Second Language Acquisition in Teaching English as a Second Language

Abstract

This article tries to answer some of the following questions : Why is it that some individuals are more successful than others in mastery of a second language? Why does one person seem to learn faster than another even if both are in the same situation? Or why does a person become more proficient in some parts of the language system (i.e., oral production and aural comprehension) than in other parts (i.e., written production and reading comprehension)? These are questions that linguists and language teachers have been asking for years. Recently several models of the second language acquisition process have been developed in an attempt to explain the interaction of variables which affect second language acquisition and the cognitive strategies that determine the form and course of acquisition. Because second language (L2) acquisition is a very complex process, no one model yet captures all of its facets. The purpose of this paper is to survey some of the current research and to review several models of L2 acquisition. The emphasis will be on the role of the learner rather than that of the teacher. KEY WORDS: Acquisition, Second, Model A. INTRODUCTIONhis article begins with the term "L2 learner" which will be used to refer to the person who is in the process of adding a second language. L2 acquisition is taken to mean adding a second language (L2) once a learner has a fairly good notion of his first language (L1). Linguists today generally believe that L1 and L2 acquisition are similar processes-learners in both go through a series of stage in which they formulate linguistic rules, try them out for themselves, and produce a language system that approximates but does not match the adult or native model. By forming and testing hypotheses, the learner plays an active role in the creation of his own language system.