Language And Acquisition

By Author: Tista Biswas
Total Articles: 22
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Language acquisition is the process of learning a language without conscious effort; it happens naturally. We acquire our native languages, whereas second languages can be acquired as well as learnt. Studies have shown that language acquisition is more effective than language learning. Therefore, courses for teachers need to focus on how language acquisition can be encouraged in the classroom.
Salient Features
Language acquisition has the following salient features:
• It is very similar to the process of learning our first language.
• It happens naturally & implicitly.
• It is spontaneous & intuitive.
• Formal teaching usually doesn’t help a lot.
• Opportunities for using the acquired language are crucial; otherwise learning will not take place.
• Fluency precedes accuracy.
• Peer interactions help more than formal teaching or parental guidance.
• It follows a natural sequence, where children first learn nouns & verbs, followed by adjectives & adverbs, & prepositions, conjunctions & articles come last.

TESOL & Language ...
... acquisition
ATI (American TESOL Institute) has launched a new course for teaching English – the TESOL program. TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. It covers both TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) & TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language). The TESOL program has researched the importance of Language acquisition & consequently, has made it an integral part of the course. Trainee teachers are taught the importance of language acquisition & how to help students to acquire the English language. The TESOL program focuses on teaching trainees to create activity-based curriculums, where both speaking & listening are integral parts. Students need lots of opportunities to use the language for acquiring it. This is very important for learning a new language successfully. So, good courses for teachers, like the TESOL program, always incorporate such teaching methods.
Course Details
The Diploma in TESOL program consists of 9 phases & has to be finished in 6 months. Each phase is followed by a set of assignments, which has to be completed within the given deadline. These are then graded by online tutors & returned to the trainees. Upon successfully completing a phase, the next one is made available. 8 phases have to be done in this way. The last phase is a research module, where the trainee has to write a paper. Finishing all phases successfully leads to the award of the Diploma Certificate.
Course fees are Rs. 10,000 or $225. The course certificate will be dispatched free of cost to Indian addresses but an additional charge of $25 will be levied for shipping it to an overseas address.
Online teacher training courses have become very popular today as they provide an opportunity to do the course from the comfort of one’s home. Keeping this in mind, the TESOL program is offered in various modes to suit the needs of the trainees. They are:
• Full time online mode
• Part time online mode
• Full time distance mode
• Part time distance mode

TEFL stands for 'Teaching English as Foreign Language'. The close keen of TEFL is TESOL, which means 'Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages'. TEFL and TESOL are synonymous terms. It is an international teachers training program where the teachers are given inputs on the latest advancements and advents in the field of education. The modules of the Distance or Online TEFL course cover Methodologies, the approaches to EFL teaching, Grammar and phonology, the teaching techniques (teaching listening, speaking, reading and writing), teaching young learners and Lesson planning among other inputs. The TEFL Course Certification is accredited by the most respected educational organizations in the United States of America giving the ATI course an internationally recognized standard. Another most important factor behind the recognition of a TEFL course is its value in the foreign teaching market. For teaching jobs abroad, the TEFL or TESOL certificate is absolutely mandatory as this vocational training is required by the schools for foreign teachers.