sECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

ASSIGNMENT

Student first and last name(s): Maynell

Andrade Gómez

Jhoseline Rodriguez
León

Vanessa Zevallos
Hernández

Maria Elena Guiñez

Sandoval

Group: FP_TEFL_2022-06
INDEX

Page

Assignment 2

References 8

Appendix 9

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ASSIGNMENT
Since the purpose of the assignment was to make us reflect about our language systems
and our processes both acquiring and learning the native and foreign languages
respectively, we saw it fit to answer the following questions individually:

 At what point do we come into contact with language? In what context?

 What level of competence do we have? How do we reach that level? Has it
always remained stable?
 What difficulties have we encountered in the process? Have we overcome them
all? How were they overcome?

Maynell Andrade Gómez

Firstly, I came into contact with language from the first years of life when my parents
began to teach me directions or common phrases in the process of learning to speak, also
every day I relate to my environment through dialogues, teaching, conversations, jokes
among friends, classmates, students, co-workers, strangers, etc. However, I began to
have contact with English in my childhood (4 years old), when the teacher taught me
words, phrases, or songs. Nowadays, I always use them to teach my students, interact
with them, and with other people through an application called Tandem, which I use to
practice the language to improve my own competence.

As a native Spanish speaker, I have reached an appropriate level throughout my life. I

have studied and applied the grammar of my own language, but I am still working to
master it completely. This takes place because it is not only about speaking it properly,
but also about achieving accurate writing skills. As an English learner of a foreign
language, through studies and time that I have dedicated to learn it, I have obtained an
upper intermediate level B2, which allows me to communicate fluently and smoothly with
native speakers. I have obtained this level as a result of constant contact with the foreign
language at the academy I studied for three years. Due to listening to interactive classes
with good teachers in Guayaquil city, I have also developed effective speaking skills
through applications that permit me to interact with people from different parts of the
world. Certainly, the language is not stable because the process of externalization of
linguistic competence involves an ongoing development of language skills, since it is
expressed in each specific linguistic act. Nonetheless, there are still many more things to
learn and a new language requires constant preparation due to the fact that you can
forget what you have learned if there is not enough usage.

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When I was in school, I had problems differentiating words with S, C, and Z in Spanish, as
well as the use of V and B, but it is something that I overcame through dictation and
correcting the errors that have been presented to me. Also, as previously mentioned, the
use of accentuation is something that I have always had problems with. In my opinion,
people are used to technological devices, such as cellphones, and therefore, not much
attention is paid to accurate spelling. Nevertheless, practice is vital in order to improve our
writing skills. Furthermore, when learning a foreign language, we always come across
difficulties, especially with grammar. Indeed, when we start to face interlanguage
interference, it becomes a barrier for foreign language learning, and sometimes, the
learner tries to compare grammar features of L1 with L2 in the learning process, due to
the fact that they start to create their own linguistic system (Sharwood Smith, 1994).
Personally speaking, it is important to remember that grammar structures are different in
each language, for this reason we have to be aware of the rules to avoid errors and to
achieve a better performance.

Jhoseline Rodríguez León

As it usually happens, I had my first contact with language as an infant (0 – 1 year) within
a natural context. Firstly, while listening to my parents and other individuals speak
Spanish and eventually producing some words myself. Both my parents, and the rest of
the people we knew at that time, are Peruvians and Spanish native speakers, having that
language as the only way of oral and written communication; therefore, I acquired Spanish
as my first language, going through the developmental stages that are part of acquiring
and learning a language as a child and, later, polishing it as an adult. Indeed, referring to
my experience as an example, it can be confirmed that language is also a “social
behavior, and language acquisition is really language socialization” (Hoff, E., 2009, p. 14),
which goes accordingly with the interactionism theory, which states that interaction is a
major factor in the language development of the learner. However, I started to have
contact with English from a young age as well (4 – 5 years) in formal contexts, where I
learned the language, for despite my early age, I remember I was conscious that I was in
classroom to learn (basic things such as colors, numbers and songs about the weather).
During primary and the beginning of high school, my education towards EFL was mainly
focused on the learning of isolated structures and simple vocabulary, with little or no
exposure to the language outside the classroom, and as a consequence, I did not enjoy
learning English much, principally due to lack of understanding of it. Nonetheless, I began
to develop a joy for learning English when I started studying it at a language institute at
the age of 13 until the age of 18, where my English skills successfully evolved thanks to
the manners in which language was presented and the more personalized teaching.

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Nowadays, I use Spanish to communicate with my friends and family, but as an EFL
educator, I use English everyday as well, not only in formal contexts with my students or
colleagues, but also for leisure activities.

