Language
Acquisition
A Study by
Catherine Hoang,
Rebecca Espinosa,
and Therese Trinko
Terms to Know
❖ Metacognitive skills
➢ Awareness of one’s own learning or thinking
processes
❖ “Improvement”
➢ A higher score on the post-test as compared to the
pre-test
❖ “Acquired”
➢ Marked the correct answer on the post-test that
s/he had marked incorrectly on the pre-test
Language Acquisition
According to Vygotsky:
“...the meaning of a given word is approached
through another word, and whatever we
discover through this operation is...a record
of the relation in the child’s mind between
previously formed families of words”
Lev Vygotsky
❖ 1896-1934
❖ Jewish
❖ Moscow University (Law)
❖ Thought and Language,
❖ Mind in Society, etc.
❖ Communist Suppression
How History Shaped His Ideas
❖
❖ Marxism
❖ Engel’s use of tools
➢ Vygotsky: Language is a tool to
deal with one’s environment
➢ Individuals create psychological
tools to learn, or Metacognitive
Skills
Vygotsky’s Theories
❖ Zone of Proximal Development
➢ an area / “zone” between the child’s ability to
perform independently and with assistance, where
the most effective instruction occurs.
❖ Mediation
➢ Movement from a lower form of thought to a higher
form of thought
❖ Tools
➢ Language and Metacognitive skills
Krashen
❖ Born in Chicago, 1941
❖ Ph.D at UCLA in Linguistics
❖ Emeritus Professor of Linguistics
and Education at the University
of Southern California
❖ Published over 350 books and
papers
Krashen’s Theories
❖ Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis-immersion and
custom -vs- formal active development
❖ Monitor Hypothesis-We use what we know of a
language to self-correct/“monitor” our output
❖ Affective filter-the ability to learn a language is
affected by external and internal factors-motivation,
anxiety, self-esteem
❖ Natural Order Hypothesis- grammatical structures are
acquired in a natural, predictable order
Krashen’s Input Hypothesis
❖ Input Hypothesis
➢ We acquire language when we receive
language input that is one step beyond
current comprehension level (i +1)
Input Hypothesis Diagram
Question
If given an expository text, do
monolingual or bilingual students acquire
more vocabulary?
Hypothesis
We believe that the bilingual students are more likely to
acquire more vocabulary than the monolingual
students. Bilingual students have already developed
higher metacognitive skills due to their experience with
a second language. According to Vygotsky’s Theory of
the Zone of Proximal Development and his expansion on
Engel’s Tools with Krashen’s Input Theory, without any
assistance to both groups the bilingual students should
perform better than the monolingual students.
Original Study
❖ “Beyond raw frequency: Incidental vocabulary
acquisition in extensive reading” (2008)
■ conducted in South Korea
❖ Based on the idea that “second language can be
learned incidentally while the learner is engaged
in...reading for meaning, inferring the idea of
unknown words”
Original Study:
South Korea
Prior Assessment of
ENGLISH language ability
Subject(s)
TOEFL
Replication:
Irving, TX
None taken
South Korean ELLs
Bilingual students &
Monolingual English-speaking
students
Age
College (21 years old)
5th grade (9-10 years old)
Time Allotted
5 weeks
4-6 hours reading/ day
1 day
10 minutes / entire text
Kind of Text
narrative: chapter books
(ie Holes, Hatchet)
informational: online article
about animals
Material selected for
assessment
Tests
high and low frequency words
1 pre-test, 2 post-tests
1 pre-test, 1 post-test
Subjects
❖ 10 children from Holy
Family School
➢ 5 Bilingual 5th grade
students
➢ 5 Monolingual 5th
grade students
Methodology
❖ Based on the South Korean Study
➢ Pre-test
➢ Reading
➢ Post-test
➢ Survey
Pre-test/Post-test
(sample questions)
1) What do all vertebrates have in common?
a) They live on land.
b) They all have a hard internal skeleton or backbone.
c) They all have legs.
d) They are all warm blooded.
1) When we went to the zoo, my family and I visited several pachyderms, including elephants,
rhinoceroses, and hippopotami.
Pachyderm most likely describes an animal that
a) is small and soft-skinned
b) is large, thick-skinned, and hoofed
c) has scaly skin, like a reptile
Reading (sample)
6 Amazing Animals that Practically Lived Forever
ADWAITA THE TORTOISE (1750-2006)
Even with the long life expectancy of giant tortoises, an Aldabra Giant Tortoise named Adwaita
blows all others away with a life lasting around 255 years. Estimates put his birth date around
1750, making him an entire generation older than the United States of America.
