BILINGUALISM DEVELOPMENTS; A CHILD’S ACQUISITION OF

ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE IN NIGERIA.

AN M.A ENGLISH (LANGUAGE) RESEARCH PROPOSAL

By

ALUkO WEMIMO ADEFUNKE

MATRIC NUMBER: ENG/2016/0047

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LITERARY STUDIES,

COLLEGE OF HUMANITIES AND CULTURE, IKIRE CAMPUS,
OSUN STATE UNIVERSITY, OSOGBO

2023
 INTRODUCTION
Introduction
Language acquisition is a notion that academics studying psycholinguistics and
bilingualism have thought about and worked with extensively over the years. These
academics' focus appears to have moved from Chomsky's theory of language
acquisition in a first language (L1) setting during the past few decades to that of a
bilingual environment, with a focus on second language learning in particular. As the
country under study for our case study, Nigeria is bilingual or multilingual, with
English being imposed upon her as the dominant or superordinate language. Since the
superordinate language is both the official language and the language of instruction,
learning it is essential given the linguistic conditions in Nigeria. Thus, we will be
talking about some of the fundamental problems with language.Therefore, in this
chapter, we will discuss some of the fundamental problems with language acquisition.
We will also describe the issue that prompted this investigation. We will outline the
goals we hope to accomplish with this study and list any potential roadblocks that
may arise. We will also attempt to define the important concepts in this chapter.

Background to the Study

Language is a hallmark of the human species, and is passed unfalteringly from adults
to infants across generations. There are over 6900 different living languages
(Lewis,2009) which, while sharing fundamental structural similarities, vary in the
surface form by which ideas are communicated. As a consequence, human infants
cannot be born with the knowledge of any particular language, but rather must learn
the specifics of their native language over the first few years of life. To this end, it is
necessary for infants to be equipped with a common set of tools for perception
and learning, which together with possible innate knowledge or predispositions, have
the flexibility and power to enable the acquisition of any of the world’s languages.
Over the years, there have been several challenges associated with second
language learners' acquisition of the English language. The complexity of language's
structure could be the cause of this. This research explores the fascinating process of a
child learning English in a bilingual or multilingual setting. In contrast to children,
adults are often claimed to find it difficult to pick up new languages. A child typically
has an inbuilt capacity to learn as many languages as possible within a specific age
span. Put differently, they exhibit specific traits that facilitate their active articulation
of the languages they are exposed to. According to some scholars, a child's capacity to
understand as many languages as possible,He or she is exposed to within a specific
age range since before the age of five, the speech organ is still developing.
Scholars' questions about how language functions in the human mind, particularly in
the minds of young infants, sparked interest in language learning. They discovered
certain broad concepts and eventually proposed fundamental language acquisition
problems. The broad concepts are:
 Human language is distinct and speculative.
 Although humans are prewired to learn language, children's minds are not born
with a blank slate.
 Children don't begin school with a fully developed command of grammar or with
an understanding of social and communicative interaction.
 Linguistic proficiency grows throughout time in stages. Children in various
linguistic regions of the world have been observed, and the stages are comparable,
if not universal.
 Some of the stages pass quickly, while others linger for a while.
The rationalist school of thought first appeared in the 17th century. Rene
Descartes was one of its main proponents. The rationalists held that since God
endowed us with particular innate talents, ideas do not come to us through experience.
The human mind's natural capacities and principles are used to comprehend sensory
input. This may have served as the inspiration for Chomsky's inherent theory,
according to which language is intrinsic and is not taught to children. But rather than
being born with a clean slate, our brains already contain some information. We don't
only learn words and then grammar; on a fundamental level, we already understand
grammar even before we talk.
Chomsky believed that the capacity for language acquisition and production is
"inherited" in children. He believed that some linguistic patterns used so correctly by
children must have already been ingrained in their minds. He had the opinion that
every child has a language acquisition apparatus in their brains that helps them learn
the fundamentals of language and its grammatical structures. Only then do kids need
to expand their vocabulary and use the syntactic structures in their language learning
tool to construct sentences.
Language acquisition has a vital phase between the ages of 0 and 4 years, but
language development is made up of overlapping stages, so a kid does not learn the
language all at once. The development of language then begins and continues until the
stage of competence. The home environment of the child determines more than
anything the quality of his or her command of language, according to Wallwork (1985),
which was evaluated in Okoli (1990). This is because this is where the child has
experienced language the majority of the time throughout infancy and childhood..
Since a dominant language has been chosen for communication, this silences the
parents' original tongues for "some time." In this case, the child’s first language is
neither the father’s nor the mother’s native language. In a bilingual family, a child
develops a ‘first’ language rather than a mother tongue. There are still cases where the
child tries to pick some vocabularies from the mother’s language, perhaps due to the
fact that the mother is always closer to him. The child, at best, becomes a bilingual.
This is also another reason for choosing bilingual children for this study.
It's interesting to note that while talking about language acquisition, the influence
of the environmental Behaviour cannot be ignored. Language is thought to be
influenced by the environment through the process of Imitation. The environment, in
contrast to the nativists' belief that it is only a "trigger" for language learning, is seen
as having a significant impact on language acquisition by environmentalists and
behaviourist,in fact, they refer to it as the "principal" factor in language learning.
Chomsky did not entirely ignore the influence of the environment. Nevertheless, he
asserts that a child is capable of creating an endless set of sentences from the limited
number of sentences they are exposed to in their surroundings. Even statements that
the child has never heard before in the environment are formed by them. These
theories each capture a crucial feature of language acquisition, hence this research
aims to take advantage of them. Thus, we will set up camp with the nativist,(Chomsky)
Behaviourist and environmentalist(Skinners) hypotheses since they best fit the
parameters of our research.

