Second Language Acquisition Essay

Judie Haynes’ article, “Stages of Second Language Acquisition”, clearly states five stages that a new learner of English may go through. In Haynes’ theory, there are five stages in total, and they are pre-production, early production, speech emergence, intermediate fluency, and advanced fluency. According to Haynes, new learners of English acquire language by going through the same stages. However, how much time each student spends at a particular stage may be different. Despite the different time length, the stages of people acquiring new language are worth discussing.

Age, Rate and Eventual Attainment in Second Language Acquisition Author(s): Stephen D. Krashen, Michael A. Long and Robin C. Scarcella Reviewed work(s): Source: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Dec., 1979), pp. 573-582 Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3586451 . Accessed: 09/01/2013 08:48

Within this paper we will take a brief look at the Language Acquisition Principles and how they work on the behalf of ELL students. We will see how these principles can be applied within our own learning environment. There is much information from Walqui article that gives a brief overview of ELL students and how things looked in the past for these students. Now that times has change we will see how educators can make the requirements for ELL students better and more effective for teacher and students. Hopefully, as we look at ways of changing learning for our ELL students we must remember that every student learns differently. Even if you follow the principles from

Since, the second language is an additional language after we acquire the first language, the L2 learning process can be influenced by the L1 learning process This essay will demonstrate the similarities and differences in L1 and L2 acquisition by discussing various theories. Then, draw a conclusion based on the evidence provided and my own experience.

In the video titled The Four Stages of Acquiring Language, in which I observed. The first stage is “Babbling” one syllable sounds. I observed an infant at 4 months of age babbling. According to the CDC, at 4 months of age infants begin babbling, they can babble with expression and copy sounds he/she hears. Infants at this age can cry in different ways to express hunger, pain or being tired.

Guidelines to teaching a foreign language highlight all of these elements. Listening, reading, writing, and speaking are all taught and tested at beginner, intermediate, advanced, and superior levels so that these different learning methods are highlighted and executed at varying levels. Children also learn and are shown new ways of looking at the world through the varying strategies. In fact, correlation studies have shown that “students who have had several years of foreign language do better on SATs, particularly the verbal part” (WALKER). As root words, prefixes, suffixes, conjugation, and noun agreements are taught in new languages, it is easier to see connections to the structure of one’s first language. The knowledge of a language one is raised speaking and understanding is simply obtained through experience. However, learning a second language emphasizes the parts of language that come naturally in the first. It takes self-motivated work and dedication to learn a second language later in life, so the outcome of attaining a comprehensive grasp on a foreign language early on pays off in multiple ways.

Learning a new language can be difficult for anyone. It is especially difficult for students who are expected to learn a new culture and different subjects at the same time. The article this paper references discusses ways teachers can help their students learn a new language and the stages those students experience as they become proficient in their new language.

Acquiring second language is different with first language development. These differences are the learning environment, learning development, interlanguage, learning goal, knowledge transfer and others.

There is a rising issue in today’s education system to whether or not we need to require and when the education system should start the second language learning in the school system. Some say that education system should wait until the students have reached high school and others say to start it young. Other school officials have said that they should require it in high school because they’ll remember the language better. Experts say that the education system needs to start it young while the child’s brain is like a sponge. The answer to this question is to simply start the foreign language learning young during their childhood which is why all the state education systems should require a foreign language class during the elementary years

For this reason, it is necessary to look for good resources and materials to support the language teaching-learning process. It necessary to notice the role that each skill plays in the language acquisition. For instance, Listening is considered as the basis of developing the other skills, it is because, through listening, learners learn vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. Then, reading, permit learners to expand their vocabulary and learn grammatical structure. After that, writing, which allows students to produce the language. Finally, speaking recognizes as one of the main skill that allows students to produce the language and use the knowledge that acquired with the other skills.

Second language acquisition is a process whereby people learn an additional language on top of their native ones. Learning a second language can be functional to oneself especially when communicating with a person whom you do not have a common language with. In acquiring the second language, there will be difficulties that one might face as compared to acquiring the first language, which makes it harder to acquire. Our mother tongue is easier to learn as we would have been brought up by our parents or grandparents that speak the language. Learning a second language can be difficult as we are not brought up for that language and would not know the basis of it. Some factors that makes it hard is the age of the learner, experience, the cognitive

When I was in Middle School and High School I had no interest in learning English as my second language even though it was required from 7th to 11th grade. I would make excuses to and have my cousin do my English homework for me. English was not spoken much in my community. As such, learning a language that is not generally spoken in the surrounding community (Yule 187) was not important and I did not see any need to learn English. My attitude was why do I need to learn a foreign language? A “Foreign Language” was not on my priority list as a teenager.

Second Language Acquisition or SLA is a term used to describe learning a second language. There are a number of ways in which one can learn a second language, and in this essay I am going to discuss the links and relationship between second language acquisition and computer-assisted language learning, with particular focus on the pedagogical aspects. The most obvious approach to learning a second language is undoubtedly through the Pedagogic Design, or learning from a teacher in a structured classroom environment. Computer-Assisted Language Learning is another commonly used resource for language learning, and this is regularly referred to as CALL. The

Recent phonetic work on second language (L2) acquisition has focused on the influence of the native language (L1) on L2 learning by providing phonetic interpretations of non-native production and perception. Researchers have suggested that the weight of a feature used in L2, but not in L1, may create difficulties for L2 learners. A classic example of this problem is the difficulty that Japanese listeners experience in distinguishing English /r/ and /l/ phonemes, which are both mapped to the Japanese /l/ (McClelland et al., 1999). Several studies have also investigated whether native speakers of a tone language have an advantage over natisve speakers of a non-tone language in discriminating or acquiring tones from a tone language with which they have no prior experience. For example, Gottfried and Suiter (1997) found that adult native English speakers were less successful in learning lexical tones to signal phonological contrast, as this feature is not used in English, than they were in learning vowel quality in Mandarin. Also, Chinese speakers outperformed English speakers in their ability to distinguish two Thai tones both before and after training (Wayland & Guion, 2004). In addition, Peng et al. (2010) investigated the influence of different tone inventories (Mandarin vs. Cantonese) as well as tone language vs. non-tone language experience (German vs. Chinese) on the categorical perception of pitch contours in Mandarin syllables and non-speech contexts (e.g., pure tone).

A great deal of researches is devoted to discuss different teaching techniques through which teachers can maximize teaching efficiency and facilitate the process of learning a new language for the learners. To design and adopt such techniques we need to be aware of psychological and cognitive procedures through which a foreign or second language is learnt. When researchers decide to analyze such procedures, like other fields of human science, they need to deal with learners