However, it can be a bit challenging to determine one’s level of competence in a

language. As a Spanish native adult speaker, I am able to express myself quite well in my
mother tongue and considering my education, I may have achieved a proficiency level.
Regarding my L2, I had the opportunity to take the Cambridge English: C2 Proficiency
exam (CPE) in 2019 and according to it, my level of competence is C1. Nevertheless,
although I communicate appropriately in English, I do not believe the level of expertise of
any learned language is to remain stable forever unless its usage happens; for my part, I
could see the improvement of my own competence in that language throughout the
years.

All in all, acquiring and learning these languages has been a wonderful experience that
has given me not only the ability to communicate, but also taught me about discipline,
resilience and responsibility, especially when overcoming my lack of confidence at
speaking in English during the first years of my learning process, where I committed
myself to better my fluency and create opportunities to use and produce the language.
Fortunately, now I am confident about my capacity to communicate as I please in English
and use it for educational purposes.

Vanessa Zevallos Hernández

We as human beings come into contact with language from a very early stage in our lives.
During the development of the course of second language acquisition, we have seen
different theoretical approaches to native language acquisition. Nonetheless, I consider
“Cognitivism and Connectionism” one of the most relevant ones. According to the
cognitive view, language acquisition is understood as a process that starts with the child’s
first cognitive and social experiences and thanks to the communicative exchanges,
grammatical forms emerge (Slobin, 2001). Indeed, following the “Stages of child cognitive
development”, we start our L1 language development since the sensorimotor period (0-18
months) due to the fact that we start to recognize our environment and handling objects
which leads to the formation of schemes of action (Heo, Han, Koch & Aydin, 2011).
Therefore, since the first stage of child cognitive development, we start to create and
mature mental representations which is highly important for the acquisition of language.
Then, I strongly believe that people can start their L2 development in the preoperational
period (2-7 years) due to the fact that since this age the use of language has become
symbolic. Furthermore, we also come into contact with the L2 in different contexts

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depending on the experiences we have lived throughout our lives (natural context or
educational context). Indeed, most of us who became teachers of English as a foreign
language were exposed to an educational learning context since we developed our skills
in a language classroom, which is a controlled and regulated learning environment with
different learning activities. In my personal case, I started being in contact with my L2 in
an educational context at the age of 3.

I have been an English teacher for more than 4 years and the institute I work for gave me
the opportunity to take the ECPE exam, which demonstrates my C1 level of English.
Indeed, according to Gass and Selinker, I can be considered a bilingual person since I
have reached a stable level of knowledge in two languages. Moreover, this level of
competence is achieved in the long-term, after having been exposed enough to L2 so that
a person is able to generate meaningful output without any problem. What’s more, I
consider it highly important to mention that my level of language competence has not
always remained stable since there were times when I didn’t use the L2 in my daily life as
much as I do now. However, nowadays I use the L2 everyday in an educational context
because of my job.

I have encountered different challenges when learning my L2. One of them was the
interlanguage interference, which refers to the aspects that differ between L1 and L2.
Indeed, I definitely think that the influence of L1 in the process of learning a L2 can have
really positive effects since language becomes meaningful for students, however, the
overuse of it can also bring negative consequences as the mentioned “interlanguage
interference”. This takes place because at some point during my learning process, I used
to compare L2 utterances with L1 ones, which caused a lot of confusion between my
classmates and me. Nevertheless, we were able to overcome this issue with hard work
and by being aware that English and Spanish are two different linguistic systems.

Maria Elena Guiñez Sandoval

As most of us, I came into contact with my native language in a natural context at an early
stage of my life while listening to it, repeating and answering to different given stimuli,
acquiring it from association and imitation (Skinner, 1957). Indeed, what could have
happened to me during the sensorimotor stage is the fact that the stimuli I received was
not real as people or adults who talked to me did it using motherese talk (Chomsky,
1965). Afterwards, I started reading and writing it at school, as a consequence, I obtained
a native and formal L1. On the other hand, I learned English as a foreign language at
school at a rather late stage; when I was 12 years old, lessons were structured to develop

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my 4 skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Personally, I believe I learned the
target language and I could communicate rather well in English, nevertheless, it was later
at the university where I studied English for 5 years, that I really got to master my skills in
English.

Regarding the level of proficiency, I could say that I master Spanish (my mother tongue) in
almost all its areas: written, oral, listening and speaking; despite the fact that I have to
prepare myself when speaking in front of an audience or writing a formal document.
Obviously, as it is my L1, I usually use it in a natural context rather than in a formal one.
On the contrary, I speak English as a foreign language, so I use it in a formal context most
of the time, that is to say, at school or university. Furthermore, I have a B2 level of
proficiency in English, certified by an FCE exam. Regarding competence, I think I am able
to produce both languages in the same way; indeed, it is even easier for me to express
myself in English rather than in Spanish, especially concerning oral communication due to
the amount of practice and use of the latter. Consequently, my performance in English
has increased from very basic to upper-intermediate and it will continue improving.
However, I strongly believe neither of both languages could remain stable, since we,
particularly teachers, are always reading and studying, therefore, we are always learning
and improving our level of English. Nevertheless, maybe we could have had some
moments when we did not use the language as we wished, for example, during the
pandemic, where we were unable to practice English as we would have liked, due to the
teaching conditions we had to face at that time, hence, our language did not remain stable
then.

