Timeline for A question about how native speakers learn prepositions
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
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| Jun 13, 2015 at 15:15 | comment | added | Ben Kovitz | @pazzo Your summary answer certainly nails the most important factors: learning in natural contexts, and vast exposure to examples. I'm hoping to see an answer that says something more specific about natives' understanding of prepositions, though. I just posted my answer; that ought to give a clearer idea of what I mean. | |
| Jun 13, 2015 at 14:58 | comment | added | user6951 | @BenKovitz I don't think it's hard to post an answer to this question. Which is why I could post a comment giving a summary answer. | |
| Jun 13, 2015 at 14:32 | comment | added | Ben Kovitz | @pazzo Anyway, I know it's very hard to give a good answer to this question. I'll post an attempt right now, which should be easy to criticize. Maybe that will give someone an idea for a better one, or maybe oerkelens will get some ideas for how to edit this one, based on his or her unusual knowledge and experience. | |
| Jun 13, 2015 at 14:30 | comment | added | Ben Kovitz | @pazzo oerkelens brought it up in the 2nd comment. I understand its relevance here to be the idea that natives have some quasi-magical, "critical period" ability or authority, which adult non-natives can't have. All we can do, on this theory, is stand in awe of the children, call their learning process by a special jargon word, and not even try to tell an ESL learner something useful and specific about how natives learn English prepositions. | |
| Jun 13, 2015 at 14:19 | comment | added | user6951 | @BenKovitz I think you are the only one who brought up speed as an issue. (Well, okay, oerkelens did, but not me). For kids newborn to age 4 or 5 they learn/acquire naturally, without explicit instruction, at a pace that goes along with other developmental things such as walking, so that by the time they enter primary school they have a firm grasp on speaking and the underlying grammar. Also, remember adults already have a first language or two upon which to map the new language they are learning, so I don't see speed comparison all that helpful here. | |
| Jun 13, 2015 at 13:10 | comment | added | Ben Kovitz | @pazzo I think we're all in agreement, though, that "memorize facts about the language and regurgitate them on exams" is a pretty ineffective way of learning (or whatever word we want to use for getting good at something). I don't even think it works very well for chemistry. You have to get your hands dirty in the lab. I especially liked your remark that "99% of questions here could be answered by: get more exposure to the target language and you will come to realize how it works." I suspect that a lot of questions here are really "help me pass this exam". | |
| Jun 13, 2015 at 12:58 | comment | added | Ben Kovitz | @pazzo I thinking finding good info about how fast adults vs. children learn from the same exposure is not trivial; the information I've come across so far seems equivocal. (I don't consider redefining "learn" an answer.) That page does mention "Adults have less time and opportunity to learn and practice L2. It takes well over a year to accumulate as much L2 experience as a young child gets from learning L1 in a month." If an adult learns 10x as much from 1/12 the exposure, that would be learning 120x as fast—which would contradict the claim that kids learn faster. But who knows? | |
| Jun 13, 2015 at 12:35 | comment | added | user6951 | emedia.leeward.hawaii.edu/hurley/Ling102web/mod5_Llearning/… of course you can always just Google kids first language acquisition or similar | |
| Jun 13, 2015 at 12:34 | comment | added | user6951 | @BenKovitz "Language acquisition by adults is language learning--a deliberate, painstaking, intellectual process that rarely, if ever, results in the total native fluency acquired so naturally by any small child, regardless of intellectual ability or personal motivation. The deficiency is particularly evident at the phonetic level, and adults who learn second languages usually speak them with some recognizable non-native accent. Thus, language acquisition by children and language learning by adults are strikingly different phenomena." | |
| Jun 13, 2015 at 11:51 | comment | added | Ben Kovitz | Are you sure that kids learn (or whatever) their native language faster than adults? I've heard that a lot, but it seems to me that an adult, aided by a teacher and even some explicit talk about grammar and rhythm, typically learns at least 100x faster than an infant, when measured in terms of exposure and practice time. In calendar time, adults usually go more slowly, since they're more distracted, but a typical adult can outperform a native 4yo in less than four years of study and immersion in an L2. But I don't know for sure. Have you read anything about this? | |
| Jun 13, 2015 at 11:41 | comment | added | Ben Kovitz | I hear of so many weird claims and perverse use of language from linguists. So learning your native language isn't learning, because you don't memorize explicitly stated rules and consciously apply them? So learning to walk, learning to ride a bicycle, and learning to write computer programs aren't learning, either? I think the question is a good one and merits an answer, regardless of what you call the process. | |
| Jun 12, 2015 at 17:29 | comment | added | oerkelens | @pazzo indeed, we do agree :) But let's keep finding other ways to answer questions here, as it would get quite boring answering 98% of them in the same way :) | |
| Jun 12, 2015 at 14:51 | comment | added | user6951 | So what I mean is that learners who are aware of the acquisition process but who can analyze the grammar also, as an aid, not a methodology, knowledge of this strategy can give adults a strategy that most kids do not have. 99% of questions here could be answered by: get more exposure to the target language and you will come to realize how it works. But people (a) want to see language-acquisition as they do learning chemistry, (b) want answers now, when waiting will do much to resolve their questions. | |
| Jun 12, 2015 at 14:49 | comment | added | user6951 | Yeah, when I said a leg-up, I was referring to this one ability only over kids, not to adults' overall situation. Second, yes it's true this ability may not apply to many 2nd/FLL,precisely because they are not being taught using acquisition methods. This is probably true of 90% of the learners here. People seem to equate learning a FL with learning chemistry, which is not how it works, as we both agree. | |
| Jun 12, 2015 at 8:59 | history | edited | oerkelens | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 12, 2015 at 8:57 | comment | added | oerkelens | @pazzo sure, modern teaching methods try to use acquisition instead of learning, exactly because it works more intuitively. Whether adults have an advantage because they analyze grammar remains to be seen - just look at all the questions here on ELL that stem from things going wrong in that analysis, like over-applying rules, or using over-simplified rules instead of intuitive (native-speaker) patterns. Kids become fluent in their native language much faster than (most!) adults do in a new language, so it seems the kids have the advantage :) | |
| Jun 12, 2015 at 8:53 | comment | added | user6951 | Except many foreign/second language methodologies concentrate on exposure and acquisition rather than the study of grammar. And, for adults, their ability to analyze the language according to grammar gives them a leg-up over kids learning their first language. | |
| Jun 12, 2015 at 8:32 | history | answered | oerkelens | CC BY-SA 3.0 |