TESL 0100 Unit 4 Reflection

(Source: http://makalanguageconsulting.blogspot.com/2015/09/first-vs-second-language-acquisition.html )

This unit was about the difference between first language acquisition vs second language acquisition which is great. First language acquisition is natural. We listen to the people around us, their speech melody, their sounds, their words, and their sentence structures. Before we can even read or write a single word in our first language, we already use an impressive vocabulary and many important grammar structures. Some people never learn how to read or write but still speak their first language fluently.

Babies do not study grammar rules but learn it while listening to the people around them. They are able to distinguish sentence structures at a very early age. They also pick up new words from their surrounding people.

Second language learning, on the other hand, is an active process. We need to learn vocabulary and grammar in order to achieve our goal. If we ever want to achieve fluency or near-fluency in a second language, it requires years of studying and practice.

I have two first languages. At home, we used to speak Punjabi while in my school, my teachers used to speak Hindi so I became bilingual. However, I started learning English at the age of 6 at school, but the exposure to the language was very less as compared to my native languages. We used to just read and write English in English class, learn grammar rules that were just for 30 minutes a day. Even in the class, my teacher used to explain everything in Hindi so there was a lack of speaking practice or implementation of those grammar rules. When I grew up, I started watching English TV shows and started reading English books, I got some English speaking friends in my graduation that helped me to acquire this language. However, I feel that Languages acquired after about the age of 15 are in a different part of our brain, so we never speak them as proficiently or as accent-free as our native languages.