Statement of the Problem

It is clear that man is influenced by the surroundings and behaviour in which he lives.
A child's language preference in the competence domain often results from a
multitude of external variables. such as age, level of education, social circle, family
history, and so forth. Also, a child's environment and people’s behaviour around
him/ her appears to have an impact on their ability to pick up a second language.
The observation of children born into a multilingual society's capacity to pick up
English as a second language within a given age range is the issue that made this
study necessary. It is expected that kids in elementary school would have been those
between the ages of four and five. Some people may perform poorly, while others
may do well. Their varied levels of upbringing could be the cause of this.

Aim and Objectives of the Study

The study aim is to observe the second language Acquisition development of Nigerian
children. As Bowen (1998) Stated that the important thing in a child’s language
acquisition is to watch that it proceeds steadily, not whether it is fast or slow.
The achievement of this research aim will require the pursuits of the following
objectives which are to;
 To ascertain whether the environment and behaviour has an impact on children's
learning of English as a second language.
 To determine the elements of the surroundings and Behavioural imitation that
affect kids' English learning
 To explain how these contextual factors are related to the language behavior.
The Research Questions
 Does the environment and human behaviour influence children’s acquisition of
English as a second language?
 What are the environmental an Behavioural variables that influence children’s
acquisition of English?
 What are the linguistic behaviour associated with the environmental variables?

Justification of the Study

The fact that several studies exist on language Acquisition does not deny the fact
that only few studies have focused on the Second Language Acquisition in children.
The few studies in this field have mostly studied foreign children’s bilingualism
development and not much has been carried out on Nigerian children second language
Acquisition. Also, the extensive studies have applied only the nativist approach
without looking at how the variables of other language Acquisition hypothesis surface
in language Acquisition.
The purpose of this study is to agree that asides from the Noam Chomsky nativist
theory how children acquire or learn second Language, there are other variables
which the environmental and behavioural variables that influence the acquisition of
second Language in. Children. A study of this type is necessary to be able to provide
useful insight and explains how these children acquire languages within the particular
study age range which can be examined and analysed with different linguistics
variables. A study of this type will be useful in the teaching of English to speakers of
other languages.
It is also of no doubt that the development of language acquisition device in
human as a powerful tool of communication started from childhood and the diverse
studies of languages. Therefore, This study seeks to serve as tool for the
improvement of teaching pedagogy to balance language differences between infants
and teachers. Also, infants and their immediate environment
Scope of the Study
It is only appropriate to limit our analysis to the Nativist and Behaviourist/
Environmentalist theoretical frameworks because of the nativist and environmentalist
ideas that will be used in this research. We'll be talking about a child's natural aptitude
for learning English as a second language in a multilingual environment, as well as
the impact of society. Children at junior School, Our lady of Fatima Nursery and
Primary school, Iwo, Osun State, between the ages of four and six, will be the subject
of this project.
Due to the researcher's location and the timing of the decision, the aforementioned
school was selected. Four to six-year-olds were selected because, in accordance with
nativist and ecological views, children in this age range are fully aware of their
linguistic ability and are already
Conclusion
We have been able to give background knowledge of the research by identifying basic
issues of language acquisition postulated by scholars. Some of which include human
language as being unique and species specific, children as being born with a prewired
brain to acquire and learn language and that linguistic competence in children develop
by stages. We were able to state the problem that necessitated the research, set
objectives which we seek to achieve at the end of the research and have confined our
study to basically cover two aspects or theories of language acquisition because of the
proximity of the researcher and time frame.
 Literature Review
This literature review summarizes a number of academic studies on how bilingual or
multilingual environments affect children's acquisition of second languages.Also,
explain key terms that will be used this research. The study of second languages (L2)
was rare until the 1970s, when second language acquisition (SLA) started to gain
traction as a subject of study and because bilingual programs for Spanish-speaking
kids in the US and French immersion in Canada were being created. A renewed focus
on this child demographic has occurred recently, partly because of clinical and
specialized research aimed at understanding how to differentiate language diversity
from language disorder and the difficulties of multilingual communities.
We shall be looking into some key terms. We would also be considering Omego ’ s
account on Children’s Acquisition of English and the Gradual Extinction of Nigerian
Languages, Daramola’s Language Acquisition and Learning in Nigerian English ,
Ellen’s account on second Language acquisition and Bilingualism at an early age and
the impact of cognitive development.

