Language Acquisition And Language Learning

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0.-INTRODUCTION 1.- DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ACQUIRING AND LEARNING A LANGUAGE. Language acquisition is defined as the learning and development of one’s mother tongue while language learning refers to second language acquisition .Krashen explained the difference between acquisition and learning in his Monitor Theory by considering them two distinctive cognitive processes. 1.1- Krashen’s Monitor Theory Krashen’s Monitor Theory has been the best known and most influential theory for decades. Basically, Krashen says that second performance relates to two knowledge decades: the acquired system consisting on the knowledge that speakers have on their own language; and the learned system, whose knowledge comes from formal instruction. The learned system serves as a planner and an editor with which a speaker can monitor the output of the acquired system. Monitoring is carried out by intrusion of the learned system on performance tasks, and by using conscious or subconscious awareness of language. This process is different depending on the learner. Some students hardly ever monitor their performance, others are optional users and use the learned system without losing fluency, and some others learners monitor in excess, which limits utterances and communication. 1.2- Instruction and Second Language Acquisition The latest studies about (SLA)Second Language Acquisition focus on the effectiveness of formal instruction. Teresa Pica compared three groups of second language learners in a tutored group, an untutored group and a mixed group. She found that accuracy was similar in the three groups and that the effects of formal instruction depend on the grammatical structure being taught. On the other hand, Pienemann proposed the teachability hypothesis, which states that formal instruction helps language acquisition when the grammatical structures are worked in the natural
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