Wild Child

Question 5:

       Although, the movie "Wild Child" displays a boy who has spent most of his life in a forest, isolated from any human communication and found at age 12 not being able to talk or communicate, it is hard for me to say that this proves or supports Critical Period Hypothesis. My reason for this is that, nobody is certain when Victor was left in the forest or why  he was left in the forest. To me it seems that a parent who would abandon their child to die in isolation, could have also been an inflictor of domestic abuse. Therefore, Victor could have been a victim of abuse and suffered from mental issues. Additionally, Victor could have been born with disorders that were not examined and studied at the time such as autism. I am not discrediting the Critical Period Hypothesis, I am simply saying that Victor's case does not have enough evidence and information to prove the hypothesis.

Saville-Troike's Chapter 3

            In this week's reading of Muriel Saville-Troike's text, linguistics were covered in detail. The concepts behind these various terms can be very complex, but as in my previous post, I was able to connect many of the terms with personal and real experiences. Although, English is my second language, I learned it at a very young age and speak as a native speaker. My parents however, started to learn English in their 20's. Furthermore, they did not receive any formal learning; they didn't learn the linguistics and still today, they encounters troubles because they try to form a sentence the way it is formed in Polish. For example, Saville-Troike writes of types of intereference (35-36). For my parents, it is difficult to distinguish when to use an article before a noun because articles do not exist in the Polish language.
      
            In chapter 3, the authors writes this of social learning, "Although the capacity for the first language acquisition is inherent in the neurological makeup of every individual, no one can develop that potential without interaction with others in the society he or she grows up in" (32). This caught my attention because  it is very true. Language is really based off of the culture around us. My first language is Polish, but the Polish that I use here in America differs from the Polish that I start catching onto when I am visiting Poland for a longer period of time. As the author goes onto say, the purpose of language is communication, and therefore language is always changing. These changes cannot be obtained and used unless, one is exposed to them from their culture and society. My parents are speaking the Polish that was being used in Poland's culture in the 80's. Although the proper language is still the same, pop-culture and technology have changed many aspects of the language, and since I am not living in that country and not interacting with others from that society, I am not speaking the most everyday informal Polish.

Chapter One and Two:

            Chapter one sparked my interest in that I never really looked at L2 learning through a variety of perspectives. It has excited me to learn and explore the different perspectives this semester mostly because, throughout my reading, I was able to apply my personal learning experience with many of the bolded key terms. For example, my first language is Polish, my second language is English and my foreign language is Spanish. Also, I learned my second language through a combination of formal and informal L2 learning; however, most of the learning took place informally. That is to say that, while I took an ESL class as a young child, I was more so forced to learn the language from my surroundings because I only received a formal learning experience (ESL) for a short period of time.

            As mentioned before, the three perspectives pointed out in this chapter—linguistic, psychological, and social interest me and I am looking forward to exploring the ideas behind these perspectives individually as well as combined. For example, in my personal experience, through a linguistic perspective, one might say that it was easy for me to learn how to read and write Spanish because the sentence structure is very much similar to Polish, it can also be argued through the social perspective that it is not easy for me to actually speak the language because I have not been culturally exposed and immersed in the language.

            The second chapter of this text further explored the three perspectives. The author ponders and points out interesting insights on multilingualism and children L2 learners. For example, Saville-Troike writes, “The ability to acquire language could not be dependent upon intellectual powers alone, since children with clearly superior intelligence do not necessarily begin to speak earlier, or with better results, than children of ordinary intellect” (15). What is it that has the most influence on the learning of another language? This is a question that I would like to learn more about. Additionally, why is it that it is easier to learn another language at a younger age? Since I was exposed to English at a young age, quickly I learned the language and lost a Polish accent, where as my parents still have difficulty today with English grammar and vocabulary, and their accent is very thick. What is it that makes a child so susceptible to acquiring a second language fluently?

            I also wanted to point out something that the author states that truly stood out to me. “Regrettably, there is a common attitude among educators, sometimes pursued with almost religious fervor, that socially “inferior” or “uneducated” varieties of a language are a moral threat and should be completely eradicted” (12). As a future educator, I think that these “inferior languages” are something I will most likely encounter with many students, and I think that teachers need to realize that these are not inferior languages at all, but simply languages of other cultures. While it is important to teach proper grammar of standard English, who is to say that standard English is in fact the “superior” language. The acceptance, appreciation and acknowledgement of other dialects per say, is very important to a student. Additionally, language is always changing. This is to say that a very proper and grammatically correct standard English sentence today, could have been slang one hundred years ago. The main purpose of a language is for communication, and if a language needs to change in order for society to communicate better, so be it.