Definition of key Terms

Language Acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which people develop the ability to understand,
produce, and use language for communication. It entails learning a wide range of skills,
including syntax, phonetics, and a large vocabulary. There is still no theory that can
fully account for how language is acquired, which is a complicated and distinctive
human trait. Linguists can define language acquisition in a variety of ways. These
methods include many different academic viewpoints, like as Chomsky's LAD model,
Skinner's idea of behaviorism, and many others.
Contrarily, language acquisition comes about as a result of explicit training in
linguistic norms. Since learning assumes that students have conscious knowledge of
the new language and can discuss that knowledge, learning a language is not a suitable
activity for very young children. They typically possess a fundamental understanding
of grammar.
The study of how children pick up a language is known as child language acquisition.
Children learn to comprehend and eventually employ the language used by their
caretakers from a very young age. Three primary domains are covered in the research
of language acquisition:
 First-language acquisition: Learning a language as a child involves speaking your
native tongue.
 Bilingualism: Learning two native languages
 Second Language Acquisition: (learning a foreign language).
First-language acquisition and second-language acquisition are the two groups into
which researchers divide language acquisition. The process of acquiring a first
language is universal, independent of one's native tongue. Infants pick up on noises
from their environment, mimic them, and eventually start speaking. Second-language
acquisition refers to the process through which a person picks up new language skills,
including vocabulary, phonological aspects, grammatical structures, and writing
systems. It is predicated on the knowledge of a first language.

Second Language Acquisition

Learning and acquiring a second language after mastering one's mother tongue or first
language is the definition of second language acquisition and learning. It is the
methodical investigation of how individuals pick up languages other than their native
tongue. The process of acquiring languages in addition to one's mother tongue is
known as second language acquisition, or SLA.For instance, when a child begins
attending school and speaks Yoruba as his native tongue, he begins learning English.
Through the process of second language acquisition, English is learned. In actuality, a
small child can pick up a second language more quickly than an adult can.
SLA stands for second language acquisition and has two definitions. It is a term used
to broadly refer to picking up a second language. It is the name of the theory that
describes how humans learn a second language, to be more precise. This mostly
unconscious process takes place as we concentrate on communicating. It is comparable
to acquiring a second language, which explains how formal language instruction aids
us in learning a language through more deliberate methods.

Standard British English and Nigerian English

Although, as far as this is concerned, the word "language acquisition" has raised
problems such how relevant and appropriate it is in the acquisition of a second
language. Although English is a native language of the Britons, it has also become
nativized in Nigerian society (it goes without saying that English came into touch with
Nigerian languages as a result of colonization, trade, and commerce, among other
factors). As a result of our lack of exposure to native speakers, English may not be
native to us when it comes to first language acquisition (L1). However, in Nigeria,
English has developed into a second language native setting where it is being learned
as a second language (L2).
In Nigeria, the English language was widely used in both formal and informal settings.
On the one hand, English is employed as the primary medium of instruction in schools
and is also a required subject in Nigeria's academic curriculum. Therefore, it is
important for students to acquire the necessary English language skills for their talks to
be considered understandable. Therefore, we can draw the conclusion that children are
capable of acquiring the language of the environment, which is Nigerian English, in
accordance with the Nativist and the Environmentalist theories of language acquisition

Bilingualism: A Trend in Second Language Acquisition

Is bilingualism inconvenient? is a common issue posed by researchers in the field of
language acquisition. Although they are frequently linked, Haugen (1972) distinguishes
two major categories of concerns that emerge: those that represent society
preoccupations and those focused on the individual. The striking thing is that, in
comparison to monolinguals, fewer bilinguals share these anxieties. In a survey
conducted by Grosjean (1982), 52% of bilinguals and 67% of trilinguals who were
asked about the inconvenience of speaking more than one language responded, "no
inconvenience," yet not a single participant believed that there were no benefits. He
also learns that bilinguals believe that the apparent distinction between them and
monolinguals is a figment of the latter group's imagination.
Although there are instances where bilingualism simply served to exacerbate existing
issues, several studies (de Jong 1986; Harding & Riley 1986) claim that they never
encountered children whose problem may be directly attributable to bilingualism. For
instance, when parents of a new language divorce, a new lingua franca for family
communication is introduced. With the exception of that example, the issues appear to
be with the parents rather than the kids.
The discussion of second language acquisition is increasingly focusing on bilingualism
or multilingualism. In fact, it is challenging to locate a nation in the globe that is
mostly monolingual. Languages impact one another at various levels, times, and under
diverse conditions; no language is free from foreign influences. However, Dadzie (2009)
emphasizes that alternation is not anticipated inside a single discourse.

Infant Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition

According to Dadzie (2009), infant bilingualism refers to a child simultaneously
learning two languages from parents who speak a different language than his
classmates. Linguists have classified infant bilingualism as one of the varieties of
bilingualism in language learning. The topic of baby bilingualism is crucial to this
study since it encompasses a significant portion of our research. According to Dadzie,
a kid may develop bilingualism if the language spoken at home and in the environment
and in the nation where they live are different. Given the aforementioned
circumstances, the child is left with little alternative but to become multilingual; in
order to profit, s/he must be successful in the school language.
According to Tosi (1982), there are differing views on how a school should introduce
the school's language to a student whose home language is different from it, and the
debate is typically related to larger questions of the rights and positions of minority
groups in multiethnic societies. Using the three main ethnic groups as a guide,
paragraph 8 of the language provision of the 1977 National guideline on Education in
Nigeria proposed a guideline for how Nigerians should behave toward the English
language at the academic level as well as their native languages.
There are two main strategies in the NPE constitution that can take multilingual
children into account. The first is instruction in the mother tongue, while the second is
instruction solely in the school language, with foreign languages introduced only as
subjects and not as the primary means of learning. However, some academics have
contended that it is impossible for the mother tongue and the second language to be
interchangeable.Instead, they think that it can only be utilized interchangeably if both
languages are still employed as teaching tools. Such programs fit under Hamers and
Blanc's (1989) definition of a bilingual education program, which is defined as any
system of school education in which teaching is organized and delivered in at least two
languages at the same time and for a variable amount of time, simultaneously, or
consecutively.

