Teach English in Shima Zhen - Chongqing

First vs Second Langauge AcquisitionLanguage acquisition is clearly an extremely intriguing and complex topic, especially for those who teach a foreign language. A child?s first language is learned as a necessary part of their development, to be able to communicate with those around them and therefore function in the society into which they were born. A child?s brain is particularly adept as well at picking up this language and incorporating it into its functioning. Second language acquisition is perhaps an even more complex and confusing topic, since there are so many possibilities as to the variety of circumstances in which one would learn a second language. Past a certain critical age, if a child has not already been introduced to a language, it is generally agreed that that language is a second language and not a primary language for that child. The case is very clear for adults learning a second language. The question then arises as to how humans acquire a second language, how this differs from their first language acquisition, and how second language acquisition can be made most effective. A very interesting facet of this research involves first language influence in students learning a second language. It is generally assumed that students who are learning a second language will make mistakes in this language based on the structure and functioning of their primary language. That is to say, one would generally think that the errors in grammatical structure that are made by a second language acquisition student would come from their prior language knowledge and the fact that certain structures that they have learned may not, in fact, be the same in both languages. Steven Krashen has examined this misconception in his book ?Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning? and cites research that concludes that this is not often the case. He states, ?subsequent empirical studies of errors made by second language students led to the discovery, however, that many errors are not traceable to the structure of the first language, but are common to second language performers of different linguistic backgrounds? (Krashen, 1981). This signifies that the functioning of the mind during second language acquisition is often similar between all students, regardless of their primary languages. There are certain circumstances, of course, in which the first language may highly influence incorrect production of the second language. According to Krashen, first language influence appears to be strongest in complex word order and in word-for-word translation. This seems logical, seeing as students have no other information with which to work for these types of structures and are required to fall back on the information they have obtained from their first language. There are also situations that influence the amount of usage of the first language in second language acquisition. First language influence is generally higher in situations that are acquisition poor, or in which students have little immersion and learning is taking place in a forced and unnatural environment. According to Newmark (1966), first language influence is the result of the performer being "called on to perform before he has leaned the new behavior". The result is students using what they know from their first language to make up for what they have not learned in the second language. Newmark suggests that the "cure for interference is simply the cure for ignorance: learning.? First language influence may therefore be an indication of situations with poor resources and low acquisition. If this is the case, it can be eliminated or at least reduced by exposure to natural immersion environments. Teachers of foreign languages must therefore ask themselves how they can best avoid situations in which students are required to fall back on their first language knowledge, and instead create an environment where students can learn the language in a natural context and can absorb it without needing to transfer large amounts of previous information. In other words, how can teachers create an environment that most resembles that in which the students learned their first language. This is clearly a difficult task when it is often impossible to expose students to large communities of target language speakers. However, it should be the goal of the language teacher to expose his or her students are much as possible to native speakers in the second language and to create an immersion-based environment. Works Cited Krashen, S. (1981) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. 64-69. Newmark, L. (1966) "How not to interfere with language learning." Language Learning: The Individual and the Process. International Journal of American Linguistics 40: 77-83.