Stages of cultural acquistion

Four basic stages of culture shock are:

	Honeymoon stage: Euphoria with the idea of being in a new culture.
	Hostile or aggressive stage: The honeymoon is over and daily activities become insurmountable problem.
	Recovery: The individual reconciles with the anxiety and begins to understand the cues of the new culture.
	Adjustment: Life is now acceptable and the anxiety and strain of life in the new culture diminishes.

Teachers can help students overcome culture shock by understanding the symptoms, embracing multiculturalism, incorporating the home culture into daily lessons, reaching out to the families, and making positive parental contact.

Three Native Language Acquisition Theories

Behaviorists:

· Explained first language acquisition as a process of imitation of the care-giver.

· Behaviorists could not explain novel utterances.

Innatists:

· Claimed that first language acquisition resulted from an innate ability.

· Innatists hypothesized that infants were born with a biological language acquisition device (LAD) that equipped them for linguistic analysis.

· Innatists could not explain how children/adults who were not exposed to language could not develop language.

Interactionists:

Explains first language acquisition as a result of the interaction between nature (innate ability to acquire language ) and nurture (the role of the social environment)

E-mail me Christiana Udebor at christieudebor@yahoo.com

Last updated 12/06/2007