INTRODUCTION
Language is a natural human phenomenon, which every normal child will acquire when he/she reaches the age of acquisition. With children’s exposure to the language of their immediate environment, they gradually develop ability in the language and use it naturally in communicative situations. This is quite different from the experience of a person who is exposed to a second language. Linguists have a way of explaining the two different experiences and the entire idea of how humans have come to use language in different ways to reflect the society they live in.
3.1 Competence and Performance
Chomsky (1965) coined the term competence to account for the unconscious knowledge speakers have of their language. This unconscious knowledge refers to what someone knows about the language, the mental representation of the language (Fromkin and Rodman, 1981). Competence, however, has been subdivided into two broad areas, namely, linguistic competence and communicative competence.
O’Grady, Dobrovolsky and Aronoff (1993) define linguistic competence as the ability speakers have "to produce and understand an unlimited number of sentences, including many that are novel or unfamiliar" (p. 3). Normally, language users speak a language without consciously knowing about the rules governing it, i.e. the grammar behind it. For this reason, some authors refer to linguistic competence as grammatical competence. This knowledge has five main components: phonological, syntactic, semantic, lexical and morphological.
Phonological competence refers to the knowledge speakers have of the sounds and possible sound combinations of a language. Syntactic competence refers to the knowledge the speakers have about the possible syntactic combinations of their language. Semantic competence refers to the knowledge speakers have of the meanings of words in their languages. Lexical competence refers to the knowledge speakers have of an extensive amount of words in their language. It also refers to the ability that speakers have to use these words according to the appropriate context. Morphological competence refers to the knowledge speakers have of the formation of words in their language, or better said, word structure.
Communicative competence is a broad term that involves not only the structural features of language, but also its social, pragmatic and contextual characteristics. Therefore, it is necessary to understand communicative competence as the sum of a series of competences. Performance can be seen as the physical representation, usually in utterances of any type, of the human competence (Chomsky, 1965). It refers to "how" someone uses language. Chomsky considered performance as a faulty representation of competence because of psychological restrictions such as memory lapses and limitations, distractions, changes of directions halfway through sentence, hesitation and so on. Performance, in a way, accounts for the failures language users have when they transpose their competence into actual linguistic production.
3.2 Language and Thought
Linguists have been doing research on the relationship between the language we speak and our thought. Some of the questions they ask are which one comes first: language or thought? Do we think before we talk or our language shapes our thought? How does thought translate into language? The list is endless. However the general feeling is that we think in the language we speak. For instance, Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis stipulates that the structure of our mother tongue influences the way our minds perceive the world we live in. Speakers of different languages notice different things and so make different distinctions.
One view, Bloom points out, "is that there exists a universal core of meaningful distinctions that all humans share, but other distinctions that people make are shaped by the forces of language. On the other hand, language learning might really be the act of learning to express ideas that already exist."
The classical theories of the relation between language and thought in developmental psychology are those of Piaget and Vygotsky. Piaget's claim is that language depends on thought for its development, and is based on four sources of evidence:
• the period of infancy, in which fundamental principles of thought are exhibited well before language
• the simultaneous emergence of language, deferred imitation, symbolic play, evocative memory, and mental imagery, suggesting language is but one outcome of more fundamental changes in cognitive abilities
• the lack of effect of language upon reasoning abilities in middle childhood
• and the nature of speech in early childhood, the claim being that the communicative function of speech results from cognitive developments.
By contrast Chomsky, while seeing thought and language as initially separate systems, considers the two merge at around two years of age, producing verbal thought. Mental operations are regarded as embodied in the structure of language, and hence cognitive development results from an internalisation of language.
3.3 Second Language Acquisition/Learning
According to The Wikipedia Dictionary, Second language learning is the process by which people learn languages in addition to their native language(s). The term second language is used to describe any language whose acquisition starts after early childhood (including what may be the third or subsequent language learned). Scholars (for example Krashen (1981) often differentiate language learning from language acquisition. The former being seen as ‘formal’ (what is done in the classroom or other formal situations), while the latter is seen as ‘natural’ (which is not necessarily taught, but naturally acquired).
However, today, most scholars use the terms interchangeably. Applied linguists focus more on the experience of the learner in the classroom, while most psycholinguists focus on the processes a child goes through to acquire a language. According to Krashen (1981), Language acquisition is a subconscious process not unlike the way a child learns language. Language acquirers are not consciously aware of the grammatical rules of the language, but rather develop a "feel" for correctness. "In non-technical language, acquisition is 'picking-up' a language."
Language learning, on the other hand, refers to the "conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them." Thus language learning can be compared to learning about a language.
The acquisition-learning distinction hypothesis claims that adults do not lose the ability to acquire languages the way that children do. Just as research shows that error correction has little effect on children learning a first language, so too error correction has little affect on language acquisition.
Krashen's theory of second language acquisition consists of five main hypotheses:
• the Acquisition-Learning hypothesis,
• the Monitor hypothesis,
• the Natural Order hypothesis,
• the Input hypothesis,
• and the Affective Filter hypothesis.
The Acquisition-Learning distinction is the most fundamental of all the hypotheses in Krashen's theory and the most widely known among linguists and language practitioners. According to Krashen there are two independent systems of second language performance: 'the acquired system' and 'the learned system'. The 'acquired system' or 'acquisition' is the product of a subconscious process very similar to the process children undergo when they acquire their first language. It requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in which speakers are concentrated not in the form of their utterances, but in the communicative act.
