?

Take care,

Jerry

Re: L1 & L2 learning | Raymond Sheehan | June 9th, 2002

An interesting question, Jerry (and I remember reading L and Spada last year and being really impressed by their scope and their clarity).

I'm not sure that I really agree with you on your conclusion about exposure. Working as I do in the Middle East, I see myself and my students functioning in a bilingual environment, with national newspapers and TV in English; sports and music events covered in English as well as Arabic. Shops, banks, and hotels (every institution I know except mosques) function bilingually with signs, information, bilingual clerks (many of whom are not native Arabic speakers). So the potential for exposure is great. But the learner does not seize the potential.

What may be lacking is the urgent communicative need that every child has. Children communicate because they want something (food, approval, a smile, a quick change of clothing...). My students feel (quite rightly most of the time) that they don't need to function in English except in the artificial confines of classrooms. My classroom anecdotal evidence tells me that they don't know how to spell restaurant or know the meaning of tailor even though these signs are posted all over the place! But they don't need to see them in English.

The second reason, I think, is a lack of integrative motivation. If you see every child as wishing to belong to the first discourse community s/he encounters (the family) and to participate in their dialogues, then s/he will very quickly pick up the language required to engage with siblings and parents. My learners don't have that strong motivation (unlike certain learners in certain immigrant communities who may well want to integrate and advance within their new community).

What I have to work with instead, then, is creating exposure within the classroom, raise their awareness of the opportunities for exposure all around them outside the classroom, set tasks that get learners more involved in using and appreciating the value of those opportunities, develop a sense that it is they (and not I) who are ultimately responsible for the quality of their learning, create short term motivation based on task-involvement, test performance etc... while all the time valuing the students' own culture and appreciating their sound reasons for not wishing to embrace a global Anglophone community wholeheartedly.

I think the reasons I have not become a good learner of Arabic, by the way, are the same. I've gone to classes, studied alone, but in the end I function in my own language in this community without needing to use Arabic (I use it for ice-breaking talk and quickly switch to English). I also don't have any integrative motivation- no strong cultural curiosity, and I have a   feeling that even if I were to become proficient in the language it would not necessarily provide me with easier access into the life of the local communities....

Raymond Sheehan

Re: L1 & L2 learning | Maria Leedham | June 11th, 2002

Dear all,

Yes, I agree with Raymond. I also feel that children are good language learners in the affective sense (see Brown for full list of GLL characteristics). Kids are avid pattern-noticers and try things out constantly. They are not worried about making errors- no adult feeling of loss of face if they say "goed". They practise constantly- chattering to themselves, toys, peers, adults. I'm talking of under 5s here. (My own is currently sitting on my knee and trying to grab the mouse.....while talking.....)

Maria
Oxford

Re: L1 & L2 learning | Jerry Talandis Jr. | June 11th, 2002

Hi everyone,

Thanks for responding to my question about the differences between kids learning their L1 at home and learning an L2 at school. It seems that exposure to the L2 is the major difference, in that kids are surrounded by L1 at home and only encounter L2 for brief periods.

Raymond, your point of view was interesting. It reminded me that the main difference between L1 and L2 learning is not just a matter of exposure. Here in Japan, there is very little contact with English (except on road signs and various products), so I came to my conclusion that lack of exposure to L2 was the main difference between L1 and L2 learning. Your comments broadened my mind, and you basically clarified my thoughts on the matter. Your situation seems to have much more L2 exposure than here, yet the people still don't pick up the language readily. Urgent communicative need and integrative motivation are the crucial components needed for language learning, and those are often missing for students in a classroom. I've been thinking that for a long time, actually. It's SO true here. The majority of people just don't NEED to speak English in Japan. While the amount of exposure to English seems a lot less here than in the Middle East, the key differences are a need to use it and the corresponding motivation that arises from that need.

I really like your "solution:"

Well put! In other words, "do your job well."

Thanks for that.

Oh, and Maria, I have a question for you: when you say that children are not worried about making errors, you are talking about them learning thier L1, right? I wonder because when it comes to learning an L2, the kids I teach are every bit as shy as the adults I work with.   Perhaps this is another cultural thing or because I'm not good with kids, but I find my little students very conscious of face. Just wondering.

Jerry

Re: L1 & L2 learning | Maria Leedham | June 12th, 2002

Hi Jerry,

Yes, I was talking about kids learning L1. Sorry that wasn't clear. Under 5s are not concerned about loss of face and try out the language constantly. Kids I know with parents who are different language-speakers learn both languages (2 x L1s) equally well and confidently. I wonder what age kids become self-conscious about making errors and thus restrict their speaking? I suppose it's when peer group pressure kicks in at between 5 and 8.

Maria

Children learning a FL | Rita Balbi | June 12th, 2002

To Jerry and those who are interested in this issue,

I'd like to contribute to the above debate relying on the Italian experience. A foreign language is taught in Italian Primary Schools for 3 hours a week starting from the age of 8 (in some schools they start earlier). Of course the exposure to this language is very limited compared to learning a first language and the need to use the language is induced by tasks with rare opportunities of "authentic" need, at least for the majority of children.

Another difference is that the children already know a language and their expectation is that learning another language is just learning new labels to substitute those of the first language with a word-to-word correspondence. It takes time for them to accept that in English we say "I'm ten years old" and in Italian "ho dieci anni" (I have ten years!). It takes time for them to accept that the rules of   pronunciation and spelling do not correspond to those of their first language.

Another difference is that when we learn our first language we learn it thru listening and speaking and reading and writing come later even if children in the Western world are shown books very early. When a language is learnt at school reading and writing come almost contemporarily to listening and speaking; also when the   teachers stick to a long oral phase children write what   they learn in their own way to support memory and because learning of other subjects at school involves some reading and writing they transfer this way of learning to the FL.

Rita
Italy

 

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