Spanish as a Second Language - Case Study Example

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Name Professor Subject Data Introduction Second Language acquisition is a concept that is growing fast and receiving much attention in the literate world. Indeed, as the world seeks to become a global village, people are more and more willing to understand aspects of cultures all over the world. These include; language, art, culinary skills and even religion. What is more commensurate with cultural understanding than the rest in the list of cultural aspects is the language. Nothing fosters greater understanding than the ability to speak a language. While most people around the world are born of a particular tongue, they often adopt second languages such as English, German, Chinese, Spanish and Japanese as these languages offer a path to education and literature material for the entire duration of their academic life. Often, some languages fail to meet this requirement thus people end up adopting a language that will support their academics for as long as they will study. This paper looks at the study of Spanish as a second language and the various intricacies of second language acquisition. Gilda Nissenberg’s ‘Practice makes perfect: Complete Spanish grammar’ gives a guide to the learning and mastery of the Spanish language. Through the book, the learner gets an in-depth understanding of various Spanish sounds, tenses and grammatical rules. It is all about learning Spanish and a great reference guide for such an exercise. Spanish is known to be the popular language in most of South American states; having been colonized by Spain in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. Most North American nations however do not speak Spanish; at least not as a first language. The language however finds prominence in its native country of Spain. The teaching of the language in this nation is not really a task, given that there is little or no effort required in teaching first languages. Often, the language finds such a necessary approach in teaching in regions where the study is common among people taking it as a third or second language. Such regions include; Africa, United States of America and Australasia. Such are the regions that really require Nissenberg’s book. According to Nissenberg (2011), the book offers a comprehensive Spanish course that beats any teaching offered in classes anywhere. There is especially a great interest in Spanish vocabulary in the book, offering about 3,500 exercises to insist on the learning of the Spanish vocabulary and tense. The book; written in English, inherently targets first-time learners of the Spanish language with an English background, especially a first-language English experience. Mostly, Americans fit the bill due to their curriculum that is strongly founded on the English language. There is also a consistent market for the Spanish language in the United States, which is inherently the best market in the world. However, the book fails to address other languages transitioning into Spanish. For instance, it does not address first-language Italian speakers willing to transition into Spanish. There is also the fact that such a language comes with a tape for pronunciation purposes. For this case, the tape is not provided; just that it is best utilized by instructors. Australia is a perfect market for Spanish instructors or literature material. Given that English is the first language in this nation that hugely borrows from British traditions, there is a bias on the use of English as a medium of instruction. Spanish comes as a second language of choice to most Australians. The Author, Gilda Nissenberg holds a philosophical degree in Spanish and has written various literature materials on the language. She is a profound scholar and indeed a great contributor to second language adoption and training. As the world continues to embrace languages such as French, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian among a host of other second languages, Spanish language acquisition all over the world has greatly benefited from her books. The book is easy to read and quite fun in its approach to learning. There is little emphasis on aspects of grammar that do not apply to contemporary Spanish life. These are taught at much advanced stages and only when the learner can fluently communicate in Spanish. The challenge becomes how to master the basic verbs quickly in order to play around with words. This is made easy by the various assessments available to the learners as they seek to generally understand the language. Spanish is not like any other language as it stresses a lot on the pronunciation of words. The author makes this pronunciation easy through her learner- centered learning approach. The end result is that the facts of the language are delivered with little or no stress on accurate learning and the ability to be a quick learner but more on the need to be versed with as many communication tools as possible within the Spanish domain. Thoughts on Spanish as a second language (500) Spanish is a second language to many people willing to learn it in most continents of the world. Aside from the native speakers in Spain, the speakers with a colonial influence such as the South Americans and the immigrants into these nations, most people have to begin from scratch. Just like most second languages, the first step is to learn the various vocabularies in the language. There are tenses as well as sentence structures to be learnt as well. All in all, the learner could take up to six months to understand the language. This is however dependent on one’s ability to master the language easily as at times, fast learners could take even three weeks to understand the basic concepts of the language. There is however need to avoid the influence of the first language on one’s second language acquisition efforts. The idea is really to ensure that the learner becomes assimilated into Spanish culture at the end of the so taken Spanish course. Spanish customs have a lot to do with song and dance. The language has a great accent and indeed, the process of learning is quite interesting. It is however not exactly a walk in the park and may be inherently a tall order. There are intricacies to the