Morpheme Acquisition Order

Paper Summary:

In this paper, the writer discusses a study that examines the morpheme acquisition order and the stages of five second language learners (L2) of English. The writer looks at the results that show how the there are a number of differences between first language learners (L1) and L2 learners including affective and cognitive factors. The writer explores the nativist views that language acquisition is innately determined, as well as the environmental and psychological factors that elucidate the processes of linguistic development in L2 acquisition. The writer concludes that knowledge of an acquisition order in L2 provides a number of theoretical and pedagogical implications that help L2 practitioners develop effective teaching methods and approaches.

Outline:
Introduction
Method
Results
Discussion
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"Behaviourist views of language acquisition, that language learning is the formation of habits resulted from interaction between stimulus and response, have began to lose their popularity in the 1960s as nativists contested that language acquisition is a biological process and innately determined. Nativists argue that children are born with an innate capacity that predisposes us to a systematic perception of language that in turn facilitates innate mechanisms such as the language acquisition device (LAD) (1965, cited in Brown, 2007, p. 28). The findings of later research that investigated the morphemes acquisition order provided empirical evidence for the systematicity of the language acquisition process in which an infant develops linguistic features of a language in similar sequences. A morpheme (a smallest meaningful linguistic unit) may be lexical or grammatical depending on the meaning, for example, the word dogs consist of the lexical morpheme dog- and the grammatical morpheme -s, and morpheme studies are primary concerned with grammatical morphemes."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Brown, H. D. (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching. (5th ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.
• Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stage. London: Allen & Unwin.
• Ellis, R., & Barkhuizen, G. (2005). Analysing learner language (pp. 73-83). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., Hyams, N., Collins, P., & Amberrer, M. (2005). An introduction to language (5th ed.). (pp. 304-333). Melbourne: Thomson.
• Hakuta, K. (1976). A case study of a Japanese child learning English as a second language. Language Learning, 26, 321-351.

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