Midterm-test

Tiyas Fauziah

2201411005

Rombel 4 / 103 – 104

Midterm-test

Questions :

1.    What is second language acquisition?

2.    What is the difference between ‘second’ and ‘foreign’ language?

3.    What are the goals of SLA?

4.    Give an example of a ‘naturalistic’ learner. Why?

5.    What is the difference between ‘mistakes’ and ‘errors’?

6.    Explain and give one example of ‘overgeneralization’.

7.    Explain two learning theories: Behaviorist and Mentalist. What are the implications of these learning theories for language teachers?

8.    Consider the following data:

A : I like your shoes (expressing compliments)

B : Thank you

How can you explain the B’s response in terms of the acquisition of discourse rules?

Answers :

1.    Second language acquisiton (SLA) is a study about how and the way people learn one language besides their mother tongue.

2.    ‘Second’ language is a language that is learned besides the mother tongue. ‘Second’ language is not always the second language that people learn besides their mother tongue. ‘Second’ language can be the third or the fourth language that people learn.

“Foreign’ language is a language besides a person’s mother tongue. We can say that ‘foreign’ language is another language that people know besides their mother tongue. However, it is not studied, maybe just for a knowledge.

3.    SLA has goals to describe the process of L2 acquisition and to explain the process of L2 acquisition. Another goal of SLA is to explain why some learners seem to be better at one language than other learners.

4.    An example of naturalistic learner is someone who lives in British, he or she will be accustomed and fluent in speaking English. It is because English is the mother tongue in British, so he or she will know about communicating in English naturally from doing communication with his or her environment, without studying it in the classroom.

5.    ‘Mistakes’ happen when the learners know about something in a language, but they cannot perform what they know.

’Errors’ happen because learners do not know what is correct in a language, so it is excusable if they something wrong in communicating with a language, because they do not know the correct one.

6.    Overgeneralization is something that happens when learners of L2 acquisition assume that all the pattern of one L2 is just the same. For example, in English, it is usual if the past simple form of a present verb is just added by suffix –ed, just like ‘walk’ becomes ‘walked’. However, not all verb in English just added by suffix –ed if they are in past simple. Some learners do not know about that. So, they change verb ‘sleep’ into ‘sleeped’ in the form of past simple, not ‘slept’.

7.    Behaviorist theory is a theory which states that language learning is just like other kind of learning that involves habit formation. So, people will accustomed to speak in a language if they use that language in their communication as a habitual.

Mentalist theory is a theory which states that only human being that can study a language, because human’s brain si provided with device that can help them to study about language.

8.    In the conversation above, B’s response is a bare response. Usually, bare response like ‘thankyou’ is used by L2 language learners.