Children who are exposed to two different languages at once are indeed able to acquire both of them simultaneously but certainly the majority of people have only one native language they learnt in this process of "sponging". Furthermore, the foreign language we learn in later life will be very rarely assimilated to the same degree as our native tongue even if studied for years. The puzzle here is how are children able to acquire languages so effectively and why does this skill apparently die out as we grow older? Why do other mental abilities and systems of knowledge we might be familiar with in our lives only ever develop in adult brains e.g. mathematics, physics, psychology. Children seem to have an unfair advantage, a spark of genius, when it comes to perfecting their first language acquisition. How is this possible?
Learning vs. acquiring
Of course, we may say that learning strategies of adults differ from those employed by children. There is an important distinction between learning and acquiring. Learning a language is an unnatural process and results in knowing “about” language whereas acquisition refers to developing the ability to speak a given language while using it everyday life. The latter normally brings much more success. Even under perfect conditions putting a person into a foreign country and forcing them to interact socially for long periods rarely results in the ability to speak L1 and L2 at matching levels.
Critical Period
There must be some crucial moment in our life, the so-called Critical Period that once passed, it becomes extremely difficult if not impossible to acquire or learn a foreign language to perfection. To illustrate this point let me introduce the story of Joseph Conrad who, despite not becoming fluent in English until he was in his twenties, went on to write novels at a level remarkably higher than most native English speakers but… until he died he retained a very strong Polish accent in his spoken English. This might make us think about how, perhaps, some features of a language can be acquired more easily i.e. grammar and vocabulary than for example pronunciation.
Emotional Reaction
What I find intriguing is that there is also some type of emotional reaction in adults who are naturally more self-conscious than young children, which seems to reduce the levels of L2 acquisition. This might have to do with fear of pronouncing words and even single sounds that seem strange and unnatural in their native language. This would explain why foreigners often struggle with English th sound and why English speakers of Polish can’t deal with sz or ś sounds. It’s not like our speech organs are built any differently or our tongues are too stiff to explore new ways of positioning. Fear might indeed be one of the reasons or perhaps the inability to acquire a foreign language fully stems from the fact that we consciously or unconsciously dislike a language or its speakers. If we move to another country and don’t align ourselves with its culture and inhabitants or have particularly bad experiences while living there we might be less likely to “pick up” the language on quite the same level as we’d like to in different circumstances.
I recently wrote about first language acquisition and received several interesting comments. I’d love to hear from you this time as well. Do you think that first and second language acquisitions differ from each other and if so, on what terms? And finally, more importantly, what methods of learning simulate first language acquisition in order to improve the effects of our efforts?