The tortoise was originally owned by a man named General Robert Clive, an important member
of the East India Company, who [died in] 1774. Barely a toddler at that time, Adwaita bummed
around for a bit before eventually being transferred to an Indian zoo in 1875, where he spent
the rest of his life eating and...that's pretty much it. After his death in 2006, carbon dating on
his shell confirmed his age, making him quite possibly the oldest living creature ever, and
almost certainly the oldest living vertebrate.
Average Scores
Pre-Test
Post-Test
Improvement
Monolingual
4.6
5.4
0.8
Bilingual
6.0
6.8
0.8
Data Analysis: Monolingual
•
•
•
3 students(1,3,5): scores remained the same
One student (2): score increased by 1
One student: (4): score increased by 3
Data Analysis: Bilingual
•
•
•
3 students (1, 2, 4): scores slightly increased
1 student (3): score stayed the same
Exception: Score of student 5 dramatically
decreased by 4
Metacognitive Strategies Survey
For each question, when you weren’t sure of the answer in the first test,
why did you select the answer you choose in the post test?
a. Remembered from the article (post test)
d. Guessed
b. Looked like a word I already knew
e. Other
c. Sounded right
Student #
Bilingual (Y/N)
Score
Answer Letter
Comments
Monolingual Survey Responses
Student #
Answer
Students’ Comments
1
Sounded right, guessed
Already knew some
2
Sounded right
Tried to do process of elimination, tried to
match the word with whichever word seemed
like it in the definition
3
Looked like a word I
already knew
“Learned from context clues” when she saw
the sentences
4
Guessed, Other
Went back and read from my mind,
remembered what article said about the
words
5
Other
Remembered the answer “from the
outside”
Bilingual Survey Responses
Student #
Answer
Students’ Comments
1
Remembered
from the
article
Learned
2
Other
Process of elimination, maybe noticed in the article
3
Sounded right
4
Other
Process of elimination on the pretest; on post-test used
context clues “if it was an adjective I read the noun it
was describing, to see”
5
Other
I used context clues, looked at words around it, and
used process of elimination on the pretest
Grouped Survey Response
Monolingual
Bilingual
Explanation of Data
Monolingual: Highest percent:
- “guessed” and “already knew” (both 17%)
- “other” (25%)
Bilingual: Highest percent:
- “Context clues” and “learned from article” (both 22%)
- process of Elimination (34%)
In relation to Vygotsky
Engel’s Tools Ext.
Zone of Proximal Development
Definition Objects/Skills to
manipulate one’s
environment, such as
language and
metacognitive skills
an area / “zone” between the
child’s ability to perform
independently and with assistance,
where the most effective
instruction occurs.
Our Study The survey tested
what metacognitive
skills or tools the
students were using
The pre-test was moderately too
difficult to do for the students to
do before the reading, but with the
aid of the reading, they were able
to perform better on the post-test
In relation to Krashen
Input Hypothesis
Acquisition-Learning
Hypothesis
Monitor Hypothesis
Affective Filter
Definition
We learn language
when we receive
language input that is
one step beyond
current comprehension
level (i +1)
immersion and custom -vsformal active development
We use what we
know of a language
to selfcorrect/“monitor”
our output
the ability to learn a
language is affected
by external and
internal factorsmotivation, anxiety,
self-esteem
Our Study
We gave students a
reading harder than
their level, but not too
difficult
Students were immersed in
a natural reading source,
receiving communication
from the author in the
article
One student
responded that s/he
checked the
grammar in the
sentences to see
what was right,
demonstrating an
ability to self-correct
We informed the
students beforehand
that they were not to
be graded or
negatively affected
in anyway
Challenges and Limitations
❖ Of the monolingual students provided for us, one was
partially fluent in a second language.
❖ We were unable to acquire a larger sample size due to
time constraints and number of students available.
❖ We were unable to obtain an objective measure of the
students’ prior knowledge before the pre-test.
❖ The wording of question 7 seemed to affect the results
Question 7
7)
Circle all that apply. There may be more than one right answer.
When the presidential candidates discuss the hotly contested issue, the topic might be
a) controversial
b) enthusiastic
c) calmly discussed
d) exciting
8) What would happen if you survey a classroom?
a) You would watch children learning and playing.
b) You would paint it different colors.
c) You would grab the pencils.
d) The kids would spread out around the room.
Conclusion
Our hypothesis was disproved upon finding
that the rates of improvement were the
same for both groups.
However, it appears that bilingual
students demonstrated more
metacognitive skills or tools as proven
from our survey.
Bibliography
http://esl.fis.edu/teachers/support/krashen.htm
http://www.s9.com/Biography/Stephen-Krashen
http://unt.unice.fr/uoh/learn_teach_FL/img/figures/Stephen-Krashen.jpg
http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html
http://mentalfloss.com/article/29830/6-amazing-animals-practically-lived-forever
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metacognition
Thought and Language, Page 52 Chapter 5: An experimental study of the development of Concepts
Catherine