Pecularities of early foreign language learning

Aсылбекова Алия Мухтаровна

студентка 3 курса КазУМОиМЯ

им.Абылайхана

Казахстан,Алматы

PECULARITIES OF EARLY FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

Language is man’s unique accomplishment. It is a system of communicating with other people using sounds, symbols and words to express thoughts and ideas. This language can be used in different ways, primarily through oral and written communications as well as using expressions through body language. More than anything else, it sets man apart from the animal world. It is the vehicle of communication and speech; it makes possible the keeping of records and the creation of a store of knowledge; it is the basis of all creative thought. Without language there would be no progress, no civilization, and no culture. The cultural heritage of mankind resides in language. In the language and literature of every people are preserved its hopes, its aspirations, and its thinking. Through the learning of a foreign language we gain a better insight into human relations and a deeper appreciation of man’s struggles and achievements. In setting up as its ultimate aim the better understanding of foreign people and of its culture. A foreign language presents so many interesting facets that it is the best medium for introducing the student to the history, civilization, and cultural achievements of the foreign people. Learning is essentially the process of change in mental and physical behavior induced in a living organism by experience. To learn a new language means simply to acquire another set of speech habits.

This paper is devoted to psycho physiological peculiarities of early foreign language learning. It is assumed that children learn a second language more easily than adults. Before assessing to what extent age affect results let as have a peep on the findings of science regarding the way age operates in the acquisition of language. Psychologists prove that during the years of life the perception is rapid. Maturation is achieved to 60% when the child starts speaking and then slows down progressively. The most favorable period appears to be between 2 and 5. During that period, there is an interaction of maturation and self-programmed learning. At the age of 5, the brain is sufficiently developed to tag general principles with rules of exceptions. The child moves progressively from juxtaposed utterances to organized, coherent and cohesive speech. At the age of 8, the child is able to cope up abstractly with the language and to acquire quickly without difficulty the concepts and corresponding vocabulary. As regards the exact process, Kenji.Hakut, an American psychologist would observe thus: One should not be fooled, however, by the developmental order in which their characterizations of language emerge, from communication to meaning and grammar. It would be rash to conclude that there is a progression with grammar developing out meaning and communication. Grammar, meaning, and communication are distinct levels of language and cannot be interchanged. Each has its own course of development, and it is still unclear how they are related to each other. At the age of 12 the mind is shaped for formal operations and the essential of mental and linguistic structures is constituted. The brain is now programmed. There is no more docile assimilation of the first years of life, when brain was plastic and d receptive to all language units and when units of different languages could be deposited at the same time. This capacity slows down with age, because the brain is turned progressively towards other purposes. Speech units of the mother tongue are well anchored and appear to stand in the way of units other language. Acquisition of a second language is no longer instinctive; it becomes intellectual. Acquisition of written language becomes easier; there is some handicap in picking up oral language. Motivation plays a big place in any work or learning. It is indispensable for acquisition of a second language. The word “motivation” is quite commonly used, but its nature is only confusedly perceived. Motivation arises out of need or interest; it is sustained by external factors and is easily subject to variations. In its manifestation, it is the will to learn. Among pre-school children the exposure to language would be only through activities, and the motivation would depend on the interest those activities generate. It may become equal to that for the mother tongue. Furthermore, psychologists and physiologists justify that early foreign language is caused by natural disposition of children to language and that they are emotionally ready for mastering it. In this case it should be mentioned sensitivity of preschool and school children to mastering the language in general. This period lasts differently, but basically it is the age from 4 to 8. This is the age children differ by their natural curiosity to know something new. The language acquisition during this age the language acquisition is more flexible, rather than at later ages. The child picks us language simply by listening attentively to the language spoken to him or around him. Parents want their child to understand what they say to him and they use for the purpose a simplified language known as caretaker’s speech or baby talk. In the first stage he seems to be interested only in what is spoken to him. Later he shows interest in the talk going about around him. The language heard by the child is stored and remains latent for some time in the brain; it is put to actual use slowly, first for understanding. With the years, a person gradually loses this ability; the sensitivity to perception of sound and the ability to imitate them is gradually is getting lower, short-term memory is also getting worse. Another important factor of early foreign language acquisition lies in the fact of global game motivation, which allows naturally and effectively organize early foreign language learning as means of communication and build it as a process, as close as possible to the natural process of the mother tongue. This is possible with the help of specially organized games in the learning process can be done almost any valuable communicative language units. Thus the efficiency of learning increases by interaction of game motivation and interest in school learning. Psycho physiological factors are not only these above mentioned. Actually, one can master a foreign language at any age, if the ways of learning and teaching methods are focused on particular age, including adults. However we should take into account the aspect, mastering of foreign language is more successful during the sensitive period. This is the ideal pronouncing sounds of foreign language and imitating authentic speech perfectly, without accents. However, this factor is not enough to justify the initiation of early foreign language learning. Therefore, we should take into account next peculiarity – anthropological. The significance of this group of factors is that both preschool and primary school students through learning foreign language gets experience of communicating with the world, other people, this facilitates socialization of personality. This is possible due to natural sensibility to everything that surrounds him and happens, influencing its development. It is assumed that the world and surrounding of children are full of innovations and senses. Moreover, global integration, not only in financial and economic field, but also in other social spheres, makes this world so small that every preschool student, even being geographically far from target language country, can face every day linguocultural phenomena. Therefore, not being able to interacting in foreign language and lack of knowledge of culture leads to problems in communicating. Fear of the other language and the possible