Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Method I 126

4.5.2 First and second language acquisition

Finally, I will have to justify the relevance of a study on Ll use to the
learning of a L2.

Those who take the study of language as the study of the development of
communicative competence have always insisted that the contexts which
motivate communicative intent and provide a responsive environment are
the most effective for learning of Ll and. L2. This seems a natural
consequence of the overall approach : the experiences of participating in
the alternating roles of speaker and listener, of testing the adequacy of
rules and hypotheses in conversation and in its breakdowns, and the
demands created in the course of interaction to use language as
successfully as possible   to negotiate meanings, are seen as the most

powerful factors in language acquisition. This has also lead to the
disregarding of the distinction between Ll acquisition and L2 learning
and between language learning and u≥e_l and, furthermore to the blurring
of the differences betweeen home and school as Institutions, stressing
the common principles underlying the process of language learning that
should be guiding the encounters between speakers at various stages of
competence: L2 teacher-pupil as parent-child, peer-peer, native-foreiagn-
speakers. etc. (see Ellis,1985 for a review).

The sequence of emergence of linguistic items in the many interlocking
systems (such as the pragmatic, semantic and syntactic, Veils 1985) has
been studied, adopting Lock's starting point that 'language is imported
into situations which have already become socially intelligible to the
child' (Lock,1980:195), and therefore the initial emphasis is in
pragmatics. These studies, when replicated in a wide range of settings,
should provide valuable information on a crucial question for L2 learning,
i.e. 'what is the sequence from simple to complex, from easy to difficult '
for language learners, allowing for cultural variability.

The similarities of the processed characterizing first and second
language acquisition were stressed by Vygotsky in a paper, The Question

<<   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   >>

More intriguing information