Linguistic Aspects of Second-Language Acquisition

What is meant by "proficiency" in a second language is defined in light of theoretical
and empirical research on second-language acquisition. Others have focused on the
capacity to use language to carry out cognitive tasks, while still others have focused on
the social and communicative components of language. Some scholars have defined it
narrowly around the control of grammatical rules. This section explains how research
on second-language acquisition has been impacted by such expansive conceptions of
language.
The issue of how linguistic structures are acquired has received a lot of attention in
second- language acquisition research because it is highly influenced by the prevalent
paradigm in first-language acquisition. For instance, numerous research have looked at
how children learn morphological and syntactic aspects of language. that, in native
speakers, are fully developed by the age of 5 or 6. The grammatical elements of
language, such as function words, sentence modalities, sentence embedding, and
sentence coordination, that Brown (1973) found in his seminal investigation of Adam,
Eve, and Sarah are among these characteristics.
The researcher's definition of language is a crucial aspect of research on
second-language acquisition. A specific definition is drawn from formal linguistics, in
particular Chomsky's (1965) description of the solution to the logical issue of
first-language acquisition as a "Language Acquisition Device" that enables the learner
to infer abstract linguistic information from a small amount of linguistic input. It
follows logically that linguistic knowledge must be innate and extremely specific to
the task of language acquisition by revealing the end-state knowledge to be deep and
abstract and proving that this knowledge is not accessible through induction (i.e.,
observation of "surface data") or extrapolation from more general cognitive principles.

Individual Differences in Second-Language Acquisition

Age of Learning
The age of the student is one element that is commonly mentioned, with the idea being
that younger learners pick up a second language quicker and with a better level of
proficiency. Periodic reviews of the relevant literature (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994;
Collier, 1987; Epstein et al., 1996; Harley and Wang, in press; Krashen et al., 1982;
Long, 1990; Snow, 1987) haven't done a great job of proving this assertion. There is a
critical phase in learning a first language, but this does not mean there is one for
learning a second language.
According to studies on age as a factor in the acquisition of English that is appropriate
for academic use, children who begin learning the language in kindergarten in
English-only educational settings take longer than children who start in grades 2
through 6 to achieve age- appropriate levels of performance on academic tasks (Collier,
1987). This age difference may simply reflect the general observation that initial
acquisition is faster for older learners with more cognitive skills, but it has also been
interpreted as supporting the idea that continued development in the first language is
supported by mastery of the first language's basic grammar, around age 6. Such data
have been viewed by Cummins (1979) as validating Intelligence
General intelligence may play a role in second-language acquisition as well. This
element has primarily been discussed in relation to classroom foreign language
instruction (Carroll, 1986; Gardner, 1983; Oller, 1981). Second-language learning is
obviously not hindered by learning difficulties or poor IQ to the extent that it would be
in formal learning settings for immigrant learners and those in immersion settings
(Bruck, 1982, 1984; also Genesee, 1992, for a review).
Although educational professionals frequently notice that second-language learning is
easier for pupils with a history of formal education and higher socioeconomic
backgrounds, second- language acquisition has not been linked in the field of bilingual
education to issues of general ability. Additionally, correlational studies that look at
bilingual children's relative proficiency in the two languages reveal that
native-language.
Attitudes
The majority of studies examining the influence of linguistic attitudes and motivation
on second-language acquisition have been restricted to students who learn a foreign
language that is often only used in the classroom (Gardner and Lambert, 1972).
According to these studies, motivation and a positive outlook are important predictors
of oral communicative competence in a second language, whereas linguistic aptitude
predicts competence in vocabulary and grammar. Therefore, it is evident that desire
and attitude can play a significant role in second-language acquisition in particular
situations. The few studies that have examined these characteristics' significance in
immigrants' acquisition of English in the United States.
Personality
Numerous research have looked into the characteristics that, in addition to fundamental
intellect, influence a person's propensity to learn a second language. Instead of learning
a language in its context, this activity is primarily focused on learning a foreign
language. Construct validity difficulties are not adequately addressed in this body of
literature, according to a review (Bialystok and Hakuta, 1994). This is probably not a
particularly profitable field for future research given the extreme difficulty of
accurately assessing personality characteristics across cultures, although it will
continue to be a source of discussion due to its inherent fascination.