learning of the Spanish language that require great effort and input from the student. Learners must be wary of the accent and pronunciation and need not confuse tenses as it would bring about challenges while conversing with a fluent speaker. Second language learning must however not induce a lot of pressure and effort on the student as indeed, the language that is first to them continues to dictate their lives more than this second tongue. Teaching ought to be done by a fluent speaker to ensure that all the necessary pronunciations are done correctly. According to Brown (2007), there is a great need for the learner of a language to interact more with the instructor for the language experience to be captured in full. There are various reasons why one would want to study Spanish (Nissenberg 2011). One main reason is to be able to effectively communicate in a foreign language that uses Spanish as a medium of instruction. Though few syllabi are coined in Spanish, there arises scenarios where one needs to converse with Spanish speakers on a day to day basis. At these times, aspects such as asking for direction or even greetings could prove a challenging ordeal. It is necessary to enrich oneself with this language especially given that it is among the top five most popular languages in the world. All these five languages provide an avenue for the speaker to be well versed with communication and ethical skills from different parts of the world. It is often the case that language does not come with just communication skills. The verbal and non-verbal cues to communication are important but then, within the language are enshrined etiquette requirements that are of great importance to the communicators at all times and in all conversations. Second language acquisition is a great phenomenon that needs to be adopted across the globe. According to Troike (2006), a second language is like a new motor skill. While most people are easily able to perform activities such as walking and eating within their first few months of life, new motor skills such as writing and speaking prove to be quite a challenge. However, as time goes on, they are able to adapt to these skills and make them part and parcel of their lives. This is the case with most of the second languages. They are at first difficult to learn but with time, they become quite easy to those who pursue them with passion (Allwright & Bailey 1991). Such can however take time and may be quite difficult to slow learners. Indeed, many people give up the study of the second language due to tenses and pronunciations that are either affected by their first language or indeed affect it altogether. A second language can be a great tool to foster understanding if well embraced. This is because, these languages bring cultures together. A combination of English and Spanish cultures for instance could be a great addition to a sport person from England to Spain. In the current world, sports is the common language uniting all with the Olympics and World Cup games being the major and most popular sporting events in the world. Without the mastery of various languages, referees and other sports assistants that help in the administration of these games would not be as effective as they are especially given the fact that there is no time to interpret during the games. Second languages thus become not only important skills in communication but enabling the interaction between people on an international arena (Williams & Burden 1997). There are many known benefits that come to such persons with mastery of two, three or four languages. They are able to fit in many countries and interact with many cultures around the world. It is these people that promote the global village concept. Second language acquisition has its challenges nonetheless. According to Brown & Hall (2012), second language acquisition is a great asset to the lives of those who bother to approach the skill with enthusiasm. A rather popular myth that second languages are irrelevant to most of those who acquire the skills is a misguided notion (Brown & Hall 2012). There is however the need to get the best reference materials for these languages as they are not quite easy to learn. It is also common for the learner to forget the sense and need of their natural first languages as they continue to learn more languages. This could be quite an unfortunate occurrence. Conclusion Many authors have presented their theories about language development and training. Dubin & Olshtain (1986) give the differences between curricula and syllabi. Curricula give an entire list of units to a larger study while syllabi give the topic to topic reviews of what each unit in a syllabus entails. Language studies take the form of syllabus utilization. They need to be guided by such syllabi since there are many intricate subjects within a language and as such, it may not be easy to study an entire language in this manner. Brown (2007) encourages the use of rewards to motivate students to study. It thus inherent that students who are less motivated by the complicated nature of second languages need more of a ‘pat on the back’ to continue these studies. As a result, it would suffice to motivate these students in every instance they feel less capable of going about their studies. Bibliography Brown, H. Douglas., 2007, Teaching by Principles. An Interactive Approach to Language Nissenberg, G., 2011. Practice makes perfect: Complete Spanish grammar (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Troike, M., 2006. Introducing second language acquisition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brown, S., & Hall, J., 2012. Second language acquisition myths: Applying second language research to classroom teaching. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Dubin, F. & Olshtain, E. (1986) "The separate purposes of a curriculum and a syllabus", in Course Design, Cambridge University Press, pp. 34-39. Williams, M. & Burden, R. (1997) "Chapter 4: What can teachers do to promote learning?" in Psychology for Language Teachers, Cambridge University Press, pp. 65-87.  Allwright, D. & Bailey, K.M. (1991) "Chapter 7: Input and interaction in language classrooms" in Focus on the Language Classroom, Cambridge University Press, pp. 120-138. Read More