Hi, friends!
This module discusses about language acquisition and language learning.
The factors influencing the acquisition of a language,
like the learner factors, environmental factors and infrastructural factors
are dealt in detail.
Acquisition and learning.
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquired the capacity to
perceive and comprehend language, as well as, to produce and use language.
Acquisition is implicit and subconscious which take place in an informal situation.
According to Stephen Christian 1985, language acquisition does not require
extensive use of conscious grammatical rules and tedious drills.
Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language,
natural communication in which speakers are connected,
not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying
and understanding.
Language acquisition encompasses the development of
four interdependent systems.
Pragmatic: communicative use of language in a social context.
Phonological: perception and production of sounds to form words.
Semantics: processing of meaning
and grammatical use of syntactic and morphological rules to combine words
into meaningful sentences.
The phonological and grammatical systems constitute the language form.
The pragmatic system describes
how language should be adapted
to specific social situations
in order to convey emotions
and reinforce meaning.
The term acquisition is used for L1
and the term learning is associated with L2.
Children acquire language through a subconscious process
during which they are unaware of grammatical rules,
that is no deliberator for to learn the language.
They pick up language in informal situations.
Language acquisition is implicit, and effortless as meaningful communication
occurs in natural environment,
while communicating the message in the text is given more important
rather than the form.
It is all connected through feedback or when they hear the correct usages.
Later on, they can cut it themselves
when they become masters of the linguistic generalizations.
They will be confident in using the language in the real life situations.
Language learning is explicit and conscious
and takes place in a formal situation.
The rules of the language are taught directly
and learning is the product of formal instruction.
It is learning about a language.
Children have the conscious knowledge of the new language, and can talk about it.
They can memorize the rules to solve a grammatical problem,
but when it comes to the practical level of using the language,
it may not work.
In the case of second language,
or the third, or the fourth language,
this is what happens.
Whatever that is learned
meaningfully and naturally, is retained and will become acquired.
Factors influencing acquisition.
Language learning is a habit formation,
and so,
if one's acquired it becomes automatic.
According to Paul Roberts:
"When we learn the first language,
we face the universe directly
and learn to clothe it with speech.
When we learn a second language,
we tend to filter the universe through the language already known."
By the time the child learns a second language,
he is familiar with the system of the mother tongue.
He has to set aside the rules and sets of his mother tongue
to invite the habits of a new language.
Factors influencing acquisition can be broadly classified into three.
They are:
Learner factors.
Infrastructural factors.
Environmental factors.
The learner factors.
The learner factors influencing the acquisition of a language are mainly
psychological, physiological and sociological.
Factors like aptitude, attitude, interest, personality,
motivation, age, sex, intelligence and learning styles come under this.
Aptitude.
Aptitude refers to the potential for achievement.
According to Carrol,
foreign language aptitude consisted of four independent abilities.
They are:
Phonetic coding ability.
The ability to identify and memorize new sounds.
Grammatical sensitivity.
The ability to demonstrate awareness
of the syntactic patterning of sentences of a language.
Root learning ability.
The ability to learn associations between sounds and meaning.
Inductive ability.
The ability to identify similarities and differences
in grammatical form and meaning.
It is not necessary that successful language learners
are strong in all the involved components.
Teachers can identify their students requirements,
and select appropriate strategies to accommodate
their differences in aptitude.
Personality.
The personality characteristics which can affect
language acquisition are:
Extroversion, introversion,
self esteem, anxiety, etcetera.
Personality may be a major factor in the acquisition of oral skills,
not in reading and writing skills.
Introverted or anxious learners
make slower progress
especially in communication skill.
They try to get away from opportunities to speak
and express themselves.
The extroverts will take risks.
They will not worry about the mistakes,
and make the advantage of opportunities to interact.
Motivation
This is a strongly favor intrinsic motivation.
Intrinsically motivated learners, try for excellence,
autonomy and self-actualization.
A supportive and non-threatening learning atmosphere
naturally creates motivation.
Through various activities, tasks, and learning materials in the class,
the teacher can increase students interest to learn language.
A felt need develops both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Learning styles
Learning style is an individual's natural habitual,
and preferred way of absorbing,
processing and retaining new information and skills.
Reid, 1995.
Each individual is different,
and process information in their own, unique ways.
Types of learning styles are: perceptual learning styles,
and cognitive learning styles.
Perceptual learning style includes:
visual, auditory and kinesthetic.
Visual learners have a preference for seeing.
Auditory learners best learn through listening.
And tactile or kinesthetic learners preferred to learn through experience.
That is:
moving, touching and doing.
Cognitive learning styles, are the mental mechanisms
that process the incoming information through different sources.
Each individual learner has his own way of processing information
or approaching a task.
This is known as his cognitive style.