The Issue of Methodology in Language Acquisition

The approach that researchers in the field of language acquisition originally intended
to use to evaluate their data but which frequently seem insufficient to capture and
interpret the essence of their study are frequently faced with this issue. These
techniques include the Chomsky's LAD theory, the environmentalist theory of Halliday,
the behavioralist theory of Skinner, the corrective feedback techniques, and others.
Thus, when faced with the problem of an inadequate theory chosen for their research
activity, linguists in the field of language acquisition always have a tendency to add
one or two concepts or theories.
According to Bialystok and Swain, the study of second languages, like any educational
endeavor, is influenced by such a variety of factors that research strategies cannot
afford to limit themselves solely to those methods of inquiry that precedent has
approved. They proposed three criteria (case study, evaluative, and experimental
studies) to be used in choosing an appropriate methodology for the intended inquiry,
reviewed with examples the various characteristics and limitations of case study
research, evaluative research, and experimental studies, in order to establish that
research has its own necessary and complementary role to come to a firm conclusion
about language learning.
Some academics think that the best way to assess a child's language development is in
a school context. According to Swain and Barik (1976b), evaluative studies often
observe a sizable sample of subjects on a variety of measures. These safeguards
improve the validity of the results and enable generalization across the population as
well as to other populations. According to Swain and Bialystok, the experimental
technique entails a constrained mode of inquiry. To ascertain the components of a
certain hypothesis, questions are frequently created, and interviews may occasionally
be planned. Their case study methodology is appropriate for exploratory research.
They claim that the data may be studied at any degree of detail and that changes to the
analysis and procedures can be made at any time. Typically, the case study examination
is lengthy.
Omego ’ s account on Children ’ s Acquisition of English and the Gradual
Extinction of Nigerian Languages
Human issues are centered on language, which is essential to human survival. Since it
expresses the thoughts, desires, and feelings of man, it is indeed of fundamental
importance. The significance of language as a means of human communication has
highlighted the level of care devoted to a child's language acquisition and
development.
The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) hypothesis of language learning, which
Chomsky first put forth, is the most widely used and recognized theory in the field. In
Chomsky's view, a kid has the linguistic propensity to pick up the language of his or
her community rather than being born linguistically deficient. Language faculty or
language acquisition program have both been used to refer to this endowment in
linguistics. The language faculty gives the young learner a set of instructions for
creating an internal grammar of his language based on speech input from native
speakers of the language. "The triggering experience" is what Chomsky refers to as the
speech input the youngster hears.
Language acquisition has a vital phase between the ages of 0 and 4 years, but language
development is made up of overlapping stages, so a kid does not learn the language all
at once. The development of language then begins and continues until the stage of
competence. The home environment of the child determines more than anything the
quality of his or her command of language, according to Wallwork (1985), which was
evaluated in Okoli (1990). This is because this is where the child has experienced
language the majority of the time throughout infancy and childhood. The parents of a
multilingual family are forced to use English as the primary language of
communication at home because the linguistic context of the Choba community, where
this study is based, already encourages its usage to fill the communication gaps caused
by multilingualism. Since a dominant language has been chosen for communication,
this silences the parents' original tongues for "some time." In this case, the child’s first
language is neither the father’s nor the mother’s native language. In a bilingual family,
a child develops a ‘first’ language rather than a mother tongue. There are still cases
where the child tries to pick some vocabularies from the mother’s language, perhaps
due to the fact that the mother is always closer to him. The child, at best, becomes a
bilingual. This is also another reason for choosing bilingual children for this study.
The Choba community served as the site of this study. The presence of the University
of Port Harcourt and the social makeup of the residents of the Choba neighborhood
necessitate the use of English as a language of communication. A youngster raised in
such a setting would therefore unavoidably need a second language other than his
native tongue or first language to act as a lingua franca. English. It primarily serves
that purpose and is spoken by the vast majority of locals. The native tongue of the
Choba people is ikwere, but not everyone who lives there, particularly non-natives,
speaks it. Additionally, Igbo is widely spoken there. There are other languages spoken
by people of other ethnic groupings, although they are not widely used. It is clear that
heredity and environment have an equal impact on people. The consensus among
many psychologists is that one's environment influences how they learn to speak.
Language acquisition is the process of learning a language through spontaneously
utilizing it in social situations. Although the infant is born with a language capacity
that allows him to learn any language, this endowment is insufficient for him to
become fully competent in language usage.
The issue that prompted this study is that, in Nigeria, a multilingual society, children
who learn English as a second language between the ages of 0 and 5 are contributing to
the gradual extinction of our indigenous languages. If this risky trend is not reversed, it
will begin to show symptoms in the coming years, as predicted by UNESCO, and the
resulting crises will be more severe than the country's current economic and political
issues.
The primary goal of this research was to examine how the environment affects a child's
acquisition of a second language in a multilingual environment like Choba and the
progressive extinction of indigenous Nigerian languages as a result of this acquisition.
The gradual extinction of Nigerian languages can be linked to the child's early learning
of English and the attitude of Nigerian parents who do not encourage their children to
acquire and speak their mother tongue(s) at home, even though this field of child
language acquisition is not entirely new. This makes the study relevant. This study will
offer suggestions for preserving our native dialects. By speaking their native tongues to
their children more frequently than English, parents will learn from this study that they
can help prevent the extinction of our native languages. This analysis will be useful to
the government and policymakers, who should act quickly to put the National Policy's
requirements into effect.
This study only considers environmental elements, such as how a child's peer group,
social milieu, and educational environment all affect their linguistic development and
the future of indigenous languages. Additionally, only the following schools in the
Choba neighborhood are included in the study Because the children in the study were
in the nursery and pre- nursery levels of education, which government schools do not
run as part of their educational system, government-owned schools were excluded
from this study. Children between the ages of three and five were the subjects of the
study. This time frame is crucial for language learning. These kids were specifically
chosen because some of them already speak English as their first language (e.g., they
are bilingual) and because they are in the crucial early childhood and infancy period
when language learning occurs.
The researcher had to embrace the nativist and environmentalist views of Halliday
(1978) due to the nature of the investigation. According to the environmentalist theory,
a child's ability to successfully learn a language depends on the environment of the
language he or she hears around them, as well as the contexts in which it is uttered.
This theory holds that no child is born with the specific properties of language.
Although there are many theories of language acquisition, including Wilkins' (1974)
mentalist theory and Chomsky's popular and elegant Language Acquisition Device
theory, which is commonly shortened as LAD, a great deal of relevance to this work
and, like Halliday's theory, directly relate to the current investigation. The
environmentalist theory of Halliday and the nativist theory were used as the theoretical
foundations for this research because they both stipulate that the environment as a
whole provides some kind of stimulus for language acquisition while still
acknowledging the importance of innate factors.
Thirteen children's instructors and parents were involved in the study. Aged between
three and five years old, seven of them were males and six were girls. Both of these
kids were in pre-nursery and nursery schools, where they had begun their official
education.
Parents and teachers of the study subjects' children were the main audience for the
interview. Because mothers, in particular, play important roles in their children's
language development, the researcher focused on this group of people. In the
household, the mother is the one who is closest to the child. Similar to this, a teacher is
the person who attends to a student's urgent requirements, making him the closest adult
to the student in the classroom. The interview schedule used by the researcher has six
questions on it. The interviewee, specifically the parents from Ikwerre, stated that
Choba is not a speech community with a uniform dialect when asked what language is
spoken in the child's environment. For this reason, in addition to the mother tongue,
English is primarily spoken to children. When asked why English was chosen at home,
the interviewee noted that because universities are multilingual, it is essential to
introduce English as a first language so that the child can interact with peers who come
from different ethnic and linguistic groups and become a part of the university
community. The parents believed that in order to accomplish this, they needed to begin
as early as possible by using both the mother tongue and the English language at home.
Conclusion
It was discovered that although the parents of these kids speak their native tongues at
home, they prefer to speak English to the kids in order to help them integrate into
society. When asked which language the child uses to communicate himself or herself,
some of the interviewees said that while inside the home, the youngster responds to the
language spoken to him, which is typically English and, in rare instances, the mother's
native tongue. Since English is the language of instruction in Nigeria, it was learned
from the teachers that English is the medium of instruction in the schools under
investigation. They underlined that no vernacular language (other than English) is
permitted in schools and that any usage of a vernacular language by teachers—for any
reason—is not authorized. The teachers claim that since only English is permitted, the
child is encouraged to learn it early. Only very seldom does a child unintentionally
utilize his or her mother tongue in class or during play, according to the teachers. The
interviewees also concurred that the child's environment—in this case, the home and
school environments — influences how well the youngster learns English as a second
language.
This investigation makes it clear that indigenous languages in Nigeria are in danger of
disappearing. Our parents do not encourage our kids to speak their native languages.
This data supports Ohiri-Aniche's (2004) assertion that Nigerian youngsters no longer
possess proficiency in their native tongues and frequently respond in English when
addressed in those tongues.

