LEARN FOREING LANGUAGE
- 1. HOW HUMANS LEARN IN GENERAL AND HOW THEY LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE. Learning a foreign language can increase the size of your brain. The study is part of a growing body of research using brain imaging technologies to better understand the cognitive benefits of language learning. Tools like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and electrophysiology, among others, can now tell us not only whether we need knee surgery or have irregularities with our heartbeat, but reveal what is happening in our brains when we hear, understand and produce second languages.
- 2. Foreign language learning and teaching refer to the teaching or learning of a nonnative language outside of the environment where it is commonly spoken. A distinction is often made between ‘foreign’ and ‘second’ language learning. A second language implies that the learner resides in an environment where the acquired language is spoken. In the area of research, the term second language acquisition (SLA) is a general term that embraces foreign language learning and investigates the human capacity to learn languages other than the first language once it has been acquired.
- 3. By the time a child is five years old, s/he can express ideas clearly and almost perfectly from the point of view of language and grammar. Although parents never sit with children to explain to them the workings of the language, their utterances show a superb command of intricate rules and patterns that would drive an adult crazy if s/he tried to memorize them and use them accurately. When it comes to second language learning in children, you will notice that this happens almost identically to their first language acquisition. And even teachers focus more on the communicative aspect of the language rather than on just rules and patterns for the children to repeat and memorize. In order to acquire language, the learner needs a source of natural communication.
- 4. LEARNING We learn from the things that happen to us - our experiences. For example, we learned that lightning is followed by thunder, we learned not to tell lies because it can cause us to lose our credibility and to lose our friends, or that we learned how to dance by watching others demonstrate dance steps to us. We can say that we have learned these things because we have acquired appropriate responses for them - we cover our ears when lightning strikes, we try to avoid telling lies, and we dance. Learning is acquiring relatively permanent change in behavior through experience. We experience things and learn to modify our behaviors based on what we know.
- 5. Learning applies not just to humans, but also to animals. For us humans, learning extends beyond the scope of proper education. Prior schooling, we learned how to tie our shoes, how to write, and maybe, even how to read. For animals, learning could mean knowing how to hunt for food, how to climb trees, and when to avoid predators. Learning about the environment is important for adaptation and survival.
- 6. ACQUISITION Acquisition is the initial learning of the stimulus-response link. Two important aspects of acquisition are contiguity and contingency. Continguity is the time interval between the occurrence of the meaningful stimulus and the neutral stimulus. The optimal time interval between the two stimuli is 0.25 second. Contingency, on the other hand, is the predictability between the two stimuli. Ideally, the two stimuli should always be paired together until acquisition occurs. For example, if thunder doesn't always come after lightning, we would never learn to cover our ears when lightning strikes. Learning through classical conditioning doesn't take much time.
- 7. In short, we see this tendency in which second language teachers are quite aware of the importance of communication in young learners and their inability to memorize rules consciously. Unfortunately, when it comes to adult students, a quick look at the current methodologies and language courses available clearly shows that communication is set aside, neglected or even disregarded. In almost all cases, courses revolve around grammar, patterns, repetitions, drillings and rote memorization without even a human interlocutor to interact with.
- 8. WHY STUDY A SECOND LANGUAGE Learning a foreign language takes time and dedication. The reasons below may help to convince you to take the plunge, if such persuasion is needed. Some reasons are practical, some aspirational, some intellectual and others sentimental, but whatever your reasons, having a clear idea of why you're learning a language can help to motivate you in your studies.
- 9. Emigration When you move to a different country or region, learning the local language will help you to communicate and integrate with the local community. Even if many of the locals speak your language, for example if your L1 is English and you move to the Netherlands, it's still worth your while learning the local language. Doing so will demonstrate your interest in and commitment to the new country. Family and friends If your partner, in laws, relatives or friends speak a different language, learning that language will help you to communicate with them. It can also give you a better understanding of their culture and way of thinking. Work If your work involves regular contact with speakers of foreign languages, being able to talk to them in their own languages will help you to communicate with them. It may also help you to make sales and to negotiate and secure Knowledge of foreign languages may also increase your chances of finding a new job, getting a promotion or a transfer overseas, or of going on foreign business trips.
- 10. Generalization and/or Discrimination. Generalization is the application of learning to other similar stimuli. Using the thunder -lightning example, if you are watching a movies, and lightning striked in the movie, you would probably expect to hear thunder to follow. Discrimination, on the other hand, is the process of knowing when not to elicit similar response. Using the example of the whistling kettle above, if a family member blows a whistle while you're heating kettle on the stove, you would probably know that the whistle is not coming from the kettle and water is not yet boiling, because the sound of the kettle whistle is not the same as the one your family member just blew.
- 11. Learning and Measurement Language teaching has experienced numerous curricular innovations in response to the importance of providing students with opportunities to acquire and practice the foreign language in contextualized and meaningful language communicative tasks at all stages of the second or foreign language acquisition process. Communicative language teaching (CLT), the term most associated with current discussion of method, emerged as a significant approach that found universal resonance and support in theory and application in many contexts and across disciplines
- 12. How humans learn a foreign language. One of the biggest questions over human behavior is whether our actions are determined by our natures, or by our nurtures. In other words, do we act the way we do because of genetic programming – innate qualities that we have no power over – or is it the way we are brought up, treated, educated, and so forth. This will be discussed in more detail in human sciences, but the debate interests us in language in the question over how we learn to speak. Is it an innate human capacity, or is it purely a result of our environment, as we first imitate our parents and family members, and then apply the rules of grammar to perfect our powers of communication?
- 13. Learning language is something we’re born to do. it’s an instinct we have, which is proven, as one research paper says, just by observation: To believe that special biological adaptations are a requirement, it is enough to notice that all the children but none of the dogs and cats in the house acquire language. As children, we learn to think, learn to communicate and intuitively pick up an understanding of grammar rules in our mother tongue, or native language. From then on, we learn all new languages in relation to the one we first knew—the one that we used to understand the world around us for the first time ever. Although language is something we learn, research has shown that the instinct to do so is present from birth. Not only are we inclined to process and adopt language, but it seems that the human brain has common linguistic constraints, regardless of the language we’ve learned. Certain syllables, which aren’t common in any language, are difficult for the brain to process, even in newborns who haven’t started learning any language yet.
- 14. What is the best way to teach a second language? There are many different things that factor into the decision about how to teach a person a second language, including the following: language spoken in the home amount of opportunity to practice the second language internal motivation of the learner reason that the second language is needed The ability of a person to use a language will depend on his or her family's ability to speak more than language. It is important for parents/caregivers to provide a language model. If you cannot use language well, you should not be teaching it.
- 15. AS A CONCLUSION: Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding. The best methods are therefore those that supply comprehensible input in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are ready, recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production. In the real world, conversations with sympathetic native speakers who are willing to help the acquirer understand are very helpful.