Language Acquisition - Essay Example

Language Acquisition Possessing a language is important in all human beings. Language acquisition refers to the process of learning a second or a native language. It can also be described as the process by which people acquire the ability to comprehend as well as to use words to communicate. Psycholinguist and developmental psychologist studies the acquisition of native languages. Although, there is no clear explanation of how infants learn to speak. Most explanation is based on the inference that infants have a natural tendency of understanding grammar and observation that infants simulate what they hear and learn from others (Blom, Craats-Oosterwold and Verhagen 46).

Children learn vocabulary and sounds of their native language through imitation, but grammar is rarely taught to children explicitly. According to researcher Noam Chomsky, infants have an innate capacity to learn the grammar of a specific language as all intelligible languages are based on grammatical rules that are common and corresponds to the ability of the human brain. The stages of acquisition of the native language are measured by originality and increasing complexity of children utterance.

At first, infants overgeneralize grammatical rules. For example, they may say “goed” trying to mean went, a form infants are unlikely to have perceived, suggesting that they have deduced or intuited complex grammatical rules and failed to apprehend exceptions that cannot be anticipated from a grammatical knowledge. An applied linguist studies acquisition of foreign or second language. Learning a second or foreign language involves passing through some stages. These include the overgeneralization stage similar to infants learning their mother language.

According to researcher Haynes, learning the second language involves passing through some stages such as early production, preproduction, speech emergence, advanced fluency and intermediate fluency (Saville-Troike 67). About preproduction stage, learners are yet to converse with their second language. In the second stage, learners speak in short phrases. In the emergence speech stage, learners increase their vocabulary and can converse with simple phrases or questions. In the fourth stage, learners increase their vocabulary to about 6000 words and can communicate with complicated sentence structures.

In the last stage, learners function at a level similar to their native language. However, it is difficult for a person to become fluent in the second language compared to the first language. According to psychologist Jean Piaget, this is because after childhood the brain loses its facility hence it becomes difficult for the brain to assimilate a new language (Yoshitomi, Umino and Negishi 35). Traditional techniques for acquisition of a second language involves various systematic approaches to memorization of vocabulary and analysis of grammar as well as comprehension of grammar.

A cognitive approach that are favored by psychologist in language acquisition emphasizes immersion, extemporaneous conversation and other methods which are intended to imitate the environment in which people acquire their first language. People may lose a language they have acquired through a process called second language attrition. Language attrition may be caused by lack of exposure or use of language for a certain period of time. The severity of language attrition is determined by various factors.

This includes age, proficiency, motivation at the time of acquisition and social factors Work Cited Blom, Elma, Ineke Van de Craats-Oosterwold, and Josje Verhagen. Dummy Auxiliaries in First And Second Language Acquisition. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter, 2013. Print. Saville-Troike, Muriel. Introducing Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge , UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print. Yoshitomi, Asako, Tae Umino, and Masashi Negishi. Readings in Second Language Pedagogy And Second Language Acquisition.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub., 2006. Print.