At the end of the day, learning the English language has been a long process and to
reach an appropriate performance and level of proficiency was a great achievement. To
accomplish it, I needed to go through making mistakes and errors and overcome them
effectively. Besides, I have gotten around lots of difficulties like mastering grammar rules
and patterns; as a foreign language, I have gone through interference, which has made L2
learning more complicated. However, practice, use of it and motivation, has helped me
improve and perform it more accurately.

In the same way, in order to compare each of our own learning and acquisition processes
regarding the languages we speak, we addressed the last question as a group:

 What are the differences and similarities in the linguistic experiences of each?
What can they be due to?

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The acquisition of a language is a very remarkable experience, and when comparing our
own processes acquiring and learning the languages we speak, Spanish and English
respectively, we were able to notice important features that we had in common and were
different.

To begin with, regarding the similarities that we found among each other, we can confirm
that we all learned English as foreign language due to the fact that we learned the
language in an educational context. There we had the opportunity to go to a classroom, a
space of interaction whose common goal is to achieve language learning. Nonetheless,
one important drawback of the educational context we were exposed to is that our
learning depended on the frequency and quality of exposure to the L2 proficiency.
Therefore, when we wanted to have more contact with the language in order to improve
our English skills, we had to search for different sources outside the formal classroom
environment. Secondly, as we all acquired Spanish as our L1 and learned English as our
L2, we all experienced interlanguage interference during the development of our L2
learning, especially concerning grammar rules. Certainly, this is a common issue among
us as language learners, for according to Chomsky (1979), we possess an innate
knowledge, which is internal to all human beings, and we tend to compare our implicit
knowledge about our native language with what we learn in the L2.

On the other hand, there are some differences we found among each other as well.
Firstly, we all were exposed to English in different stages of our child cognitive
development. Some of us came into contact with English during the preoperational period
(2 – 7 years), where the use of language became symbolic to us as we started to learn
basic vocabulary through chants and songs in a family and educational context.
Conversely, some others were exposed to L2 during the period of formal operations (11 –
maturity), where we used the language for socializing purposes and logical thinking in
different degrees, as we were able to learn the language in formal contexts, using more
meaningful hypothetical situations, for instance, at the restaurant, at the airport, etc.
Additionally, another striking dissimilarity among us is the proficiency level of English that
we have achieved throughout the years, for some of us count with the CPE certificate,
meaning that our level of English is C1, whereas two of us have the FCE certificate,
stating that their level of the language is B2.

All in all, as we were able to distinguish the likenesses and differences in our learning and
acquisition processes, we noticed that they depend on a variety of internal and external
factors, such as cultural and personal ones that shaped us as individuals and EFL
educators.

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REFERENCES

De Angelis, G. (2005). Interlanguage Transfer of Function Words. Language Learning,

55(3), 379-414.

Braine, M., (1971). The acquisition of language in infant and child. In C. Reed (eds.), The
Learning Language. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 7-95.

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hoff, E. (2009). Language development. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Sharwood-Smith, M. (1994). Second Language Learning: Theoretical Foundations.

Londres: Longman.

Skinner, B.F (1957). Verbal Behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Croft

Wadsworth B. J. (1996). Piaget’s theory of cognitive and affective development (5a ed.).
New York: Longman Publisher.

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APPENDIX

FP003 – SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

ASSIGNMENT
General instructions:

The assignment in this subject consists of writing an expository-argumentative document

in pairs in which answers are given to the questions posed below. The assignment must
satisfy the following formal requirements:

 Length: 5 pages (excluding instructions, statements, bibliography and annexes -if any-).
 Font: Arial.
 Size: 11 points.
 Spacing: 1.5.
 Alignment: Justified.

The assignment should be carried out in this Word document following the rules of
presentation and editing in terms of citations and bibliographic references (see Study
Guide).

Submission must be done following the procedures described in the subject’s evaluation
document; under no circumstances should it be submitted through the professor’s
email.

On the other hand, remember that there are evaluation criteria which are considered
extremely important for the student to follow. For further information, please refer to the
subject evaluation document.

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ASSIGNMENT
Write an expository paper reflecting your linguistic profile (languages spoken, level of
proficiency, contexts of habitual use). Then write an argumentative piece containing a
detailed analysis of the process of acquiring these languages and contrast each other's
experiences. The assignment may be a set of answers to the following questions:

 At what point do we come into contact with language? In what context?

 What level of competence do we have? How do we reach that level? Has it always
remained stable?
 What difficulties have we encountered in the process? Have we overcome them all?
How were they overcome?
 What are the differences and similarities in the linguistic experiences of each? What
can they be due to?

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