Acquire?

Hi readers.

Do you like learning different languages? What about the second language? I'm sure for most of the readers of this blog, English is your second language. So do you know the stages of acquiring a second language? Basically there are three stages in which you firstly go through the Native Language Effect, Interlanguage and also Communicative Competence.


1. Native Language Effect

- vital aspect of acquisition of a new language
- learner assumes that the 2nd language operates similarly to the 1st language
- can also facilitate the learning of a 2nd language - some structures of 1st language and 2nd language are similar

~This is basically when people do direct translation


2. Interlanguage

- systemic developmental process
- stage right before competence
- utilizes feedback from others

~ This is the stage which people catch on to the 2nd language, but have only grasped the basic conversational and contextual part, yet not much of the grammar and structure.


3. Communicative Competence

- able to display grammatical, pragmatic, strategic and psychomotor (pronunciation) competence
- best achieved by focusing on language use
- allow students to use language in unrehearsed context

~ In this stage, communication flows well and language is more structured - misunderstandings rarely occur



Hopefully now you know where you are in learning a second language. Fret not if you feel incompetent, there's always room for improvement :)

Reference:
Teaching by Principles - Douglas Brown