A Project Plan - The Time and Effort Involved in Acquiring a Language

I am glad we are putting lots of effort to teach our language to our kids. A noble effort. We want them to understand, speak, read, and write our language. A great goal. We need a workable plan. I discuss what it takes to acquire a language; the order, effort and time. Is what we are doing enough to meet this great goal? How to say? Let us compare with a benchmark. The benchmark is how we all acquired our first language. Using this as benchmark, we will be able to tell if we are investing enough to expect the expected return.

First let us understand the five stages of language acquisition. Please watch The Five Stages of Second Language Acquisition.

Here is the stages we went through when we acquired our first language. (the numbers can only be an approximate since the start time, and amount of time taken varies from kid to kid).

Stage#	Period	What happens	Rough Actual Time (in hours)	Notes
Stage 0 - Initial Stage	0 - 9 months	Surrounded by Language Language Exposure Parents and relatives talk to them They just listen and keep acquiring words and meanings	1000 hours	Awake 4 hours a day
Stage 1 - Preproduction Stage	9 - 12 months	Understand and respond to simple commands Has minimal comprehension Does not verbalize Nods "Yes" and "No" Draws and points	600 hours	Awake 6 hours a day
Stage 2 - Early production Stage	12 - 14 months	Very first words Has limited comprehension Produces one or two words Uses keywords and familiar phrases Uses present tense verbs	600 hours	Awake 4 hours a day
Stage 3 - Speech Emergence Stage	14 - 18 months	Use lots of words Makes lots of grammatical errors. Has good comprehension. Can produce simple sentences Makes grammatical and pronunciation errors Frequently understand jokes	500 hours	Awake 8 - 10 hours a day
Stage 4 - Intermediate Fluency Stage	?	Uses lots of sentences Makes few grammatical errors. Has excellent comprehension.	500 hours	Awake 8 - 10 hours a day
Stage 5 - Advanced Fluency Stage	?	Have a near perfect level of speech.	?	?

Only after mastering so much of language skill, we went to school to learn to read and write. This is the way the brain acquires the language and this is what it takes to acquire a language. Are we doing something similar to teach a second language or something else? If you are doing the same thing, congratulations. Otherwise, what is the reason?

Of course we can not afford the same luxury, time, and effort in teaching a second language in schools. But, that does not mean we can alter this order or take a short cut. It simply does not work.

There are techniques that will help us to replicate the first language experience in teaching second language and get the result close to the first language competency over time. If we are teaching our language in a different way, or that goes against the way the brain acquires the language, how do we expect the learners to acquire and master language skill?

காயை அடித்து கனியாக்க முடியாது அல்லவா?

"A language learning machine (a kid) , that can master a language effortlessly on it's own, struggles to acquire even the basic language skill from school that too with the help of an experienced language teacher." -- a very interesting quote.


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The Two Primary Approaches to Language Teaching

Introduction

I here discuss two approaches, skill based and language acquisition based. I may sound like one is good and the other is not. That is not my intention. My objective here is to share what I learned about the approaches and what I believe about each of them. My intention is not to say we should abandon one approach and completely move over to another approach. I do believe language is too complex to teach with just one approach. As the linguistic expert Prabhu says there is no one single approach that can meet the needs of every language teaching situation. Use the approach as applicable to your need.

I understand there are primarily two language teaching approaches. Skill Development and Language Acquisition. Interestingly these two approaches take opposite view of language teaching and go in the opposite direction. What I mean is if one approach says "do A and you will get B", the other approach says "do B and you will get A".  Example: Skill Building approach says "learn the language elements and you will be able to use it in the language", but the Language Acquisition approach says "use the language in communication so you will be able to master the language better". This key difference motivated me to learn more on this.

Check the following video (from xx:xx to yy:yy). Dr. Krashen outlines the main differences between the two approaches. I here summarize the two approaches, the differences, and the values.

Skill Development

The skill based approach is about teaching language element one by one and  help the learners to use in the communication. We give them vocabulary, grammar rules, letters, etc first and slowly introduce conversation skill. This is the approach used in most second language classes in regular schools.

Language Acquisition

The language acquisition approach is about giving basic language elements, help them use in communication, and build on top of it. Example, help the learners to understand basic vocabulary and language structures using Total Physical Response (TPS) and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS), and help them to first improve listening skill, and then output skill. In this approach we give lots of input first based on contexts, goals, and tasks, and then help them use in the communication context.


Comparison

	Skill Building	Language Acquisition
Method	Learn the language element and use the language.	Use the language and learn the language elements.
Approach	Language exercise drill	Use language for communication
Grammar	Teach grammar rules.	Help them pick up grammar construct inductively.
Goal	To score high marks in tests	To develop communication competency in the target language.
Effort of Students	High	Medium
Effort of teachers	High	High in the beginning and medium afterwards
ROI	Low to Medium	Medium to high
Motivation	Language drills make the students to lose interest in learning the language.	Learners enjoy participating and producing language output.
Structure	Structured, systematic way. Predefined syllabus, tests for grading, etc.	Unstructured and loosely connected. The language elements are chosen based on the learners need and situation.

Conclusion

Please check The Five Stages of Second Language Acquisition.

Before I give my conclusion, let us look at how we acquired our first language. You may not know what you did and how you did this when you were a child. Look at how your kid(s) acquired their first language. That alone can give you a preview of my conclusion.
Acquisition, I think is the way to go. This is the way we have been acquiring the language for thousands of years and billions of people are doing it this way every day even today. I do not see a need to reinvent the wheel. Skill based approach do have value. But, it is hard to learn a language this way and the value is limited.

Hence I can confidently conclude that Language Acquisition approach is the way to go.

For more on language acquisition concepts and techniques, please refer to TPRS, and TBLT. I have discussed these topics in several posts in this blog.

Then an obvious follow up question would be how to use Language Acquisition techniques in the class. Let me answer this question briefly.

At Elementary level:

• Help them with basic listening comprehension.
• Teach 100-150 words using TPR. The goal at this stage is to be sure they understand the words, the follow the direction, and are able to respond back using actions. Do not expect or force them to talk in the target language.
• Help them  basic language elements and structures.
• Teach language elements and more works using TPRS. Tell level appropriate stories that the learners can understand and enjoy. Make them participate. Still they may not talk in the target language yet. Absolutely alright. Also use TPRS to help them start talking.
 

• Help them with advanced language skills

• Involve the kids in the language learning activities in context using TBLT. By now they are able to understand and talk simple sentences. Use TBLT to enhance their language skill. Here they will practice listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Use this approach as long as needed. Sometimes the learners may get bored doing activities, so, you may want to involve them in fun trips, teaching activity, projects, demonstrations, presentations, etc, all using TBLT approach.

 At Intermediate level:

• Help with more reading and writing skill.

At Advanced level:

•  Help them with literature, history, more culture related learning, etc. Also help them with writing skill.

The order of developing the skill is highly important. First we need to help them build listening comprehension, then speaking, and only (and only) then with reading and writing skills. I would not recommend introducing letters until they can talk at least little in the target language on their own. It is counterproductive to teach letters, reading and writing skill before they acquire listening and speaking skill.