Koutsompou Violetta-Irene
(BA, MA, DipCounsPsy, MSc)
1(English and Psychology
Department, New York College, Athens Greece)
Abstract: The case study presented here, deals with the
subject of second language acquisition making at the same time an effort to
show as much as possible how L1 was acquired and the ways L1
affected L2, through the
process of examining a Greek girl who has been exposed to the English language
from the age of eight. Furthermore, I had the chance to analyze the method used
by the frontistirio teachers and in what ways this method helps or negatively
influences children regarding their performance in the four basic skills. We
will evaluate the evidence acquired by the girl by studying briefly the basic
theories provided by important figures in the field of L2. Finally, I will also include my personal
suggestions and the improvement of the child’s abilities and I will state my
opinion clearly.
Keywords: case study,
children, Greece, second language acquisition, skills.
- Introduction
According to the findings of the case
study examined here, concerning issues such as age, social and family
background, personal characteristics, age, sex, motivation, environment,
parental education, and financial situation, we will have the chance to
understand how the above factors played either a negative or a positive role in
acquiring L2.
- Difference
Between L1 And L2
The basic
difference between L1 and L2 is that the former is
remarkable for the speed with which it takes place (usually during infancy).
The important element is that by the age of five the child has acquired a great
part of the basics of the language while acquiring L2 requires e set
of paragons and methods to develop the proficiency of the language. L2
refers to the gradual development of ability in a language by using it
naturally in communicative situations(1).
- Acquisition
And Learning
Some researchers distinguish between
acquisition and learning. Acquisition refers to the subconscious process of
“picking up” a language through exposure; on the other hand, learning is
related to the conscious process of studying it(2).
What
Is A Case Study?
A case study is an empirical inquiry
that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real life context; one
not clearly evident and in which multiple sources of evidence are used(3). The most common type of CS [case
study] involves the detailed description and analysis of an individual subject,
from whom observations, interviews, and (family) histories provide the database(4).
Historical
Review
In applied linguistics, the case study
has been employed principally as a tool to trace the language development of
the first and second language learners(5).
Thus, we should take a look to previous important case studies concerning
language acquisition. A notable case is that of Genie, a 13-year-old who had
spent most of her life tied to a chair locked in a small room. Her father was
intolerant of any kind of noise and had beaten Genie whenever she made a noise.
Moreover, there had been no radio or television and the child’s only human
contact was forbidden to spend more than a few minutes with her, only long
enough to feed her. Genie had spent her whole life in a state of physical,
sensory and psychological deprivation. As a conclusion, Genie was unable to use
language, but when she was brought into care she began to respond, trying to
imitate sounds and communicate. Her syntax remained simple. This case provides
some evidence against the notion that language cannot be acquired after the
critical period (up until puberty); it can be acquired but not fully and not in
a proficient level(6).
- Research
Method Used
The oral interview has been widely used
as a research tool especially in psychology and applied linguistics. It has
been used by second language acquisition researchers seeking data on stages and
processes of acquisition(7).
Obviously, the research method I used is the one of interview, both of the
child and his parents. The main purpose of interviewing both sides is that of
having more accurate findings, being more objective and also becoming more
familiar with the general idea about language that exists in the family (see
Appendix p.1).N Another method I used is tape recording because the child examined
is not affected negatively by the fact that everything we talk about is
recorded. She is not a shy child. The interview lasted almost 2 hours and
naturally took place at the girl’s house.
I would like to mention here that the discussion with the parents was
held in Greek, since neither of them speaks English. The conversation with the
girl was held in both languages.
- Family And
Social Background
Firstly, I should introduce the girl.
Her name is “Ioanna L.”, she is fourteen years old and she lives in an area
that is close to Athens. Her family is a typical middle class Greek family. She
has two sisters and an older brother who lives abroad. From what I have
experienced, being a long time acquaintance of the family due to the fact that
we were neighbors, I could say that there are exceptionally strong love bonds
between the mother and the children. The father is more distant towards his
children, which by no means indicates he doesn’t care about them. However, he
expresses his love in his own unique way. Both parents have an adequate
educational background; they have finished high school and more specifically
the father is a graduate of an Institution of Electronics and Engineers.
