Some Personal Response to Second Language Acquisition
Among Krashen's Five Hypotheses About Second Language Acquisition, I am especially impressed by The Natural Order Hypothesis and The Input Hypothesis. As an English teacher in high school, I often set a high standard for my students, but can't understand why a student or more than one student often makes the same mistake over and over again. To me, this kind of situation is not tolerable, which often makes me lose my patience and even my temper with my students. But Krashen's two hypotheses do remind me of something that I used to neglect.That is, students should be allowed to be in a transitional period to use transitional forms when learning a new language structure. Through the Natural Order Hypothesis, I know that it is useless to overcorrect the students' errors. Instead, I should try to understand why students make the errors and to alter my own expectation accordingly. On the other hand, we, the teachers, should play a more active role in providing our students with as much comprehensible input as we can. We've got to learn that each time we lead the students to move from the current level i to the next level i + 1, they then may review what they have learned and go on naturally with these comprehensible input. That is something that is important and we teachers have to be very careful to deal with when we decide and prepare the materials for each class.
Also, in my daily life, I find some evidence of these two hypotheses. Amy, my niece, has stayed with us since she was born. She couldn't say a word until she was two years old. We all worried she might be speech impaired, but we still tried our best to make her talk, hoping that our talk would be a stimulus to her. Then one day Amy finally opened her mouth to say her first word, which excited everyone in my family. More to our surprise, once Amy began to talk, she could say much more than we had expected. From the process of Amy's learning to talk, I find the evidence that a child has to pass the so-called "silent period." And we adults should be patient of that. Also, we found Amy kept making the same errors while she was learning to pronounce some words. That is, she had difficulty making some sounds. Even we tried to correct her pronunciation, it didn't work. For example, she could say“ㄅㄚˋ ㄅㄚ˙””ㄐㄧㄡˋ ㄐㄧㄡ˙” but it seemed hard for her to say "ㄇㄚㄇY " " ㄐㄧㄡˋ ㄇㄚ". We never thought it would be so hard for her to pronounce the sound "ㄇㄚ " and of course we wondered why, but we got no answer. Not until the day came when Amy said "ㄇㄚ ㄇㄚ" for the first time did we realize that there was a natural order for a child to talk and we adults had better not try to change it by forcing the child to do according to our constant instruction and in fact that doesn't work at all.
Among some of characteristics associated with the good language learner, I especially agree with Beebe's viewpoints about "a strong drive to communicate" and "risk taking" I think they are the essential parts in learning a language. Languages are an important means of communication. Chinese students are always too shy to speak out. They are always so worried about the accuracy of their grammatical usage that they miss many chances to communicate with others. I totally agree that high risk takers may also chance more encounters with the language and therefore develop other areas of language ability not necessarily related to linguistic accuracy, but more related to skills of social interaction and communication. In fact, I'd like to say ‘the more we say, the more accurately we use a language’ because by communicating in the second language, you learn more authentic expressions and explore more colloquial styles, which make us feel much easier and more confident in using this language. To take myself for example, every year during summer vacation I always like to take a trip abroad not only to relax myself but also to expose myself to a foreign environment so that I can get a chance to "indulge" myself in English. I really believe "learning by doing" is the best way for people to learn a language. Every time from the trip abroad, I learn much more useful English than when I do in Taiwan. With my own experience, I like to encourage my students to speak out in class. Of course I would set up an "environment" or provide as many chances as possible for them to speak English. I find it is really hard for them for the first few times because they still worry too much about the grammar. But once they find no one cares about their grammatical errors, they feel encouraged and their performances always get better and better.
The term "fossilization" also attracts my interest I get a general idea that "fossilization" refers to the phenomenon that if a learner learns a second language after the puberty, it's more likely for him/her to have the accent of his/her mother tongue. I also find a lot of evidence in my teaching job. Some of my students, even though they can't do well in their English studies, can speak native-like English. I mean, their tone, intonation and pronunciation sound like the natives’. Then I find they have something in common. That is, all of them have learned English since they were very young. Compared with them, some other students can't avoid the Chinese or Taiwanese accent no matter how fluently and correctly they speak English. There's one point that I'd like to emphasize here. Many parents want their children to start learning English conversation from a Chinese teacher because they think it would be easier for the children to understand the teacher and what the teacher explain. But I see that as a pity because the children will imitate the teacher's accent. Once the children's accent is formed, it is hard to be changed. I think there's nothing wrong to put a child in an English-spoken environment, especially the one with native speakers in it. Though they don’t understand the language or the teacher in the beginning, little by little they'll get used to it. It is very similar to the process that they learn their first language, isn't it? So I wonder why parents often neglect their duty to provide their children a good learning environment but always complain their children can't speak native-like English.
I'd also like to say something on the research on communicative competence which especially focuses on speech act realization. According to the research, there are certain semantic formulas for speakers of different nationalities to express apologies, invitations, compliments, refusals, requests, complaints, and expressions of gratitude. But I don't agree at all. If this case refers to the group of people who are of the same nationality and speak their own native language, I think it is O.K., but if those people speak or express in their second language, I don't think these so-called "formulas" are credible. In my view, different people would have different reactions to the situations based on different "backgrounds" which include "whom to speak to," "time to be allowed," "the language ability that the speaker has," even "the speaker's mood", etc. It's very dynamic, never fixed. We can never expect in what way others would express themselves, right?
I always see teaching English as a challenging but enjoyable job. I cherish each hour I spend with my students in class. Even though I have been teaching for over twenty years, I still have a lot to learn and I do hope I can do my best to help my students acquire this language in a more confident and efficient way and use this language as a useful communicative tool rather than a torturous subject.
