The Importance Of The First And Second Language Acquisition

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.

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.

A vocabulary is the set of words that make up a language. The acquisition of a vocabulary is a process that usually happens subconsciously and we usually are not aware that it is happening. Vocabulary can be classified as receptive or productive, i.e. what we understand and what we produce. But acquiring a vocabulary is a different process when it is a first language from when it is a second or a foreign language. Acquiring a first language is a natural process while acquiring a second language requires effort and hard work on the learner’s part. In first language acquisition, the basis for learning is universal grammar alone, but in second language acquisition, knowledge of the first language serves as groundwork for learning the second language

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.

Many second language acquisition theories have been developed over the years. These theories examine the avenues in which second language is acquired and the avenues in which they are

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is a young but widely-discuss field of study. Many theories are exploring how children learn to talk and understand language such as behaviorism, nativism, social cognitive learning and stages of language development (Levine, Munsch 2013). For example, a mother-infant conversation is one of the

What is First Language Acquisition? First Language Acquisition studies how children acquire their native language. Up to this day, there are many theories that theorist came up with to explain how children acquire their language. The main theories that people believe for how children acquire language are Innateness Hypothesis, Imitation Theory, Reinforcement Theory, Active Construction of a Grammar Theory and last but not least, Social Interaction Theory. These theories have many similar characteristics as well as many differences.

There has been much research conducted in the field of second language acquisition relating to the age factor, and it seems that the link between the two has been altered over time. To understand how and why this shift has occurred, it will be helpful to look at some of the older theories that hypothesise the idea of a critical period in which a second language is acquired, and compare this notion to more recent studies that provide a basis for the conclusion that age is not necessarily a critical factor in successful second language learning and that the idea that ‘younger = better’ is not absolute.

According to Houmanfar, Hayes, and Herbst (2005), the first and second languages are interrelated and the history of the first language is a participatory factor in the acquisition of the second language (L2) and its maintenance. The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis indicates that the structure and shape of the L1 of an individual are different from those the L2 that could create errors in speaking, reading and writing (Dulay et al., 1982). Similarities and differences between L1 and L2 acquisition will be outlined in terms of various theories.

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

It is believed that younger learners are better while acquiring a second language. The common notion is that younger children learn L2 easily and

Entrepreneurship is regarded as one of the most important determinants of the industrial growth of the country.The dearth of the entrepreneul and managerial skills is one of the most common problems being faced by all under developed economies.Moreover,the potential for the employment of students graduating from professional colleges is enormous,but one major handicap which many of them face is poor communicative ability in English.Proficiency in English is recognised globally as a pre-requisite for entry into the work place.Since English plays a key role in the domains of entrepreneurship,corporate sectors and international business,its use has to be standardised,simplified,made more functional and intelligible. Students of professional colleges need a great deal of help in improving their ability in English language proficiency so as to entrepreneur and obtain easier entry into the corporate world.Proficiency in communication skills develops ability to grasp opportunities to offer economic advantages, maximising gains and above all building confidence in every individual that one could make things happen.

In the current education system, foreign language education is strongly encouraged for high school students planning on attending college, but is not required. With more than half of the U.S. population having Spanish as their first language, it is not only college bound students who would benefit from learning a second language. Rather than limiting second language education to only a percent of students, The Influential is incorporating second language education in all schools all across the nation. According to a study conducted on 17,000 British children, the most productive age for second language instruction is between 11 and 13 years of age. With

Summary of article: The authors provided reflections on 17 popular ideas about language learning. The first one is that languages are learned “mainly” through imitation. Lightbown and Spada (2006) argued that children imitate selectively and individuals have their own learning strategies. The second popular idea is that parents usually correct young children when they make grammatical errors. However, parents rarely comment on grammatical errors. Instead, parents tend to focus on meaning. Third, highly intelligent people are good language learners. The high IQ usually preform good in class and research has shown that learners have a wide variety of intellectual abilities will be higher chances to successfully learning language. The next idea is that the best predictor of success in second language acquisition is motivation. In most cases, learners with higher motivation can do better. However, perhaps, the instruction interacts with different leaning styles and learner’s aptitude will influence learning outcome. The fifth idea is that the earlier a second language is introduced in school programs, the greater the likelihood of success in learning. Research has shown that learning a second language at an early age are more likely to be indistinguishable from native speakers. Next idea is that most of the mistakes that second language

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).