Acquisition Of English Grammatical Morphemes

Many popular theories of second language acquisition have been analyzed throughout history. The socialization of L2 learners, their present emotional state that is present at time of acquisition, as well as the comprehensible input and output with the use of scaffolding play a major role in second language acquisition. Let us also not forget the importance of written expression as well as reading comprehension with these L2 learners. Each play a role in language development. However, I believe that in acquiring a language, one must use a variety of techniques that work together to create a balance within the learning environment. Furthermore, all L2 learners learn differently and so a variety of resources will need to be used based on the ability of each student. There are many theories that have been developed by highly qualified experts in the field on linguistics. However, I will address those areas that I agree with as I present my personal theories on second language acquisition.

Judie Haynes’ article, “Stages of Second Language Acquisition”, clearly states five stages that a new learner of English may go through. In Haynes’ theory, there are five stages in total, and they are pre-production, early production, speech emergence, intermediate fluency, and advanced fluency. According to Haynes, new learners of English acquire language by going through the same stages. However, how much time each student spends at a particular stage may be different. Despite the different time length, the stages of people acquiring new language are worth discussing.

The child whom was observed MLU is 6.5 which is within Brown’s 5 stage of development. It would seem the student has the ability to speak with great length but looking closely at the child grammatical morphemes it is clearly the child is not within Brown’s 5 stage of development. According to Brown’s 5 stage, a child should be able to master grammatical morphemes by the age of 50 months. The student that was observed is 51 months of age, But continue to use grammatical morphemes within the range of Brown’s stage 3.

“The History of the English Language”. http://www.uni-due.de/SHE/. Univ. of Duisburg Essen. April 2013. Web 4 Oct. 2013.

In 1973, Roger Brown performed an in-depth study of three children and proposed stages that children naturally go through in regards to language acquisition. Although he examined semantics and grammar as well, the part concerning the order of morpheme acquisition is of the most interest to this paper. Brown proposed that morpheme acquisition follows a fairly regular process or order. He came to this conclusion after performing an in-depth analysis of the morpheme acquisition of his three test subjects. This paper makes use of Brown’s (1973) proposed order of morpheme acquisition when testing the participants’ morphological development.

b) with forms and the structure of words (morphology) and with their customary arrangement in phrases and sentences (syntax )

Reading or listening exercises can also help students to obtain morphological knowledge from formation of sentences and paragraphs because words often need prefixes and suffixes to make the sentence meaningful. Step

Often used with English Learners or struggling readers to help them build vocabulary, and the strategies presented in this book help all learners pronounce the word parts associated with morphemic

Children acquire language since they were born. They communicate with their parents. Furthermore, children and parents interact with each other using a language that we often call the first language or mother tongue. At an early age, children are only learning one language that is the mother tongue. By age and speech development, children improve to acquire a second language from the school or the environment around them. In terms of speed of langgauge acquisition, children are factorized by both the child and the child’s learning environment. Therefore, it is important to understand how children acquire second language. This paper is provided

Studies of language acquisition have shown that children take an active part in the process, constructing and refining grammatical rules for themselves as they mature. No one teaches them these rules; in fact, the majority of parents/carers are not aware of the rules themselves and would be hard pressed to explain them. Yet as the child grows they learn to use pronouns, verbs, adjectives and to form complex sentences in order to communicate with others and manipulate the world around them.

Morphological awareness supports a variety of literacy skills, including word identification, reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling. “Increased morphological awareness enables children to analyze the internal structure of words and decode them more quickly and accurately ("Morphological awareness: Implications," 2013).” Aaron exhibited problems with his morphological awareness in various spots throughout the language sample. For example Aaron said “And she felled in the thing”, “And the lady sawed her”. In these two utterances Aaron has shown a failure to meet and use the correct past tense morphology. Through intervention the SLP can influence the use of and knowledge of phonology and morphology on word recognition and spelling, ultimately increasing one’s morphological awareness.

It is not uncommon to say that grammar instruction plays an important role in language teaching. Regarding the status and importance of grammar teaching, a variety of opinions have been made. Batstone (1994) states that “language without grammar would be chaotic: countless words without the indispensable guidelines for how they can be ordered and modified” (p. 4). More vividly, Wang (2010) makes two similes. She compares grammar to the frame of a house, which is a decisive factor to ensure the solidness of it. Additionally, she regards grammar as a walking stick, whose function is to help and support students to learn English. Thus, the nature of grammar instruction manifests its own significance as it helps students

In this essay I will discuss the definition of the concept grammar in linguistic science and thee attitude teachers may have towards such a conceptualization of what grammar is. I will go into detail by explaining perspective and descriptive grammar.

The second set of bound morphemes contains what are called inflectional morphemes. These are not used to produce new words in the language, but rather to indicate aspects of grammatical function of a word. Inflectional morphemes are used to show if a word is plural or singular, if it is past tense or not, and if it is a comparative or possessive form.

Acquisition of language is often a very difficult task that requires time and commitment. To learn language one needs to focus and various aspects of language that include reading, writing, listening, speaking, and pronunciation. Perhaps one of the most difficult and time consuming tasks that exist in language learning is lexical acquisition. To accurately express oneself, a large lexical inventory is required. Vocabulary learning is accomplished by many different methods; memorization and multiple exposures are required and, in addition, one needs to learn a word’s collocations and syntactic constraints. There has been much research done that focuses on methods of teaching vocabulary and extensive reading is one such method.