Second Language: Acquisition or Learning?

Abstract

As a language is socially acquired and culturally transmitted, the goal of the activities associated with learning a second language (L2) will help learners develop communicative competence in the L2, rather than know about the L2.

A young child can acquire a second language easily in a circumstance similar to that of a first language acquisition. But the vast majority of the teenagers are not exposed to second language easily like a child. A common difficulty experienced by adults in communicating a second language is that their ability to use the first language is rarely matched even after years of study, by a comparable ability in the second language. Another difficulty is the lack of the knowledge of precise words to describe something. It is apparently felt that there is no other system of knowledge that can be learned better at two or three years old than at fifteen or twenty five. It is believed that “There is some innate predisposition in the human infant to acquire language. We can think of this as the language faculty of human with which each new born child is endowed” (Yule, 120). Various proposals have been made regarding this enigma.