Vol 04 No 1 TESL Reporter

              REPORTER PORAMON
published by

en9 i6 ingl1sh language institute

teaching english as a second language
vol 4 no
1 I

the church college of hawaii
fall
1970

wa i wl laie hamwu

language acquisition and dialaceciisal Di el tal tsm
by PATRICIA G ADKINS
we have no neat litmus paper test for the evaluation of language acquisition we know that all children begin to speak at about the same age regardless of the language involved we also note that normal children have learned the basic structure of their language by the age of five or six houston emphasizes the common age of onset of language and the common course of language acquisition of children around the world making the general assumption that this was due to neurological pathologists and factors 1 many speech psychologists accept mans inherent tendency to learn language by exposure to linguistic features in the case of the child this is not a matter of formal teaching but informal listening to the phonology morphology and syntax of the language resulting in his figuring out the relationships of the sounds forms and patterns surrounding him in the situation in which he says foots for feet as in an analogy with hand hands a simple correction by parents peers siblings or teacher may serve to correct the error this would similarly be true of beinged rringe brought or blowed for blew for

in the case of the adult learning a second language the learning problem is different from that of the child but it is a common problem in all language learning children rapidly expand their vocabularies if they are expanding in their native tongue this is a normal procedure the basic units are already formulated the sounds spelling and pronunciation are quite similar it is possible
patricia G adkins ph D is director of education professions development region XIX education service center el paso texas and has taught ES L and linguistics at SL the university of texas for the past nine years her doctorate in english as a second language was taken at the university of

colorado

CONTENTS
language acquisition and m dialacecitsm Di eltal isal by patricia G adkins ELI textbook survey supplementation of opposites simple predicate expansion by yao shen form class baseball A TESL game by alice C pack
page 1 page 2 in page 3

page 10

to increase a childs vocabulary from 1000 words to 10000 words by using the same familiar language rules the sentence structure is basically the same his accent will be that of his parents and playmates whom he first heard and imitated the speech pattern of imitation which we learn when we are beginning to talk is the one which generally remains with us in adult life lado says the adult speaker of one language cannot easily pronounce language sounds of another even though he has no speech impediment and what is even more startling he cannot easily hear language sounds other than those of his native language even though he skiif fers no hearing defect this tf u l is one of the major problem areas confronting 1 the bilingual student 012

page 2

TESL

reporter

time and pitch differences are likely to be a
major factor for we recognize immediately these deviations from our own speech in addition there are changes of word emphasis within the structural make up of the sentence ake up or thought on the basis of these differences it appears logically sound that the term accent fails to embody the problems evidenced by the majority of students who learn english as a second language grant fairbanks suggested the term dialectal speech 113 however dialectal speech or bi dialectal speech has another connotation today this term is currently utilized to describe the language of the economically disadvantaged child in the united states it is applied to the disadvantaged black child to the spanish speaking child in the southwest and to the culturally deprived child in any area the speech of these children is not the so called speech of the standard middle class monolingual english speaker in this country baratz defines dialectal speech within a frame of reference of substandard speech learned in a language environment where standard english is not spoken 4
1

references
susan H houston A diachronic Ex amiina ttion e x m nasisc a au or of the linguistic universal an address to theeASHA th asha asi convention chicago november 1967

robert lado linguistics across cultures ann Un arbor unive risty of michigan press 1957 p 11 3 grant fairbanks voice and articulation Dri llbook new york harper and brothers 1940 d ri
2
p 226

4 joan C baratz language in the economically disadvantaged child A perspective ASHA journal vol 10 no 4 april 1968 pp 143 145 a 43 145

ELI

TEXTBOOK SURVEY

does the bilingual speech or dialectal speech or substandard speech of such youngsters fall into the category of
a e defective specch Is this defective speech when it is used by an adult my personal feeling is that the child or adult learning english as a second language should be taught the phonology and syntax of an educated person if only for the ultimate goal of being able to communicate with all persons with whom he will come in contact he will appear to be uneducated if his speech reflects otherwise although his speech may not be considered defective in the sense of the word lie may be language handicapped il h phonology must be taught morphology must be taught syntax must be taught the ultimate language goal of the student will determine his needs we have no means of judging language outside of the function it serves in its own cultural environment one dialect is not better than another our judgments are valid only within the limitation of our immediate society how do you measure in terms we can all understand language proficiency

since nothing in the way of a textbook survey had been published since dr harold B aliens very valuable TENES report NCTE l 1966 early in 1970 approximately 1200 questionnaires were sent to TESOL members and institutions regarding the texts they were using in teaching english to non nattive on na speakers A questionnaire form was also published in the TESL REPORTER there were 255 replies to the mailed questionnaire and two replies from the published form plus several returned forms from those interested in the survey who were not currently teaching ESL students replies were segregated into elementary junior high high school college and adult non college some schools reported on kindergarten through garde 12 with no distinction as to where specific books were used only five replies were received from countries other than the united states so the survey is essentially of books used in the united states there were two replies from puerto rico one from tonga and two from the trust territories the complete report will be published in the next issue of the TESL REPORTER winter 1971