2. 2
Summary
SLA researches concentrate on the development of the knowledge and the use of a
language by children and adults who already know one language at least. Those people who
learn a second language do not follow the same way of learning from those kids who learn
their mother tongue in various ways, and also most of them are not that able to reach the
same flairs as those who are native of that second language; whereas, those children who
learn a second language are more able to reach the fluency of native speakers of the second
language in question. Moreover, some mistakes that are made by those who learn the
second language are born in their mother language; for example, Spanish speakers who are
learning English may say “is sunny” instead of “it’s sunny”, forgetting the subject of the
sentence; whereas, French people do not usually make this mistake because they do not
omit the subject of a particular sentence.
Another important issue is that, when people learn a second language, the way they speak
their first language changes in subtle ways. For example, when shown a fish tank, Chinese
speakers who are learning English as a second language tend to remember more fish and
less plant than Chinese monolinguals. This effect of the second language on the first
led Cook to propose the idea of multi-competence, which is focused on the different
languages a person speaks not as separate systems, but as related systems in their mind.
3. 3
Evaluation
The implication is that the classroom needs to present a greater variety of language and to
use techniques in which pupils and teachers adopt a variety of roles. For example, if the
pupils are never allowed to initiate questions or give orders in the second language, they
cannot be expected to learn to do so. Also, if it is true that L2 learners profit from
conversational interaction as L1 learners do, then a way needs to be found of bringing
opportunities for such interactions into the classroom. As always this should be qualified
with the reminder that at present we still need to find out exactly what types of interaction
already take place in language classrooms before we can advocate particular changes.
While this implication is speculative, it can hardly be denied that the principles of
simplification that have governed the choice of classroom language have little connection
with the principles underlying foreigner talk; if these simplified varieties play a part in the
learning process, then classroom language will have to move in the direction of these
simplified forms that are sometimes addressed to learners.
To conclude this paper, it is evident that the vital question the teacher must decide is the
extent to which he should modify the classroom situation to be more like that found in
'natural' language learning. If he believes that L2 learning in a classroom is entirely
different from language learning outside a classroom, we will feel no need to modify the
classroom in this way. If, however, he believes that language learning is language learning
wherever it occurs, as we would claim the evidence suggests, then he will have to bring
many features of 'natural' learning into the classroom, always bearing in mind that some of
them may not permit transfer. Some of these features have been mentioned during the
argument.
4. 4
It might be said that the classroom that takes them into account is likely to be a freer, more
spontaneous, place with less direction by the teacher and less control of the language but at
the same time provide a greater wealth of activities and interactions.
5. 5
References
Methodology Power Point Presentation
Background to second language acquisition research and language teaching
document.
Approaches to teaching document.
A “methodical” history of language teaching document.