Furthermore, they both work. Their financial situation is good enough to pay for
four to six hours of private lessons per week.
- Personal
Characteristics
“Ioanna L.” is a young teenage girl; she
is a very good student, a hyperactive child, adorable and sweet. She has a very
communicative personality and generally I can say that she is very extrovert.
She likes to attend conversations between older people in order to learn more
things. She is mature enough to understand basic issues and discuss about them.
Issues like her future studies, since her dream is to become a primary school teacher.
She is not cooperative in learning foreign languages, specifically English,
even though she understands that it is required to have knowledge in English
because it is an international language used everywhere. She didn’t start
English because she wanted to, but in order to please her parents, who had this
desire. She isn’t really motivated to learn English, so here I could say that
her English teacher will face a difficulty.
First Language Acquisition
“Ioanna L.”, based on her mother’s
words, started to understand and react to language at the age of one. She
confused baby-talk words (caretaker speech) with the correct ones. For example,
in the village a lot of mothers use the phoneme “ai” for the word
“water”, so the child muddles up “ai” and “water”. When the baby says “ai” it
means that he/she wants to drink water. Furthermore, she speaks according to
the existing dialect and she has the accent used in this particular
geographical area.
Second Language Acquisition
“Ioanna L.”, just like the majority of
Greek children, went to a frontistirio to learn English. The process of
learning the second language began at the age of eight. It is true that it
wasn’t difficult for her to adapt to the system of the frontistirio. As
expected in the L2 she produced overgeneralizations as a result of
the L1. She transferred Greek
expressions into English and she still does that; obviously, this way isn’t
effective for L2 communication (negative transfer). I should mention
that “Ioanna L.” didn’t have any previous experience with English and that
because her parents wanted her first to learn Greek (mother language) perfectly
or at least in a very good level. “Ioanna L.” spends three hours every week to
the frontistirio doing mainly exercises related to grammar (grammar –
translation method) and writing.
Speaking
The ability to speak presupposes not
only a firm knowledge of language features (grammar) but also the ability to
process information and language “on the spot”(8). The whole purpose of referring to the above
statement is because “Ioanna L.” cannot speak English spontaneously and
generally she cannot communicate easily with a native speaker of English due to
the fact that the process she follows is to think in Greek and translate in
English. From that I can conclude that the speaking section is not included in
the program or method of the frontistirio.
Listening
Another important skill for the learner,
especially the non-native speaker of the language, is the listening skill. It
is especially important since it provides the perfect opportunity to listen to
voices other than the teacher’s, enables students to acquire good habits as a
result of the spoken English they absorb, and helps to improve their own
vocabulary and pronunciation(9).From
what I saw, “Ioanna L.” understands the conversations she hears; she catches
the general meaning even if she doesn’t know many words or expressions from the
discussion.
Reading
“Ioanna L.” couldn’t read extensive
passages at the beginning, but now she is able to read whole texts and I
believe she can read books easily, since she loves reading. Sometimes she gets
stuck on words or phrases without having a basic meaning for the text. To get
maximum benefit from their reading students need to be involved in both
extensive and intensive reading. One of the fundamental conditions of a
successful extensive reading program is that students should be reading
material they can understand. The intensive reading makes learners realize that
they shouldn’t feel desperate if they don’t understand every single word in a
text. It seems contradictory to insist that students “read for meaning” while
simultaneously discouraging them from trying to understand the text at a deeper
level than merely gist(10).
Writing
Another skill of great importance is
writing which is strongly related to speaking. They both belong to
communication and combining these two skills we can say that a learner is
capable of interacting with other speakers or generally people through
discussions or personal letters and written assignments.
Oral Communication Written
Communication
Utterance text
Speaker ßà Listener Writer ßà Reader
Written
text has a number of conventions which separate it from speaking. Apart from
differences in grammar and vocabulary, there are issues of letter, word and
text formation, manifested by handwriting, spelling, layout and punctuation(11). In this specific case, “Ioanna L.”
doesn’t have a serious handwriting problem (the reader can easily understand
her writing) and her spelling is absolutely correct; there is a slight problem
with punctuation. She knows how to organize a text and she is able to write
letters with fluency.
