Post 76: Second Language Acquisition: What is Acquisition View?

Post 76: Second Language Acquisition: What is Acquisition View?

The traditional way for a learner to learn a second language is to learn that second language at school. In many other countries, it is commonplace for learners to be exposed to more than one language at home causing the child to be multi-lingual. In the US, parents think that their children learn their first language at home and then learn a second language at school as an option. For immigrant parents, they think that school is the place where their children learn English properly, fluently so that their children can get high paying jobs and be fully assimilated into American culture. Both groups of parents view school as the main vehicle to teach their children proper reading, writing, grammar skills so that their children can get high prestige jobs like engineer, doctor, or lawyer.  This traditional view of learning language is known as the Learning View of Second Language Acquisition.

In this blog post, we will contrast the Learning View with the Acquisition View of Second Language Acquisition. While Learning View involves students learning language through learning discrete units of grammar, memorizing vocabulary and spelling words, learning phonics for reading and learning the proper format of a paragraph, or essay structure for writing, the Acquisition view proposes a more natural way for students to learn language. 

When a baby learns language, he/she learns language through listening to his/her parents talk. Through listening to this rich linguistic comprehensible input of listening to parents talk or having parents talk slowly to their children, babies/young children gradually attain communicative competence (ability to speak one or two languages fluently through being exposed to rich target language input). If children can learn a language without schooling and just by simply listening to the target language and by interacting socially in that target language, then the Acquisition method of teaching seeks to replicate this natural, spontaneous method of learning a second language for older children and for adults.

In the Learning Approach, teachers test students who have memorized materials and then the teacher corrects any errors the student may make in their spelling, writing, pronunciation or reading. By correcting these errors, the student gradually gains mastery of the language in this formal manner. However, structural linguists have found that if educators focus more on meaning, and not on always correcting errors, students learn language quickly. In the Acquisition view, teachers do not give tests or oral drills nor do teachers correct for errors. Instead, in the Acquisition view, teachers give students comprehensible input to allow students to learn language naturally.

In the next blog post, I will go over the different ways a teacher can apply the Acquisition View of language learning. These learning methods emphasize natural ways students can learn language without memorization and oral drills. Instead, students learn language through context. I will discuss in my next blog posts popular Acquisition teaching methods such as Community Language Learning, Whole Language Approach, Problem Solving Method, Natural Method, Total Physical Response, Cognitive Academic Language Learning and we will explore the different theories of Stephen Krashen as well as what was known at UCLA as "Krashen bashing."