If you want to learn English, the classroom is not the best place to pick up the language. Think about when children are learning how to talk. Typically the parents or guardians of the child teach this by acquisition. James Paul Gee defines acquisition in his short story “What is Literacy” as “…a process of acquiring something subconsciously by exposure to models and a process of trial and error, without a process of formal teaching. It happens in natural settings which are meaningful and functional in the sense that the acquirer knows that he need to acquire the thing he is exposed to in order to function and the acquirer in fact want to so function. This is how people come control their first language.” (Gee, 107) Which, miraculously, is the reason why, for most children, their first word is usually Mommy or Daddy. I’m sure this wasn’t because they decided at toddler stage to pick up a book and read the word Mom or Dad. Generally parents constantly reinforce that they are Mommy or Daddy over and over. Which sets up the natural subconscious setting that Gee said is to be where most learning takes place, eventually the child picks up on it and spits out the word. Even when you grow old enough to venture off to school it is the teacher’s job to teach you how to read and write. Really though, English is so much more than strictly reading and writing. In order to fully understand the English language you need to be taught by acquisition. Not only would you learn English more efficiently you will also be introduced to social rules of English that are not talked about in the classroom.
In English learning, I think, communication is necessary. So after reading, it’s better for teachers to organize us to exchange
Beginning in grade school students are taught a basic curriculum for English, some of the basics being: five sentences equaling a paragraph and five paragraphs equaling a essay. The beginning of the English learning stage is a time to get engaged in reading and writing. Honestly, most children when they are younger start loving to read and write but do they stay that way throughout middle school, high school, or even college? No, nine out of ten times kids who started out loving to read and write end up dreading it. But why? Every students has their own personal reason. Some may have never fully understood how to read or write and was to embarrassed to speak up others may have disorders such as dyslexia which makes reading and writing difficult. In my case I had a passion for reading and writing when I was younger. As I grew up I did not like the material that had to be read or the papers that was required to be written; but since I knew the work had to be done accurately in order for me to pass the class I learned to tolerate the subject.
When schools offer children quality education in their primary language, they present them two things: knowledge and literacy. The knowledge that children get through their first language helps make the English they hear and read more comprehensible. Literacy is developed in the primary language transfers to the second language. The reason is simple: Because we learn by reading, that is, by making sense of what is on the page, it is easier to learn to read in a language we understand. Once we can read in one language, we can read in general.
Within months I learned a handful of words watching cartoons. words provided comfort when conversing to others. I also used my new learned words to participate in classes at school which I started exactly a month after arriving. Determined to speak English in order to “appear normal” to the other students, I began the process of trying to read every word of every book I stumbled upon. As the months passed, my English improved.
Language isn’t intentionally taught, but more picked up as the child grows up; “we do not learn words from dictionaries, we take them from conversations that subsequently shape our understanding of the world” (Thompson, 2009). Because of this, educators need to give time for children to practice their language skills. That doesn’t happen when children are doing skill-and-drill exercises over a concept, but rather when they are playing with their peers. Early educators can help facilitate this language development by introducing and teaching children new words and phrases.
Being able to speak more than one language is proving to be a valuable skill in modern society. Many children across the world are at least bilingual, leaving many American parents wondering if they too, should learn to speak another language. While this debate remains ongoing, many adults are seeking to learn a second language either to communicate with a new client base or to attain higher status within a corporate setting.
How do children acquire language? What are the processes of language acquisition? How do infants respond to speech? Language acquisition is the process of learning a native or a second language. Although how children learn to speak is not perfectly understood, most explanations involve both the observations that children copy what they hear and the inference that human beings have a natural aptitude for understanding grammar. Children usually learn the sounds and vocabulary of their native language through imitation, (which helps them learn to pronounce words correctly), and grammar is seldom taught to them, but instead that they rapidly acquire the ability to speak grammatically. Though, not all children learn by imitation alone. Children will produce forms of language that adults never say. For example, “I spilled milk on hisself” or “Debbie wants a cookie”. This demonstrates that children have the desire to speak correctly and have self-motivating traits to communicate. This supports the theory of Noam Chomsky (1972)-that children are able to learn grammar of a particular language because all intelligible languages are founded on a deep structure of universal grammatical rules that corresponds to an innate capacity of the human brain. Adults learning a second language pass through some of the same stages, as do children learning their native language. In the first part of this paper I will describe the process of language acquisition. The second part will review how infants respond to speech.