- Recommendations-Personal
Opinion
After the above findings about “Ioanna
L.”’s skills, I will try to make recommendations concerning her progress; it’s
not difficult to realize that the only serious problem she faces is in the
speaking section but she can be improved through discussions in the classroom
(communicative approach) and by the method of drilling (audio lingual method).
I believe that with a lot of practice she will manage to improve herself,
especially in this skill since it is the problematic one. As far as the other
three basic skills, I honestly think that she is improving daily but it would
be helpful for her to watch movies without subtitles or subtitles in the
English language, so she can see words, phrases and their spelling. Another
activity is to start reading books in English and as a result she will practice
English and learn new words, so she can use them in either speaking or writing.
- Conclusion
As a conclusion, I would like to express
my feeling of satisfaction and personal fulfillment due to the great experience
I had doing this research concerning second language acquisition. I could have
written more about the child examined but this requires a lot of analysis
which, unfortunately, there is no opportunity to conduct. It was very useful
for me to observe an individual in an issue of great concern in the field of
language. I hope the above issues presented in this case study have been
adequately explained.
References
[1].
Ellis, Rod. The Study of Second
Language Acquisition. Oxford University Press, 2003.
[2].
Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of
English Language Teaching, Longman editions. England, 2001
[3].
Nunan, David. Research Methods in
Language Learning. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
[4].
Wade, Carole & Tavris, Carol.
Psychology, Pearson Education, New Jersey, 2003: 7th edition.
[5].
Yule, George. The Study of
Language. Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, 2004.
Ms Koutsompou Violetta-Irene was born and raised in Polidrosos, a village at the outskirts of Mountain Parnassos, in Greece. She holds a BA in English and Psychology (2007) from the State University of New York, USA, a Masters degree in English and Comparative Literature (2009) from the University of Indianapolis, USA, an accredited Certificate in TEFL from the Hellenic American Union (2007) and a Diploma in Counseling Psychology (2013) from City Unity College, Athens, Greece, an MSc in Psychology from the University of East London, UK (2014) . She conducted research concerning postnatal depression and presented it to the Psychology Conference of City Unity College, which awarded her a prize of excellence. Her areas of interest and concentration are psychology of child development, children’s literature and its impact on the cognitive development, depression, grief and loss, postnatal depression, anxiety and depression, mood disorders in children and adults, second language acquisition, the use of literature in the language classroom and its benefits, postmodern literature, women’s psychology and writings, book editing and writing. She has conducted research concerning second language acquisition and the young learners as well as grief, counseling and the grieving process in all aspects of life; she has participated as a co-author in a forthcoming book on grief and loss. She has presented her work in many Conferences in Greece and abroad. Ms Koutsompou worked in private language institutions since 2005; she was interested and worked with children with special learning difficulties such as dyslexia, as well as with children with behavioral problems in the language classroom.
Some of her Publications: Koutsompou
Violetta-Irene, “Young Learners: How advantageous is the early start?” IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social
Science (IOSR-JHSS) Vol. 15, Issue 5 (Sep. - Oct. 2013), pp 27-37
Kotsopoulou Anastasia and Koutsompou
Violetta-Irene, “The Grieving Process during the Economic Crisis in
Greece”, Journal of Economics, Business
and Management vol. 2, no. 4, pp.313-317, 2014.
Koutsompou
Violetta-Irene, “Grief and the Counseling Process”, IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social
Science (IOSR-JHSS)
Volume 18, Issue 1 (Nov. - Dec. 2013), pp. 32-39
Koutsompou
Violetta-Irene, "The Use of Literature in the Language Classroom:
Methods and Aims," International
Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 74-79, 2015.
.
(1) Yule, The Study of Language, pp. 175-191
(2) Ellis, The Study of Second Language Acquisition, pp.
14-15
(3) Nunan, Research Methods in Language Learning pp.76-78
(4) Nunan, Research Methods in Language Learning, pp.
76-78
(5) Nunan, Research Methods in Language Learning, pp.
76-78
(6) Yule, The Study of Language, p. 171
(7) Nunan, Research Methods in Language Learning, p. 149
(8) Harmer, The Practice of ELT, p. 270
(9) Harmer, The Practice of ELT, p. 228
(10) Harmer, The Practice of ELT, p. 214
(11) Harmer, The Study of ELT, pp. 255-258
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