Acculturation: a significant factor

This is another environmental-oriented theory which was proposed at first by Schumman (1978). He creates a famous longitudinal investigation of some syntactic aspects with six learners (2 children, 2 teenagers and 2 adults), using questionnaires, observed spontaneous conversations during ten months and he applied a qualitative treatment over the data.

One of the findings that he got was that the learner who acquired the least amount of second language was the same who keep longer distance socially and psychologically integration with the target language group.

It clearly means, acculturation theory means that the learners who maintain fewer distances in social and psychological aspect between them and second language speakers will be more successful.
http://www.veramenezes.com/slatheory.pdf

Analyse this picture

At first I was confused when interpret this theory because I thought that we must to keep contact with native speakers of the target language to acquire well the process but what really means or try to show it´s that you need to be closer over the other culture adopting not just the language but the environment as well, you adopt the other culture but keep yours and create a distance which involves all the principles in the process of learning a second language.

Social

Psychological

First language ---------interlanguage--------- Target language

(Mistakes)

http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/files/rcd/BE021582/The_Effects_of_Acculturation.pdf

Here you will find a good research project where is related to acculturation and present the impact of this theory over a situation of research.

Reinforcement strategy

Positive and negative reinforcement, this video shows you a real example of its use.

Maybe you have seen this TV series which is called "The Big Bang Theory" here are two geeks with a sexy girl who is the girlfriend of one of them, Leonard. On the other hand, Sheldon is freaky intelligent boy who in this case is applying the skinner statement trying to modify the behavior of her who represents a human being with a lot of incongruent habits. he use positive reinforcement with her during the video in different situations who for him is wrong but she noticed alone about it and create and stimuli with the help of chocolate, but with the boyfriend, Leonard who is against to this experiment, feeling his girlfriend is like a laborat rat, receive an negative reinforcement.

Although Sheldon confuses negative reinforcement with punishment. Negative reinforcement is used to increase the frequency of a behavior whereas punishment is used to decrease the frequency of a behavior.

This is an interesting theory in second language acquisition where you can apply it and expect for an outcome but is it really the process of learning or just and expectations where the time make it forget fast?



Behaviourism

“[B]ehaviorism undermi

learning as the ability to inductively discover patterns of rule-governed

behavior from the examples provided to the learner by his or her

ned the role of mental processes and viewed

environment”.

models

Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991:266) consider that S-Roffer “little promises as explanations of SLA, except for perhaps

pronunciation and the rote-

memorization of formulae”.

This view of language learning gave birth to research on contrastive

analysis, especially error analysis, the main focus of which is the

interference of

reaction to behaviourism was the interlanguage studies, as the simple

comparison between first and second language neither explained nor

described the language produced by SL learners. Interlanguage studies will

be present in other SLA perspectives, as the concern of the area has been

mainly with the acquisition of grammatical morphemes or specific language

structures.
http://www.veramenezes.com/slatheory.pdf

In this video describe the behaviorism theory in a brief way where you can catch the main characteristics of it and you find the behaviorism example from an experiment did by some scientific...

one’s first language in the target language. An important

Behaviourism gave birth to a stimulus-response (S-R) theory which

sees language as a set of structures and acquisition as a matter of habit

formation. Ignoring any internal mechanisms, it takes into account the

linguistic environment and the stimuli it produces. Learning is an observable

behaviour which is automatically acquired by means of stimulus and

response in the form of mechanical repetition. Thus, to acquire a language is

to acquire automatic linguistic habits. According to Johnson (2004:18),

Main theories of SLA

Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991:227) ‘theories’ of SLA have been proposed”

these attempts to explain SLA present a thorough explanation for the

phenomenon. state that “at least forty

Like any other type of learning, language learning is not a

linear process, and therefore cannot be deemed as predictable as many

models of SLA have hypothesized it to be. Countless theories have been

developed to explain SLA, but most such theories focus merely on the

acquisition of syntactic structures and ignore other important aspects.

http://www.veramenezes.com/slatheory.pdf

and it is my contention that none of

i have read the last link where appear an excelent information about the processes of getting a second language, there are different points of view where you can take which you think is better. personally i think there are some more interesting than other because is more logical and easily understood from others where are more complex and at the end are no what they are trying to explain really, i mean they are not mistaken or wrong but the process could be better explained in some theories.

Last two imagens can show you a good example between the different kinds of view about the process about acquiring a second language, one is the structural way, through grammar, syntax and other important aspects of linguistics, on the other hand we have the adaptation of culture which influence in your process in a meaningful part of it.