I
studied Italian while I was abroad in Italy. I was 21 years old, completing
independent, cross-cultural studies in interpersonal communications. This was,
literally, an experience that reflects why I am passionate and interested in
linguistic studies, today. Considering my post-critical age period of SLA, I
was able to transfer and learn language forms and meaning, semantically,
depending on pertinence, through verbal and non-verbal interactions, and with
little grammar penology.
The
most interesting cross-cultural transfer I discovered during my L2 acquisition
is the transfer of humor, i.e. jokes, laughter, and catching onto implicit
meanings of another speaker, rather than, literal translations, during stages
of SLA. This discovery of meta-linguistics, at beginning stages of L2
acquisition, at a post-critical age, really “speaks too,” a human’s ability to
acclimate through cultural immersion. My study of interpersonal, cross-cultural
communications and applied linguistics, leads me to the assumption; that
post-pubescent humans, adapt to language, for survival, similarly to young
infants adaptation of language for survival.
This
assumption, in my experience, comes from the universal need of our species to
form relationships. Reflecting on the cases of The Wild Children, Genie and
Victor, isolation from healthy family system structure, and no critical-period
developments, or little to no interaction with any other humans, these post-pubescent
children where able to adapt, quickly, to scientist and researchers who sought
interest in their case. Through empirical evidence that we studied in our
modules, we see that these children formed relationships, innately and without
thought, through verbal and non-verbal interaction, (i.e. sounds, reactions,
gestures,) which led directly to L1 acquisition.
Similarly,
babies will gesture, make sounds, and learn alternate ways to signal their
needs to caretaker. For example, they will cry for milk. As they grow,
caretaker will help infant substitute this cry, or signal for milk, with sign
language, and later words. I can see that human needs are expressed in anyway
that generates response. We can generate responses through our relationships
with people around us. Another universal quality of humans, are we innately
caretaker for other. I see that we generally want to help each other if we can,
despite barriers, such as age, and language. That is what happened in Genie’s
case, she began to learn alternative ways to signal her emotions and needs.
I
reference these cases above because I can relate this to my experience in
learning a second language, abroad. In most cases, I was able to piece together
what I already knew, to learn something that was vital to accomplishing what I
need. For example, the one sentence, I used most was, “Como se dice,” pronounced,
“se,” say, “dice,” dichAy. Pronunciation in Italian is a key element in
expressing language in an understandable way. I was able to self-teach, because
I have proper grammar and reading, education background. I did most self-taught
acquisition through the Internet and reading. While in Italy, we had a
translator for a majority of the trip. This was interesting because we did not
focus on grammar techniques at all. Most phrases and useful L2 structures,
where sentences that were situational fluencies, i.e. market places, traveling, and
self-expression to others. This acquisition is interesting because as a language
learner in another country; having no formal grammar, syntax, or penology
instruction, agrees with Wordhal’s semantic transfer theory. With no systematic
instruction of grammar, I still naturally pieced together language meaning.
What’s more, I was able to make sense of Italian jokes, based off of American
and Italian stereotypes, funny gestures, and tonal changes. I received more
error correction from locals, who would assist me in pronunciation, slowing
down speech to give me time to translate, or facial queues that signaled
misunderstandings. I think about Long’s Output Hypothesis, I do not think I
would self-correct my errors, if it was not for language interactions, and
striving to match more developed native speaker language. During this
experience my affective filter was high. I have to admit; I felt pressure to
speak to a standard that was not totally incomprehensible. Through each attempt
to communicate with a native speaker, the more comfortable I became, thus
lowering my affective filter. This ties
back to my original assumption that a person’s need to survive is easier with
SLA, thus, there is more personal incentive to adapt to L2 rules. Survival
comes from pertinent experiences, relationship formation, and language building
techniques.
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