According to Ellis:
"Cognitive style is a term used to refer
to a manner in which people perceive
conceptualize, organize and recall information.
While designing learning activities,
the teacher has to consider the students with varied learning styles.
Age
Age is one of the characteristics which affect language acquisition.
Learners who have a solid skill in their own language,
are found to acquire a new language more easily.
Motivated adults learn language more easily,
but struggles to achieve correct pronunciation
because of the problems of the transfer
of the habits of native language.
They feel it difficult to recognize the sounds of the foreign language.
Young children show greater flexibility
in identifying the sounds of a language,
remembering them and reproducing them.
They are less conscious about the mistakes made,
and are ready to correct their mistakes without hesitation.
This will foster language acquisition.
Sex
Girls are found to excel voice in language learning.
They start talking earlier than boys,
and uses grammatically correct
and complex sentences.
Auditory sensitivity and other behavior
is not the same for boys and girls.
The fact that girls mature earlier than boys
has direct implications for language acquisition.
Attitude
Language attitude is the feeling one has about language learning.
It is greatly influenced by the learning situation.
Teacher, language, classroom, books, friends, homework,
and the school as such determine students' attitude towards language learning.
Spolsky says,
"In a typical language situation there are a number of people
whose attitude to each other can be significant:
the learner, the teacher,
the learner's peers and parents, and the speakers of the language.
Each relationship might well be shown to be a factor
controlling the learners' motivation to acquire a language.
A positive or a negative attitude towards language learning
can be developed in children by the influence of these factors.
Positive attitude for language learning
has to be created through a congenial and motivating environment in school.
Interest
Teachers need to design creative activities
to evoke student interest in language learning.
Clarity and relevance of the language learning goals,
extensive teacher and pure support,
learning language through fun and games,
all creates interest in learner.
As Einstein said,
interest is the best teacher,
without interest, the best learning situations will prove to be ineffective.
Intelligence
Intelligence plays a very important role in language acquisition.
Kinesthetic intelligence is the ability to use the physical actions
with linguistic responses to express ideas more clearly.
While taking part in group discussions,
the learners are using interpersonal intelligence.
Grammar analysis
falls into the logical intelligence.
The stress timed rhythmic nature of English language,
the need to communicate using melody, and rhythm in a language class
points to the need for musical intelligence.
Learning language through the knowledge about self
focuses to intrapersonal intelligence.
Linguistic intelligence involves the sensitivity
to spoken and written language.
The ability to learn language, and the capacity to use language
to accomplish certain goals:
The opportunities for learning,
the motivation to learn,
the individual difference in intelligence,
aptitude, personality,
and also, learning styles
play an important role in the rate of learning,
and success in learning.
The teacher should consider learners' individual aptitudes,
personalities, and learning styles
into account to create a learning environment conducive to all.
The environmental factors
The environmental factors include both
school and family.
The classroom should provide a favorable,
democratic environment for language learning.
Maximum exposure in target language
has to be given in the schools.
Cooperative rather than competitive atmosphere,
free from tension has to be maintained in the classroom.
A felt need to learn the language for real life communication
has to be evoked in students.
The teacher should be aware of the individual difference,
and has to provide learning experience suitably.
The weak and the gifted
has to be considered according to their language needs.
A tolerant attitude has to be adopted
to student errors while using language.
There is a marked relationship between the child's linguistic development
and socio-economic status.
The teacher should also consider this aspect of the students
while planning for language learning programs.
The infrastructural factors
The infrastructural facilities,
it's magnitude, and quality
depends upon the strength, interest and vision of the organization
which manages the institution.
Facilities to use the equipments like audiovisual aids,
language laboratories, libraries, etcetera.
which provides maximum exposure and practice in the target language
has to be arranged in schools.
First time experience to use the target language,
as interacting with the native speakers,
spacious classroom with facilities to contact learning activities like roleplay,
discussions debates, dramatization, etcetera,
where the students use the language
has to be provided.
Problems in acquiring English as a second language.
Learning a second language is always a challenge
in a place where people hardly use it in their daily life.
Second language learners face several difficulties to gain
good command over a foreign language.
English presents a number of issues to non native speakers
because of the illogical nature of its spelling, pronunciation,
and unique grammatical rules.
The pull of mother tongue.
When a child begins to learn a second language,
he has acquired his mother tongue,
the system which he can use with ease
So, whenever he wants to express something in second language,
he has to keep the habit of the first language in check
in order to produce the new sounds and structures.
It will be difficult for him
to produce the distinctive sounds of the second language
as his years are accustomed
with the sounds of the first language.
Thus, he replaces the sounds of the second language
with the similar sounds in his mother tongue.
Suprasegmental features have great impact in English language
which may not be so pronounced in mother tongue.
The natural word order of sentence in the mother tongue
may be different from that of English.
