Innatist and Interactionist Learning Approaches of Elementary School Students’ Language Acquisition

Abstract

Language acquisition starts in childhood. Oral language is the initial language to learn. Within it, lies norms to make language functional. Children start to function the language through communication. Communication provides an identity that shapes them into different settings. As language acquisition is unique and individual, experts have been studying to interpret it. There are at least three theorists of language acquisition. They are a behaviorist, innatist, and interactionist. Experts are debating on which theory provides the most appropriate approaches for the students. The discussion will compare innatist and interactionist approaches to the students’ first and second language acquisition. It describes how the educational program would be like when using innatist and interactionist learning approaches. There are also critiques on innatist and interactionist approaches. A suggestion is provided to strategically integrate both approaches to understand language acquisition process in both first and second language students.

Foreign Language Acquisition at Elementary Level Education in Samarinda

“…Several studies have been conducted regarding with L2 acquisition e.g. Mulyani (2019) where she observed related to how believes of innatist and interactionist can help students to learn as well as solving L2 acquisition problems in the language classroom. As those two approaches are considered to be helpful for students in acquiring L2, the combination of those two are suggested to be used to teach L2 acquisition in the language classroom.…”

“…Learning L2 is indeed more difficult than the L1, therefore, barriers in learning it are too often to be appeared. Not only Mulyani (2019) who found difficulties of students in L2 as well as trying several approaches to solve the problems, in this case, Peaci (2016) also noticed that English as a foreign language in Turkey comes to poor acquisition result due to several factors which have been advised by research foundation of Turkey namely TEPAV Project Team (2013) i.e. English is a subject to teach and not as a language of communication, students are not well-adequate in knowing the language function of English and communicate it, curriculum and textbooks used are not relevant to the various levels and needs of students, both teachers and students have little practice of English, and no innovation of curriculum used every year where it is an obligation for teachers to apply it.…”

“…Alike with Mulyani (2019), Rahimpour & Salimi (2010) explored how explicit instructions can help EFL students to acquire English better. As a result, indeed through explicit instruction, EFL students can significantly develop their L2 acquisition.…”