Learning is the product of formal instruction and it comprises a conscious process which results in conscious knowledge 'about' the language, for example knowledge of grammar rules. According to Krashen 'learning' is less important than 'acquisition'
The Monitor hypothesis explains the relationship between acquisition and learning and defines the influence of the latter on the former. The monitoring function is the practical result of the learned grammar. According to Krashen, the acquisition system is the utterance initiator, while the learning system performs the role of the 'monitor' or the 'editor'. The 'monitor' acts in a planning, editing and correcting function when three specific conditions are met: that is, the second language learner has sufficient time at his/her disposal, he/she focuses on form or thinks about correctness, and he/she knows the rule.
The Natural Order hypothesis is based on research findings (Dulay & Burt, 1974; Fathman, 1975; Makino, 1980 cited in Krashen, 1987), which suggested that the acquisition of grammatical structures follows a 'natural order' which is predictable. For a given language, some grammatical structures tend to be acquired early, others late. This order seemed to be independent of the learners' age, L1 background, conditions of exposure, and although the agreement between individual acquirers was not always 100% in the studies, there were statistically significant similarities that reinforced the existence of a Natural Order of language acquisition. Krashen however points out that the implication of the natural order hypothesis is not that a language program syllabus should be based on the order found in the studies. In fact, he rejects grammatical sequencing when the goal is language acquisition.
The Input hypothesis is Krashen's attempt to explain how the learner acquires a second language. In other words, this hypothesis is Krashen's explanation of how second language acquisition takes place. So, the Input hypothesis is only concerned with 'acquisition', not 'learning'. According to this hypothesis, the learner improves and progresses along the 'natural order' when he/she receives second language 'input' that is one step beyond his/her current stage of linguistic competence.
For example, if a learner is at a stage 'i', then acquisition takes place when he/she is exposed to 'Comprehensible Input' that belongs to level 'i + 1'. Since not all of the learners can be at the same level of linguistic competence at the same time, Krashen suggests that natural communicative input is the key to designing a syllabus, ensuring in this way that each learner will receive some 'i + 1' input that is appropriate for his/her current stage of linguistic competence.
Finally, the fifth hypothesis, the Affective Filter hypothesis, embodies Krashen's view that a number of 'affective variables' play a facilitative, but non-causal, role in second language acquisition. These variables include: motivation, self-confidence and anxiety. Krashen claims that learners with high motivation, self-confidence, a good self-image, and a low level of anxiety are better equipped for success in second language acquisition. Low motivation, low self-esteem, and debilitating anxiety can combine to 'raise' the affective filter and form a 'mental block' that prevents comprehensible input from being used for acquisition. In other words, when the filter is 'up' it impedes language acquisition. On the other hand, positive affect is necessary, but not sufficient on its own, for acquisition to take place.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
Study an adult learner of your language and a child acquiring the language. Identify the differences in their performance in using the language. For instance, notice how they pronounce certain words and their understanding of the meaning of such words.
3.4 Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The Sapir-Whorf theory, named after the American linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, is a mould theory of language. Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf brought attention to the relationship between language, thought, and culture. Neither of them formally wrote the hypothesis nor supported it with empirical evidence, but through a thorough study of their writings about linguistics, researchers have found two main ideas. Writing in 1929, Sapir argued in a classic passage that:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection.
The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation (Sapir, 1929: 69).
This position was extended in the 1930s by his student Whorf, who, in another widely cited passage, declared that:
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages.
The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organised by our minds - and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organise it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organise it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organisation and classification of data which the agreement decrees. (Whorf 1940: 213-14)
It was on the basis of these statements by the two scholars that the Sapir- Whorf Hypothesis was formulated. Whorf distanced himself from the behaviourist stance that thinking is entirely linguistic (Whorf 1956, p. 66). In its most extreme version 'the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis' can be described as consisting of two associated principles. According to the first, linguistic determinism, our thinking is determined by language. According to the second, linguistic relativity, people who speak different languages perceive and think about the world quite differently.
4.0 CONCLUSION
Language and thought are inextricably bound together, so it is very clear that they influence one another. What we know, how we learn the language and our actual language performance are also connected with our thought. All these have been the subject of our discussion in this unit. A major theory at the back of all these discussions is the Sapir- Whorf Hypothesis.
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit, we have examined the thinking of linguists on how we learn and acquire a language. We looked at Chomsky’s ideas of competence and performance (what we have internalised and what we actually use0. We also examined the theories of language acquisition and Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which explains how our world view affect the way we use language.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
1. What is the relationship between language and thought?
2. Explain the terms ‘competence’ and ‘performance’ .
3. Explain Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.
4. Is there any difference between language acquisition and learning?
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Bloom, P. (2000). “Language and Thought: Does Grammar Make us Smart?” Current Biology, Volume 10, Issue 14, pp R516-R517.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Fromkin, V. & Rodman, R. (1983). An Introduction to Language. New York, NY: Holt Saunders
Krashen, S. D. (1981). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. English Language teaching series. London: Prentice- Hall International (UK) Ltd.
Krashen, S. D. (1981). Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press,.
O’Grady, W., Dobrovolsky, M., & Aronoff, M. (1993). Contemporary
linguistics. An Iintroduction. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Por Lic. Jhony M. Jaimes S.(2006). “Competence and Performance in the EFL Teaching Setting.” Monogafias.com Retrieved on 25 November,2006 from http: //www .mono grafias. com/ rabajos 39/competence-and perfomance/competence-and perfomance.shtml
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