rejection of a foreign culture can become stable. To avoid this and to give children the opportunity to adapt to multicultural living conditions in today's world, children should learn foreign language, through language be aware of culture of other nations. The good teacher is one who genuinely likes his pupils. A child becomes uneasy and restless when he discovers that he is not liked by his teacher; need for independence – children want to take responsibility and to make choices which are commensurate with their abilities. The wise teacher will give children an opportunity to satisfy this need in the many classroom activities which are arranged. Next, I would like to emphasize about the developmental tasks of childhood. Individuals of every age group have problems which must be successfully solved if normal adjustment is to be maintained. Psychologists have made a special study of the typical and somewhat unique problems facing human beings at various stages of their life. He has suggested nine basic problems or tasks of early childhood, and nine tasks for the period of middle childhood. They are as follows: a) middle childhood: learning physical skills necessary for ordinary games; building wholesome attitudes toward oneself as a growing organism; learning to get along with age mates; learning an appropriate masculine or feminine social role; developing fundamental skills in reading, writing and calculating; developing concepts necessary for everyday living; developing conscience, morality, and a scale of values; achieving personal independence; developing attitudes toward social groups and institutions. Majority of the above mentioned tasks listed for early childhood are either mastered or will be along the road toward mastery at the time the child enters school. Teachers have the responsibility of helping the child to solve these problems which are particularly important at this stage of his development. The child who fails to master the important developmental tasks of children of his age group is in for trouble. Physical development. Health, energy, rate of growth, and general fitness contribute both directly and indirectly to success in school and to mental and personality development. Knowledge about child’s physical nature may be revealing in studying his behavior in his home and at school, and may give clues about his attitudes toward himself. The child who is fatigued may be irritable, the child who is malnourished may lack energy required by school tasks and child whose level of physical development is at variance with that of his friends may feel insecure or ashamed. Motor development. At all ages many school activities are posited on the assumption that practice and growth have yielded sufficient development to allow for active participation by all pupils. Everything from the early use of scissors and crayons to the fine hand-eye coordination demanded by mechanical drawing necessitates a certain degree of motor development. It therefore behooves teachers and curriculum builders to be aware of normal developmental expectations. For example, psychologists claim that we should not expect handwriting of any reasonable quality before age nine. Motor skills in one area (such as running, jumping, etc.) do not correlate highly with those in other areas such as manual dexterity. There is also only a slight relationship between a child’s mental ability and his motor skill. Lack of self-confidence may preclude a child’s receiving sufficient opportunities for the necessary practice in developing motor skills, e.g., the child who is over-protected at home often shrinks from contact games, thus losing the opportunity both for the learning of the physical skills involved, and for important social contacts. The direct means of helping this sort of child is to help him acquire motor skills. Mental development. Growth in mental ability is very rapid during early childhood and the intermediate years, and gradually tapers off in late adolescence; School teacher are usually very much interested in the child’s IQ. They feel that this information will provide them with a measure of what the child can do at present and also provide them with an indication of what the child will be able to do in the future. However, the IQ of a child does not give a sure answer to either of these questions. Mental test scores may be altered by emotional conditions, cultural factors, and environmental deprivation. Moreover, since there is no single test scale for all ages it is necessary to equate scales that do not fit together on the same dimension [2, p.135]. The result as previously noted is an inability to predict with much accuracy eventual mental development from mental test scores obtained during the early years of life. Language development. On the average, children begin to talk when they are about fifteen months of age. Although there is a positive relationship between onset of talking and later development, the correlation is far from being perfect. Any parent who attempts to predict his child’s future mental ability from the age at which he began to talk is likely to make a very serious error. According to psychologists the child, before he knows the meaning of words, even before he is able to realize that they could have a meaning, is interested by the sound combination of words. Each word has for him its features, which he is able to recognize; words have life for children. The special relation of the child with words explains his interest for poetry which is sought to be satisfied by lullabies and various sorts of traditional poetical compositions accompanying children plays. The language heard by the child is stored and remains latent for some time in the brain; it is put to actual use slowly, first for understanding. This starts at about 12 months. The child is then able to recognize a known voice or familiar sounds indicating certain facts concerning him, like the preparation of his food. His hearing system gets every day sharper and sharper. Between 12 – 18 months the child is able to follow simple commands and responds to interdictions. 90% of the comprehension ability is attained at the age of 3. The American psychologist Eric. M. Lenneberg describes the process thus: “Between the ages of two and three years, language emerges by an interaction of maturation and self-programmed learning. Between the ages of three and the early teens, the possibility for primary language acquisition continues to be good; the individual appears to be most sensitive to stimuli at this time and to preserve some innate flexibility for the “organization of brain functions” to carry out the complex integration of sub process necessary for the smooth elaboration of speech and language. Though parents are aware that the child understands what he is told or what is going about around him, they do no press him to speak except on rare occasions like greeting visitors or thanking them for the present offered, or when he child weeps and the parents are eager to know the reason in order to console him effectively. When pressed to speak, the child remains resolutely silent; the parents impute caprice to him but the truth is otherwise. Speech by its very nature is a spontaneous act which cannot be obtained by external pressure. For the child to speak he should be willing to say something and be able to say it. Personality and social development are deeply studied by psychologists, since they are considered important factors. The general conditions existing in homes from which children come have been shown to have marked effects upon children’s behavior and personality. An important study in this area was conducted by Baldwin [3, pp. 127-136] at the Fels Research Institute. He explored the consequences of democracy in the home upon personality development of children who were approximately four years of age.

