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| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6620 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 81 of 83 21 October 2006 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the links to the research. I did say that a five-year-old child has ESSENTIALLY mastered the grammar of his/her language. I am aware that some parts are mastered after this age. As to the referenced research, the problems the Spanish children had with the subjunctive were related to cognitive maturation, not language per se, the errors of the Greek children were hypothesized to be performance errors, not competence errors, and the naming and word fluency tests showed better performance for older children and adults, which is not surprising for these types of vocabulary test. What children do not do is make non-native errors such as "it came to my mind that ..." (= "the thought occured to me that ..." - a grammatically correct structure, but non-native vocabulary usage) or "I'm tired to be told that ..." (= I'm tired of being told that ..."). These are real-life examples. Surely you are aware that many non-native speakers make non-native errors even after 5 years of studying/learning a language?
As for "effectively" studying a language, research has consistenly failed to show the superiority of any one method over another for achieving accuracy in grammar and vocabulary usage. Errors are a natural part of language learning, but with meaningful exposure to the language they decrease over time, and language becomes more native-like. I recently read a study on first language acquisition of Swedish. Swedish children get gender assignment right from the beginning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7017 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 82 of 83 21 October 2006 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||
Even adult native speakers make mistakes but you would still consider them to be fluent. In fact, when learning a language, we put ourselves under a great deal of pressure to get everything absolutely correct all the time when even native speakers don't do this. But then again, they can laugh it off as having made a harmless mistake whereas the learner can sometimes be told that s/he has not learned something properly and should reinforce that concept before opening his/her mouth again. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6620 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 83 of 83 22 October 2006 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||
Speakers of a second language make grammatical errors that differ in kind from those made by native speakers (non-native errors of competence) and that often reflect the linguistic background of the second language speaker. There are also errors in vocabulary usage (non-native vocabulary usage). There are also other more subtle differences between native speakers and non-native speakers - learners of English use "moreover" 200 times more frequently than native speakers. Native speakers make performance errors, not competence errors ("performance" and "competence" being used here in the technical sense they have in linguistics). Native speakers also make prescriptive grammar "errors".
This attitude is counterproductive. I favor helping second language learners realize that errors are a natural part of language learning and that errors become less frequent over time with sufficient exposure to the language. Edited by Linguamor on 23 October 2006 at 12:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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