Daramola’s Language Acquisition and Learning in Nigerian English

The article by Daramola analyzes how some Nigerian children are developing their
linguistic skills. The data offered in Daramola's research offers a clear view of the
language development of a bilingual child (Nigerian children were his case study),
using the English language at different stages. In fact, this is our primary interest in our
research endeavor. He offers the Hallidayan paradigm and the Montgomery paradigm
as two theoretical frameworks for understanding language development.
According to Daramola, the term "protolanguage" refers to functionally oriented sound
expressions or proto forms that, around the age of nine months, start to take on
consistent and recognized meanings for mothers and other people who are regularly in
contact with the child. Specifically, the kid's nonverbal behaviors and responses.
He believes that holophrases come from the speech of older kids and adults who have a
close relationship with the child. The child learns that the adult linguistic system offers
a specific pattern into which s/he can fit and starts to establish a syntax of the language
by correctly integrating single words into sentences (albeit not without mistakes; this
stage is between children of ages three and a half years).
The research participants in Daramola's (2009) study were brought to Lagos, Nigeria, at
ages 4 months and 2 years and 6 months, respectively, after being born in Sydney,
Australia. The three languages—English, Yoruba, and Igbo—were taught to the kids;
the parents' native tongues being Yoruba and Igbo. The older one was exposed to both
the local speech pattern and the Nigerian speech pattern while in Sydney. However, in
Nigeria, they were exposed to more Yoruba and a sizable quantity of Pidgin English.
Despite the younger child's limited speech when they first arrived in Nigeria, English
is his first language.
As an example of protolinguistic and holophrases, Daramola offers his research
subjects' data analysis, Ola and Ade, respectively. He learns that one of his research
subjects substituted the available sounds he had unconsciously learned for the
necessary sounds since he was unable to recognize specific phonetic sounds when the
subject was still a baby.
The results of Daramola's study highlight the linguistic complexity of some sounds'
articulation in the pronunciation of his topic. Linguists have attempted to explain why
youngsters substitute certain English sounds for others. They believe that young
children lack the articulatory entry for some sounds and are unable to recognize them
until their language reaches the level of a mature English speaker.

