Teacher’s Role in Second Language Acquisition
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Abstract: teachers play a very important role in second language acquisition, which is noted by many educators and researchers. This paper tries to prove the importance of teachers’ role in Second Language Acquisition by discussing several factors that influence second language learners’ study. It also proposes the ways of training and improving students’ learning strategies
Key words: Second Language Acquisition; English Learning
1. Introduction:
Teachers play an important role in the process of second language Acquisition, which is noted by many educators and researchers. During the process of second language acquisition, there are many factors that influence learners’ learning results, including: age, motivation, strategies, and personality factors.
2.1Age affects SLA
Age is a factor affecting the progress made and the ultimate level of proficiency reached in the L2. I am an English teacher in University, but I teach children English in my spare time. I observe the process of learning English as a second language in my class; I found the following difference between children and adult. Theare so cooperated in the process of learning second language comparing with the children. In other words, they are not so active to accept teacher’s suggestions, imitate others and so on. Day after day, as a result, some may lose the interest of learning second language, their pronunciation are not so good as children. They don’t like to open their mouth, because of shyness or losing interest. They will think English is difficult to learn. For those who can learn it well at first, day after day if they don’t like to practice, they will also become not so good at last. Why did children andperform differently in learning at the same circumstance? Just because their age is different, they form different attitudes toward new things. Then it is reasonable to accept that there is more than one possible model of the SLA process. Long-term studies of SLA show that individuals who start learning a second language as children ultimately reach a higher level of L2 proficiency. This is particularly true in terms of pronunciation. It is only those who have begun to learn the L2 at an early age who ever speak with an accent that is indistinguishable from that of native speakers. There is also evidence to suggest that learners who have begun learning the L2 as children reach a higher level of syntactic accuracy in their Oral production.
I have taught University students for 6 years, at the beginning of every new term, I found the freshman who is good at English listening, speaking, reading and writing skills learn English at a younger age. In general, therefore, whenever those who begun to learn the second language at an older age and those who began at a younger age have been compared with one another after several years of second language study, those whose second language studies started early have reached a higher level. Thus whether we consider formal learning or natural Acquisition; it seems that those who start to learn another language when they are children are at an advantage.
2.2 Motivation influences second language study
The extent to which a particular group of learners will need second language training will vary according to their purposes for learning. For example, I made a test. I asked two group students who come from Grade two and Grade four to finish some papers. I found that for the students in Grade two, their motivation of studying English as second language just because they want to pass all kinds of examinations, such as TEM4, for the students in Grade Four, they are interested in practicing oral English than writing, their purposes are job interview. They want to find a good job in future. They will spend more time in practicing oral English than writing skills. Their purpose of learning English is to find a good job.
Motivation is crucial to successful L2 learning. Factors that determine whether or not L2 learners are likely to be well motivated include: Whether or not the topics and language covered in the language course are clearly relevant to their purposes for learning the language. Whether or not they feel that they are making real progress in their L2 proficiency.
For the Children and adults who do know why should they learn language, they acquire language successfully in class and they seem to share certain similarities in their learning experiences. First of all ,they are usually exposed to language which they more or less understand even if they can’t produce the same language which they more or less understand even if they can’t produce the same language spontaneously themselves. Second, they are motivated to learn the language in order to be able to communicate. And finally, they are active to use the language they are learning, thus giving themselves chances to flex their linguistic muscles and check their progress and abilities.
2.3. Learner Strategies
Strategies are especially important for language learning because they are tools for active, self-directed involvement. The language learner capable of using a wide variety of language learning strategies appropriately can improve his language skills in a better way. Met cognitive strategies improve the organization of learning time, self-monitoring, and self-evaluation. Cognitive strategies include using the previous knowledge to help solve new problems. Socio- affective strategies include asking native speakers to correct their pronunciation, or asking a classmate to work together on a particular language problem. Developing skills in three areas, such as met cognitive, cognitive, and socio-affective can help language learners build up learning independence and autonomy so that they can take control of their own learning.
3. Personality factors
There is little clear evidence about the type of personality that is most likely to be a successful language learner. In very general terms it seems that if the aim is to produce learners able to use the language fluently, learners who are uninhibited and able to empathies easily may be more successful. It should be stressed that not enough is known for certain about the relationships between personality traits and successful L2 learning for such relationships, but the teacher play an important role in this process. All the students should be motivated, be exposed to language and given chances to use it. We can therefore say what elements need to be present in a language classroom to help students learn effectively. Teacher should try to arouse the students’ interest and get students using language as freely and communicatively as they can.
Learners from different cultural backgrounds are likely to have different concepts. When teaching, it seems sensible to identify and utilize the strategies that different groups of learners already use. Teachers need to be sensitive to the strategies favored by learners from different cultural backgrounds and consider ways of utilizing these to improve their learner’s learning techniques. For learners who do not have clearly defined motivations for learning the L2, the encouragement of positive attitudes is particularly important. It is necessary to ensure that at least part of the input relates to their real interests, since the course can not be planned around learners’ actual needs. Teacher’s role becomes so important. For this , time will have to be spent establishing a sufficiently good group dynamic for the learners to be willing to contribute honestly to the decisions made about the topics around which input and output should be based.
In a word, every second language learning context is more or less different. It will therefore lead to more or less different answers to questions at the approach, design and procedure level. What important is that the teacher who are responsible for planning L2 learning know what questions need to be asked and against what answers should be judged, what kind of roles teachers should play. This paper tries to analyze the factors that influence L2 learning in order to help L2 learners and teachers to learn and teach better. From this paper, we can find in second language teaching, teachers play an important role. Teacher education programs are important for teachers to improve their knowledge base, drawn from linguistics and language learning theory, and a practical component based on language teaching methodology and opportunity for practice teaching.
References:
P.Skehan: Individual Differences in Second Language Learning. Edward Arnold. 1989. Chapters 3,4,6.
McDonough: Psychology in Foreign Language Teaching. Allen and Unwin,2nd edition. 1986. Chapter 6,9,10.
Ellis, R.1994. The Study of Second Language Acquisition. London: Oxford University Press.
Oxford, R. L. 1990. Language learning Strategies. Rowley, Mass. Newbury House.