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Date Posted: 13:26:10 05/02/07 Wed
Author: GASPERIM
Subject: TASK II -GASPERIM
In reply to: Rodrigo Isaac 's message, "Peer Editing to Gasperim - Rodrigo" on 06:18:55 04/17/07 Tue

Gasperim Ramalho
Argumentative Essay

How to acquire a second language: Looking for the theory that fits!

Learning and mainly acquiring a second language have been widely useful and also hard to many people. Many experts have been proposing different theories and offering several contributions to second language acquisition’s process. The most acceptable theories for that matter have been leaning on terms of “grammar input” and“social context”.Nevertheless, the most effective and reasonable theory lies on social context. An overview and discussion of that theory is the aim of this essay.
Initially, concerning “grammar input “ it has been defined as the amount of information, data and phrases which a person is provided in order to get the necessary stuff to communicate afterwards.Furthermore,through this theory,acquiring a second language would be a subconscious process taking place in a naturalistic context where there is a focus on meaningful communication.The mentioned theory was put forth by Stephen Krashen who in the mid-1970´s highlighted the concept and enhanced the necessity of providing students sufficient exposure to grammar structures of the target language.Thus, according to him, the second language would be later stirred up and produced.However, that theory does not take into account that any learner does not acquire something totally lonely what makes us reflect concerning the social aspect.
Nowadays, there has been enormously increased the concept of “social context”which was strongly defended by Michael Long in 1997.Regarding his theory, second language learning is a process that often takes place in a social setting whose roots and supports are internal processes such as :learning, thinking, rememberings, sexual arousal and digestion.Curiously,Long maintens that all of those processes make the memory ,and mainly the language to be acquired , be put to use.Then, in a social context one might have the opportunity of establishing new knowledge structures and making those available for efficent use.That theory has been shown as a great way of explaining what is really crucial for acquiring a second language.That happens since the learner only may produce an ouput and get an “input’ when he or she is exposed to data in the target language.
Furthermore, that theory is highly strengthtened by what Kanavillil Rajagopalan claims as “Language and Identity”(2001) .That means the one may feel better to acquire and also learn a second language when he or she “finds`an identity with the language that produces an environment of self-esteem and psychological comfort.Naturally,these facts would not succeed without a social context in which the learner would have the opportunity to interact among other cultures, speakers, and so on..
Briefly,we may comprehend that acquiring a second language is a very complex process in the sense that it is underlied by not only amounts of structures,pieces of language and declarative knowledge but also that process is entailed and mainly obtained by meaningful social contexts in which the learner is likely to acquire and produce the language that he or she has ultimately stored and built up throughout life.

(sources:The social turn in SLA, by David Block(1987)
Linguagem e auto-estima ,by Kanavillil Rajagopalan(2001)

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