Ellen’s account on second Language acquisition and Bilingualism at an early age

and the impact of cognitive development
Parents and educators have long been concerned about the prospect that early
bilingualism may have an impact on children's language and cognitive development. In
the first half of the 20th century, the prevailing theory was that bilingualism and the
early acquisition of a second language confused children and prevented them from
developing their normal cognitive functions1 and performing well in educational
settings.2 on a seminal study by Peal and Lambert3, which shown that bilinguals
generally outperformed monolinguals on a variety of IQ tests and measures of
academic accomplishment, these notions were sharply refuted.
Although the issue of how bilingualism may affect children's development has always
been significant, it has grown to become one of the most pressing issues facing
contemporary nations, including Nigeria in particular. Immigration has made Nigeria
into a vibrant multilingual and multicultural nation in addition to the formal
commitment to a national policy of second language acquisition and bilingualism.
Many kids who speak English or French as a second language attend public schools,
especially in large urban areas. These kids speak a huge range of native tongues, and
they frequently make up the bulk of the students in a single school. We must thus
comprehend how diverse linguistic backgrounds affect the cognitive and academic
development of youngsters.
To analyze these children's academic performance and gauge their progress, it is
critical to have knowledge on their linguistic, cognitive, and educational development.
It is crucial to identify these challenges in order to comprehend what intervention or
corrective techniques are required. For instance, children with poor competency in the
language of schooling will undoubtedly struggle more to cope academically and
socially.
In most cases, the research is carried out in classrooms, which frequently have both
bilingual and monolingual students. Even though it is not typically included as a
formal part of research enquiry, the context in which bilingualism or the use of a
second language happens is significant. There is evidence that the child's linguistic and
cognitive results are influenced by the child's home language's usage in literacy
activities, its status as a community language of value, and whether it is spoken by the
majority or minority of the child's family.4 In order to fully understand the effects of
the child's language experience, it is ideal to pay close attention to the social and
linguistic components that characterize the child's social and educational
environments.
The crucial concerns are to the educational and cognitive results for multilingual kids.
First, it's important to determine whether language learning progresses uniformly and
consistently for kids studying two languages at once or a second language once they've
started to grasp one. Second, are children who are bilingual or learning a second
language—especially if their mother tongue is not the language of instruction—able to
develop reading skills at school? Last but not least, are there effects on a child's ability
to learn new concepts or execute different calculations (like mathematics), especially if
school instruction is given in the child's less-developed language, on normal cognitive
development?
The primary findings of this study are three. First off, bilingual children often have a
lesser vocabulary in each language than monolingual children do in their native tongue
for general language ability.5 However, their grasp of linguistic structure, known as
metalinguistic awareness, is at least equal to and frequently superior to that of
comparable monolinguals. Second, the link between the two languages8 and the level
of second language proficiency in these kids affects their ability to learn literacy
skills.9 Children who are learning to read in two languages that use the same writing
system (such as English and French) make reading progress more quickly than children
who are learning to read in two languages that use a different writing system (such as
English and Chinese), who neither exhibit any special advantages nor any slower
reading progress.
However, in order for bilingual children to gain from learning to read in two languages,
they must not only be second-language learners but also have a strong command of at
least one of the languages. Third, bilingual youngsters between the ages of four and
eight show a significant advantage over monolingual peers in solving problems that
call for restricting
attention to certain aspects of a display and preventing attention to deceptive aspects
that are salient but associated with an incorrect response. This benefit is not limited to
language processing, but also extends to a variety of non-verbal tasks, such as
conceptual categorization,10 recognizing alternate images in ambitious figures,11 and
recognizing the difference between an object's appearance and its actual function.
These studies' findings show that being bilingual as a youngster is a valuable
experience that can have an impact on how quickly and effectively children develop.
The most unexpected finding is that these benefits extend to non-verbal cognitive
capacities as well as the linguistic domain, where such influence would be expected.
The majority of the time, an essential factor that affects the degree and type of
influence is the child's participation with a second language, which is determined by
the distinction between bilingualism and second-language acquisition. In these
research, three influence patterns were identified. One result is that bilingual and
monolingual children develop equally and at the same rates, proving that bilingualism
is irrelevant.
Theoretical Framework
The Behaviourist and the Environmentalist Theory
The behaviorist hypothesis was first proposed by B.F. Skinner in the middle of the
20th century, namely in 1957. Using a functional analytic approach, Skinner's Verbal
Behavior examines language behavior in terms of how it naturally arises in response
to environmental factors and how it affects human interaction. According to the
theory, any human behavior may be acquired through the stimulus, response, and
reinforcement process—often referred to as S-R-R. The behaviorist school of
linguistics holds that one of the things that makes human behavior so distinctively
human is how children learn to speak. Many youngsters of the same age who are
essentially being "observed" for the same amount of time engaging in the same kind
of behavior have been the subject of numerous studies.
According to Skinner, verbal answers and language-based behavior are how language
is learned. These vocal responses don't require any intermediary factors, like meaning,
concepts, or grammar rules, because they are directly linked to the stimuli.
Behaviorism focuses on observing how children behave and attempts to explain it by
pointing to how the environment affects the child's growth. The behaviorist
hypothesis states that acquiring a language is a process of forming habits, involving a
time of trial and error during which the kid attempts to use the correct language and
fails until it does so.According to environmentalist theory, a child's linguistic puberty
is influenced by various aspects, including the type of contacts they have and the
