The Process of First and Second Language Acquisition

This is the second in a series of articles that address the use of Psycholinguistics in the ESOL (ESL, EFL) Classroom. According to Field (2008) the three basic questions that Psycholinguists are concerned with are:

1. How individuals acquire language (whether an L1 or an L2),

2. How individuals store language in their minds,

3. How individuals use language (how they assemble it into productions and how they understand it when produced by others).

This particular article addresses the question of Acquisition as it relates to ESOL (ESL, EFL) students and their quest to be fluent in a second language. Other articles in this series address the issues of storage and usage.

The first question posed by Field (2008) is the question of language, both the native and target language, acquisition. There is a tremendous amount of research and literature that correlates the learning of our first language with learning our second. In fact the current dominant Communicative Competence Immersion paradigm, which attempts to mimic how we acquire our L1, is based on just that. Psycholinguistics presents a different perspective. A Psycholinguistic perspective believes these processes are different and is interested in finding out exactly how the processes of L1 (native language) and L2 (target language) acquisition are not the same.

For example simply viewing the L2 as acquired knowledge, "Widely quoted have been Anderson's ACT models (e.g., Anderson, 1983), which postulate that a novice in any form of expertise (driving a car, playing chess, etc.) starts out with a form of declarative knowledge (knowledge that) which becomes transformed through practice into procedural knowledge (knowledge how)" (Field 2008).

In other words, "Practice makes perfect" (although admittedly perfect native fluency in an L2 is difficult to attain). At first students are an L2 novice, discrete bits of information are learned and then recalled through conscious processing. Initially, as with any learned skill, this recollection process is slow. However, through varying kinds of practice and a genuine intention to learn, the L2 student moves closer and closer to becoming an expert. The process the brain needs to speak in the L2 then speeds up as the brain chunks those discrete pieces of information together. Eventually, automaticity steps in and these processes move to the sub-conscious just like in our L1.

*If you enjoyed this interesting and informative article on Psycholinguistics, please view my other articles on this topic by clicking my name "Tesl Goddess" for more of my expert advice.

Reference:

Field, John. (2008). Face to Face With the Ghost in the Machine: Psycholinguistics and TESOLTESOL Quarterly, Volume 42, Number 3, pp. 361-374(14).