Conscious attempts to arrange words
according to the syntactic patterns of mother tongue
results in literal translation, and produces ungrammatical sentences.
The tendency to replace
the sounds and structures of the second language
with those of mother tongue is known as
pull of mother tongue
or in psychological terms
transfer.
Transfer of learning
is the application of skills, knowledge,
and/or attitudes,
that we learned in one situation to another learning situation.
Perkins, 1992.
Transfer may be either positive or negative.
If the habits of first language help in the learning of the second,
it is called positive transfer or facilitation.
Positive impact is seen in acquiring vocabulary and sentence pattern
through comparing and contrasting.
If the former hinders the acquisition of the letter,
it is called negative transfer or interference.
Negative transfer is seen
while learning certain grammatical structures and pronunciation.
If the learning of one subject or activity neither facilitates
nor interferes with the learning of another subject or activity,
it is called zero transfer.
Spelling, vocabulary,
and the diversity of the word meaning.
English language is enriched with great amount of words.
These words are not limited to one single meaning.
Each word has shades of meaning,
which are categorized as connotative or denotative,
and it gives different impressions in different situations.
For example,
the word "hard" have various shades of meaning.
"The stone is hard".
This shows quality.
"You must work hard".
More, labour is needed.
"His hard luck".
This shows misfortune.
"He is hard of hearing".
It means he is deaf.
For a second language learner,
this creates much confusion.
They learn the meaning of several words,
but don't really learn their application,
and therefore can't benefit from them while using language.
The irregular nature of English spelling
is another problem for a second language learner.
English has 44 discreet sounds of phonemes,
with an alphabet made of 26 letters.
The letter to phoneme correspondence is not consistent.
One letter has, with a few exceptions,
more sounds than one in different words or even in the same word;
example,
the letter 'c' in the words:
cat, cycle, cancel,
success, vacancy;
and the letter 'g' in:
age, bag, geography,
gorgeous, etcetera.
Lack of motivation
Learners find it boring and difficult to learn
a second language which is very much different from the native language.
Learning English is something they have to do,
not something they want to do.
Some of the demotivating factors are;
the teacher personality,
commitment,
competence,
and teaching method,
the learner's reduced self confidence,
negative attitude towards second language learning
nature of evaluation system,
uninteresting course books and school environment.
One key to increase motivation among the heterogeneous learners
is to design and use activities,
which match the learners varied language learning needs,
and goals by a competent and creative teacher.
Insufficient time,
resources and materials.
Number of files allotted for learning English,
and the opportunity to get exposed to,
and use the language is too less.
The resources and the materials
to aid L2 learning, are sparce
Learners do not get any opportunity to communicate with native speakers,
or even with their peers at school in the target language.
Thus they miss communicative competence.
They hardly read or listen to English news, literature,
article or anything that enhances the learners' skill.
Thus they miss the listening and reading skill
which is very important in acquiring a second language.
The availability of right type of materials,
good library facilities, and audiovisual aids
will make learning of English interesting and effective.
Overcrowded classrooms.
Is the number of students in a class is too high,
it is difficult to meet the individual needs
of a diverse group of lively learners.
Group activities like roleplay, discussion, debates, etcetera,
cannot be successfully carried out in an overcrowded classroom.
Effective participation of each student
cannot be ensured.
Teaching learning process and evaluation strategies
will be under threat,
which result in low achievement.
To conclude,
language acquisition is a subconscious process.
Language acquirers
are not consciously aware of the grammatical rules of the language,
but rather develop a feel for correctness.
In non-technical language, acquisition is picking up a language.
On the other hand,
language learning refers to the conscious knowledge of a language,
knowing the rules, being aware of them,
and being able to talk about them.
Language learning can be compared to knowing about the language.
To court Richard Bentley,
"Every living language
like the perspiring bodies of living creatures,
is in perpetual motion and alteration;
some words go off, and become obsolete;
others are taken in,
and by degrees grow into common use;
or the same word is inverted to a new sense or notion,
which in tract of time
makes an observable change in the air
and features of a language,
as age makes in the lines and mien of a face."
Before moving to the next session,
please try to answer the following questions:
Point out the factors influencing acquisition.
What are the major problems in acquiring a second language?
What is transfer of learning?
Mention different types of transfer of learning.
At present to what extend
does the infrastructural facilities in schools
aid in learning the second language,
Substantiate.
For further references.
The English Teacher's Hand Book
by T.C. Baruah.
Sterling Publishers,
private limited,
New Delhi.
Contemporary English Teaching,
by author M. Jesa.
K.M.K Publications, Kollam.
Modern Teaching of English,
by Nayyar Shamsi,
Published by
Anmol Publications private limited,
New Delhi.
Hope you find the session informative.
Thank you.
Bye.