The Acquisition

The acquisition can be defined as the act of contracting or assuming possession of something. When somebody is acquiring a language is because he lives in a context where is developed the language, so, we acquire our mother tongue, because we start to understand and speak for the necessity of communication, but actually we don’t learn all the rules for learn our language correctly.

Is common think that second language acquisition is influenced by the learner´s first language, the learning and the acquire are process totally different. In the first we are conscious about the process, we know that we are learning something, but when we are acquiring, we are unconscious about the things that we are catching because we live in the context; we acquire the language because is necessary to communicate.

in the process that I already mention, we can find the interference. The interference is considered as a natural process and inevitable phenomenon in L2 ACQUISITION. I agree about that the interference of the L1 is inevitable process because when we are learning a second language, especially in languages that are similar to our mother tongue. We try to use the similar grammar rules; usually we think that we are going to learn in the same way that we learnt our mother tongue. But we as learners of a second language use to think the structures and be worried about if we speak correctly, if our pronunciation is clear, etc. these could be some reasons that make difficult the learning.

In my personal point of view there are two reasons for that the second language in this case the English never will be an acquire: we don’t have the context and we don’t learn as a need to communicate and for these reasons we don’t acquire the language.

We as English teachers have to provide a good context that help to the student to learn the second language, if is true that is very difficult provide a real context, we can give them real elements and real material for obtain a better learn process.

We can use authentic material like audios, videos, etc. Is important that we use different material not only our voice, the students need to recognize the different accents.

There are a lot of theories about the more effective process for teach and learn a second language.

The behaviorism proposes a stimulus-response. In this theory we can see the language as a set of structures and acquisition as a matter of habit formation. This theory ignores any internal process and the linguistic environment and the stimuli it produces. Learning is an observable behavior which is automatically acquired by means of stimulus and response in the form of mechanical repetition, this means that the behaviorism is focus in acquire the language with automatic linguistic habits.

I think that we acquire our mother tongue as a result of imitation, we do not know grammatical structures, we don’t know the correct pronunciation, for example, in the first years some children don’t know the meaning of some words and they use their vocabulary because their listened the word in specific situation with someone, as a consequence they repeat it.

But also I think that is a mechanic habit and it doesn’t develop in the learner a communicative skill. I think that is useful for learn vocabulary. I find some disadvantages to communicative with other people, because is an unconscious process we learn but we don’t know how use the new knowledge.

And other theory is the contrastive analysis is based in use the mother tongue like a model for learn the second language, but it can becoming confuse for the learners, because they can compare the structure of the mother tongue with the second language and translate to the structures than they already know and can make mistakes when they produce a second language.

Fisiak (1981) claims that Contrastive Analysis needs to be carried out in spite of some shortcoming

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