Second Language Acquisition

Student's name: Sally Yu

Professor: David Moroney, Stephen Daily

Date: November 20, 2008

Table of Contents

Introduction -1

Literature Review--1

The First Experience of Second Language environment--2

Interesting and Encouraging in ESL class--3

Language acquisition ---3

Conclusion--4

Reference--4

Introduction

When I was given an essay assignment about Second Language Acquisition, I felt a little confused because I was not sure about the meaning of the 'Second Language'. So, I checked the meaning of the second language in the Internet.

'A second language (L2) is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue (L1). Some languages often called auxiliary languages are used primarily as a second languages or lingua francas' ( Wikipedia, 2008)

Although I have never gone to any other English-speaking countries for studying English, I only had some experiences in University and Academy in which English is the main language in Korea.

So, I'm going to write some experiences for the second language acquisition in Korea.

Literature Review

※enabler- the kind of teacher who is confident enough to share control with the learners, or perhaps to hand it over to them entirely.(Scrivener, 2005:25)

※Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) - a broad description of current language teaching in which the need to use language in successful communication is seen as more important than having a purely theoretical knowledge of how language words. (Scrivener 2007:421)

※EFL- English as a Foreign Language (Scrivener, 2007:426)

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※Authentic Exposure- Exposure to language when it is being used fairly naturally.( Scruvener 2007:421)

※single-slot substitution drill- a drill in which students repeat a sentence from the dialog and replace a word or phrase the teacher gives them, which is called the cue. (Larsen-Freeman, 2007: 37)

※ALM- This is an oral based approach and drills students in the use of grammatical sentence patterns. This is method is based on the idea that students should form new habits in L2 and overcome bad habits in L2 to learn a second language. Students practice limited sentences within a context according to this method. (Larsen-freeman, 2007:35-50)

※ Question-and-answer drill -a drill in which students should answer the teacher's questions very quickly. (Larsen-Freeman, 2007: 49)

The First Experience of Second Language environment

'In Korea's 120-year history of English language teaching, the 1900s saw enormous changes in all aspects of this endeavor' (Honna, 2006-124)

In the latter part of the 1900s, the writer had a experience of second language environment at the first time at the University. My First native teacher, Steven Spector helped me to have some interests in English and to like language. He was one of the most popular teachers in University because he was passionate, confident, enjoyed teaching and most of all he loved his students. He was the enabler to make it possible for students to communicate in the target language using Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), using a lot of authentic materials.  His class was more

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active , compared to traditional teaching in EFL environment. But his class could not avoid missing student's fluency and accuracy. It was lack of focus on grammar.

Anyway, the writer had confidence in speaking English through his class because it was a real communication. Also, his students got used to English easily and felt learning a new language was not difficult than they expected. English as a Second Language is more practical by communicating than English as a Foreign language . So my first experience of second language environment is very helpful to acquire English.

Interesting and Encouraging in ESL class

Next native teacher the writer experienced was a man from USA. He was a instructor at University. He was different from Steven Spector. He was almost 60 years old but he always has a confidence, enthusiastic, and gives clear, positive feedback. He often used single-slot substitution drill at the beginning of the class. It has the major purpose of the drill is to give the students practice in finding and filling in the slots of a sentence. (Larsen 2003:48),that is, ALM. The Writer found his way of teaching interesting and encouraging especially for students who had no contact with culture or people of English. Maybe it seems to be applied making some sentences and speaking.

Language acquisition

Last teacher is Jane who is Australian teacher in SDA institute. She usually uses pictures describing, question-and-answer drill, Role Play, and game -3-

with materials, listening quiz etc. Her class was not boring because of  expecting what materials are going to be used in the next class. Her class made me natural to acquire language. And language acquisition through various  method let have habits in daily life. For example, writer tried to explain some situations in English through acquiring English language like the same words and patterns. At that time, it seemed to have some habits of language to me.

Conclusion

'The acquisition of a language is a natural process; whereas learning a language is a conscious one.' (Wikepedia, 2008)

I have remembered three impressive language teachers while I wrote an essay. All of the teachers affected my second language acquisition. No matter whether it was success or failure as a language learning, I recognized that acquisition of language is natural process like as Stephen saying.

Reference

Larsen-Freeman, D.(2007) Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching, Oxford: United Kingdom, Oxford University Press.

Scrivener, J. (2005) Learning Teaching. Oxford United Kingdom, Macmillan

Wikipedia(2008), the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_language

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