With the increasing popularity of dual immersion programs in schools and the widespread notion that language acquisition is something that needs to happen early on life, is there an ideal age to learn a second language (L2)?
For many English language learners (ELLs) in today’s schools, learning can be overwhelming and difficult. The sole process of learning another language is a challenging undertaking and it can take a student anywhere from four to seven years to become proficient in another language (Carhill, Suarex-Orozco, and Paez , 2008). When you consider some of the additional factors, such as cultural distinctions, history of individual and family education, academic and social language barriers, peer and teacher social limitations, and individual learning differences, it becomes clear why many ELLs are struggling to keep up in the classroom (Wright, 2010).
Children’s acquisition of language has long been considered one of the uniquely defining characteristics of human behaviour.
Sekelj and Rigo (2011) stated that there are three phases of learning the English language. The first phase is the pupils of Year 1 to Year 4, where in this phase, pupils are preferably do a lot of mechanical drilling and practicing some patterns of grammatical features which occur in the context of dialogue that are related to their real-life without any metalinguistic explanation in order to allow them to participate orally and physically as much as possible in dialogues, role playing and dramatizing. It is because, in this stage, it is important to make them conscious of their progress and increasing their motivation to use the language. Teacher should use a variety of activities to teach grammar such as by using songs, riddles, games and stories because it could be very helpful and an efficient ways in teaching grammar as what had suggested by Long (2000) where this FonF approach is effective because it is learner-centered and tune to the learners’ internal syllabus. According to Sekelj and Rigo (2011), Vilke (1977) said that, at the early age, the unconscious acquisition process is superior to the learning one due to the child’s cognitive development. Next, the second phase is Year 5 to Year 6 where in this stage, grammar start to be taught explicitly but with simple and clear explanation and awareness of accuracy of grammar structure should be
Good reading skills are very important in learning languages. Reading improves spelling because as students learn to sound out letters and words, spelling comes easier. It helps to expand the vocabulary, since the best way to acquire a large vocabulary is to read. Students learn new words as they read and put them in their mind for later use. . They also unconsciously absorb the information about things like how to structure the sentences, how words are used in different contexts, and it gives a better understanding of the word usage and definitions than the cold facts of a dictionary. It improves a person’s vocabulary and knowledge without the person even knowing it. Even if students do not understand every word, they will hear new sounds, words and phrases which they can then try out, copying what they have heard. They can comprehend ideas, follow arguments and detect implications. Reading texts also provide good models for English writing. Krashen (2004) found that reading is extremely important in learning English, since it is the only way to “become a good reader, develop a good writing style, an adequate vocabulary, advanced grammar” and the only way to “become a good speller”.
In most institutions of learning today, the classes are made up of students from different ethnic backgrounds. These have different traditions and also speak different languages. In a typical classroom, the majority of the students will speak the same language. The teacher must then employ strategies which will accommodate all the students in the class. This will ensure that every learner gets the best quality of education. This will enable them to be better prepared for career and expressing themselves. In this paper, strategies to assist learners of the English language in their literal development for third grade learners. In the paper, three strategies that can be used by the teacher will be discussed. New strategies and research that will help the English language learners to gain in depth mastery of the language will also be discussed. Due to the widespread learning of the English language in most schools, addressing issues of the language learners is of vital importance. Teachers should have the understanding that cultures are what give someone identity and therefore no student should leave their culture for another. Instead, there should be the blending of different cultures so that students can appreciate and learn from each other.
Krashen’s Hypotheses of Second Language Acquisition. For decades, foreign language teachers have wandered into a scientific abyss. Until 1983, there had been little real research dealing with the ways in which someone acquires a second language. Teachers mostly used the audiolingual classroom model that had been in place for the past twenty years (or, even worse, the literally ancient grammatical translation model that had been used by civilizations millennia old).
Second language learning is the process of learning a different language other than one’s mother tongue resulting in the ability of an individual to use one or more languages different from his first language. It can take place in a natural setting or through classroom instructions; however, the degree of proficiency differs (Gomleksiz, 2001).