Methodology's class

Acquisition of language and its barriers

Today in class we were checking some barriers which stop the acquisition of a language, some of them are:

Insufficient time: this problem is one of the most important for me, because when I was in primary school, the time for English class was not enough to learn a second language in an easy way. The class was only for an hour once a week and we as students forgot everything for the next class. It would be better if we could have more English hours for second language acquisition.

If English classes were entertaining and more interesting  I think it would be more atracctive and  easier for students. So we as future English teachers need to know what is better to teach and how we could prepare an interesting class in which students could learn  in an interesting way.

Affective factors:

Depends if the person is interested in learning a second language, we need to know that if we want to learn a second language, we should be more willing in order to make learning easier, because if the person is not really interested in the second language, the process of learning would not be short.

Dull text books are a problem for the student because they need to read something interesting or else it would not work to get second language acquisition.

 Motivation:

For me motivation is one of the most important aspects to consider. I think motivation is really good for a language learner so we must motivate the student for getting a good learning.

There are two types of motivation: 

Instructional motivation: it tries to get the same goal and it does not care the social context. For me it is not good to use in the second language learners because they would not be motivated to learn the second language.

Integrative motivation:

we us futures teachers want that the students of a second language acquire it in order to take part in the social life of a English community, using the second language like a natural one, and this goal is what we should reach in them, because as teachers we want that the students knows English as a second language and not like something never mentioned to them. It is my favorite one because if we teach to the students trying to be integrative, obviously they will be interested in the second language that is what I think.

Other things

There are two different kinds of acquisition:

Natural Acquisition: generally native speakers get it, which is a gradual process.

Artificial acquisition or artificial learning: generally non native speakers get this process, which is a conscious process.

Grammar and spoken language.

Most of the times spoken language is more important than written language   because many ages ago before the first language was spoken and then the grammar structures appeared. Kids first get spoken language and they can communicate with us before they learn to write so they do not need to know writing. So as a future teacher I could say that writing is not really important in the second language acquisition.

The picture of the Babel tower tries to show us the change of one language which became a lot of different languages and they did not need writing to communicate at first it was acquired through time by people.