These children were observed in free play situations in the nursery school. Their behavior was recorded on a rating scale by independent observers who also rated the extent to which the homes from which the children came were democratically or autocratically operated. Democracy in the home was found to produce children who were active, aggressive, fearless, planful, curious, nonconforming, and more likely to be nursery school leaders than average. Children from authoritarian homes tended to be quiet, well-behaved, socially unaggressive, restricted in curiosity, originality and fancifulness. Further evidence of the effect of family influences upon personality has been found in studies of delinquency. In one such study the investigators found three types of delinquent children: an unsocialized aggressive group, a socialized delinquent group, an emotionally disturbed delinquent group. The unsocialized aggressive boys predominantly came from homes where they had experienced parental rejection; the socialized delinquents were better accepted at home than the aggressive delinquents and came from larger families, but were reared under conditions of extremely lax discipline. The emotionally disturbed delinquent tended to be the unfavored child in his family and to come from a smaller family than either of the two groups. Further we have come to personality changes that occur with age. Harsh and Schrickel [4, p. 518] traced the typical stages of personality development revealed by individuals from infancy to old age. Perhaps the most significant difference they noted between the adult and childhood personality was that the adult personality was more rigid and than that of the child. Hartley and others [5, pp. 367-386] investigated the relation of age to children’s ethnic frames to reference. They found that children three and one-half to four and one-half age usually replied by giving their own name when they are asked who they are. Next point is either important. It refers to children’s fears. The best available evidence indicates that children are born with few if any specific fears. The psychologist John B.Watson held that the newborn child showed fears or startle reactions only to very loud noises or to loss of support in the act of being dropped. The great number of fears and anxieties held by children at the various age levels must, therefore, be attributed to learning. The child learns to be fearful of objects, persons, or situations in a variety of contexts although the basic principle of learning involved is usually the same. This principle is known as conditioning. The child who had unfortunate or terrifying experiences in the presence of some object, person, or situation tends to be fearful of these same objects or situations in the future. Numerous examples can be given. The child who fears school teachers may have been humiliated by a given teacher at some earlier time. The child who fears examinations or who has been made to feel insecure with respect to such activities.

However, children are still interested in game like activities. As A.N.Leontev thinks success of set aims is achieved when variety of activates are used. Including game like activities improves motivation and can be one of the effective ways in teaching foreign language. Also, it increases motivation and forms positive attitude to school learning.

Bibliography

Stamgaliyeva N.K. “Methods of foreign language teaching”, 2010 p.3

Frank L.K. “The Fundamental Needs of the Child” 1943, p 135

Sophic S.Sloman “Emotional Problems in Planned for Children” 1948, p 127-136

Charles M.Harsh and H.G.Schrickel “Personality: Development and Assessment” 1950, p 518

Irwin C.Rosen “The effect of the motion picture “Gentleman’s agreement” Psychology of children 1948 , p 367-386

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