Do you want to be TEFL or TESOL-certified and teach in Laogang Zhen? Are you interested in teaching English in Shanghai Shi? Check out ITTT’s online and in-class courses, Become certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language and start teaching English ONLINE or abroad! ITTT offers a wide variety of Online TEFL Courses and a great number of opportunities for English Teachers and for Teachers of English as a Second Language.
1st vs 2nd Language AcquisitionThe difference between 1st language acquisition and 2nd language learning are quite extreme. Not only are the processes completely different, as it is often a matter of natural acquisition versus studious learning, but the order in which various skills and parts of the language are learned is different as well. Most kids are able to speak (and listen) practically fluently before they start learning how to read and write, while people trying to learn a 2nd language usually do all of the above roughly at the same time. When it comes to grammar, children learning their first language are forced into learning the official rules of what they instinctively know already (unless their parents were unusually bad with the language), while L2 students learn the rules as they are learning the language itself. These days a lot of second language classes try to replicate natural acquisition as much as possible, but even with total immersion it is not possible to achieve. When children are growing up and learning their first language, they are able to do so without the help of language teachers. They simply naturally absorb the language by being constantly exposed to it and carefully watching and imitating the people around them. After a few years of trial and error they are able to speak well enough to communicate about most of what they want, and can figure out the rest by inferring meanings from context and/or actively seeking new vocabulary. By the time they get to school and start formally learning their first language, they know enough to get their points across and the lessons focus mostly on rules and intricacies of the language. When formal learning starts, kids are already considered practically fluent in their language. They already have the most important function of language down (the ability to communicate without having to stop and think about it), and just need to have that brushed up so that they do it well. Reading and writing are not formally taught until after the kids are already fluent (though they do not necessarily have great accuracy), as are any of the rules that they already instinctively know. This is vastly different from how people have to learn a new language, since they do not start out fluent before they take their first class. L2 students are forced into learning new languages in a much more studious way, as even with total immersion they don?t really have the option to do nothing but observe native speakers all day every day for years like young children do. Also, whether the class they are taking focuses on it or not, the majority of people learning a second language start out by comparing the new language to their first one (via translation). As such, most traditional second language classes focus on using the student?s native language to explain the new language to them over a few years, though many modern methods try to replicate natural language acquisition as much as possible. Even the best of these, the ESA method, can?t completely replicate L1 acquisition. A major difference between students academically learning their first language and their second one is their skill in the language before they even start. As stated above, kids are already fluent in their first language by the time they start formally learning it (allowing all the focus to be on accuracy), while students learning a second language are trying to learn fluency, accuracy, and all 4 skills (speaking, listening, writing, reading) at the same time. Due to the nature of the academic world they are also constantly being evaluated and scored (unlike children first starting to learn their L1), and even if that was not an academic requirement most adults require some sort of progress markers to indicate how much they have actually improved in order to keep interest. Basically, the difference between 1st language acquisition and 2nd language learning is one of natural acquisition vs. conscious, academic effort. Sources: Previous units (especially 1, 3 and 19), personal experience learning english (L1) and German (L2), and observing other high school through college level language courses over the years.