environment in which they grow up. According to Halliday, another environmentalist,
a kid's ability to acquire language depends on the language environment and usage
context in which they are exposed. No child is born with the precise qualities of
language.
According to Halliday (1975), a child's job is to create the meaning system that
embodies his or her own conception of social reality. This is a cognitive process that
occurs inside his head. It can only occur inside social interaction circumstances,
though. There is no other way for it to occur. According to Halliday, language
learning is first and foremost a cognitive and interactive process rather than a genetic
ability. Stated differently, it is the social semiotic, wherein the child's linguistic
system of meanings gradually and progressively evolves through cognitive
development and social contact. "He constructs his own society's semiotic through
interactions in the family, Halliday (1978) defines language as a social phenomenon; it
exists in a social context. Thus, language is social because it takes place within the
social context of culture; and is semiotic because “the culture itself is interpreted in
semiotic terms”. His view has been considered more comprehensive or
more explicitly formulated and more explanatory than that of Chomsky. Chomsky and
the innatists view the role of social interaction as only a ‘trigger’, however, Halliday
sees it as ‘principal’.
After examining a number of theories on language acquisition, we can conclude that
these views are mostly based on the distinction between "nature" and "nurture," or
between "empiricism" and "nativism," or environmentalists and nativists. Because
experts in both domains frequently place greater value on one another than the other,
these theories are typically at odds. They do not, however, entirely discount the
importance of either theory, and this research is based on both of them. The final two
theories listed above have been widely accepted in the field of language acquisition
research, and they are pertinent to this study because, on the one hand, nativists argue
that language acquisition is an innate ability that sets humans apart from other animals;
on the other hand, they contend that language acquisition is an inevitable
The Nativist Theory
The Nativist theory of Chomsky proposes the existence of elements like the Language
Acquisition Device and Universal Grammar. The concept of universal grammar refers
to an inbuilt biological system that children use to help with language processing and
development. This mechanism includes a grasp of grammatical categories. According
to Chomsky, it consists of verb and noun categories as well as the data or
understanding required to connect these categories to produce coherent speech.
This notion holds that a child's ability to build sentences or phrases correctly goes
beyond only learning words in a language (Ambridge & Lieven). Grammar sensitivity
in very young children is one of the main sources of research evidence for the
existence of an intrinsic grammar code.Infants as young as 12 months old have
demonstrated an awareness of causative statements in a recent study. These are
statements that express causation, like "who did what to whom." I.e., according to
Rowland & Noble (2010), Bogeyman stole the baby.
A theoretical concept known as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is proposed
to explain why youngsters are naturally inclined to pick up language. This explains
why children have the innate ability to learn and speak in their native tongue even in
the absence of explicit training or guidance. It is believed that LAD's functions
include analyzing grammatical structures and adding new words to their lexicon. LAD
is supposed to have two main purposes: understanding grammatical structures and
expanding their vocabulary. Practically speaking, this means that children have the
capacity to learn any language if they are exposed to enough input. They can also pick
up the grammar and syntax of the target language because they already have the
necessary neural substrates present in their brains. The Universal Grammar outlined
below could also be viewed as a sub-component of this technology that aids in
language acquisition.Noam Chomsky, the principal opponent of universal grammar,
goes on to claim that the existence of these particular innate mechanisms or
equipment is necessary for the complicated task of acquiring a language without any
evident effort. This is because every clinically intact child obtains their mother tongue
or native language in the first few years of life with such astounding precision and
accelerated speed. The argument put out by Chomsky has some support from this
phenomenon alone.
The very evident case of Differences across Species is another situation where taking
something at face value supports the Chomskian idea of Universal Grammar. If a
newborn and a domestic animal, like a dog, shared a home, both would be exposed to
the same verbal information in the same setting. However, the toddler's speech and
comprehension in a few years will be very different from the dog's. Statistical
evidence also supports
Another defense of Universal Grammar is Chomsky's principle of the Poverty of the
Stimulus. This illustrates the reality that not all children receive appropriate feedback
for their language output and that appropriate linguistic input is not always provided.
According to research, even youngsters who are unable to speak due to physical
issues have complete command of their native language's lexicon and syntax. Due to
the incapacity to make mistakes in the first place, this demonstrates the natural
capacity to acquire language even without a way to get feedback from the
environment.
The "reinvention of an existing language" has also been found in recent studies on
children's language development (Smith, Cowie & Blades, 2003). Despite their
parents' grammatically wrong or pidgin-like speech, which lacks structure and a
considerable deal of erroneous grammar, the children of a labor community from
Korea and Japan successfully acquire language along with grammar and syntax for
speaking.
In 1959, Chomsky introduced a different idea he dubbed nativism. He introduced the
idea of "Universal Grammar": natural, biological grammatical categories, such as a
noun category and a verb category, that support adults' overall language processing as
well as children's overall language development. He also asserted that a language
acquisition tool existed that made effective use of universal grammar.According to
Chomsky (1965), adult speech is corrupt and is where children are intended to learn
language. The youngster is exposed to a variety of speakers, each with a particular
voice and accent, as well as performance examples, from his point of view. As a result,
the youngster gains competence and can now construct grammatical sentences.
According to Chomsky, "having a language gives us the ability to create an unlimited
number of statements.

Conclusion
This study aims to validate the knowledge that has been gained via research, having
taken into account numerous academic journals on the subject of child second
language acquisition, the techniques they used to gather and present their data, and the
different challenges they brought up.

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