Acquisition of a language is a situation whereby a person, specifically one who is exposed to the language to be acquired is exposed to that language.
It can either happen in a natural set up where the target language is used and that the learner of this language acquires it by mere exposure to that language (Ellis, 1994), or in a formal set up where the language is to be taught to the learner and he or she is introduced to the rules and ‘tools of trade’ of the language, for instance, when a learner is born in a certain environment, for example an English family, and the language of communication is English, then the learner’s first language is English (Ellis 1985), but when another language comes up such as French, and the child is under circumstance that he or she has to learn French, then French will come in as a second language.
The environments of acquiring both languages will be different and therefore after acquiring the first language, acquisition of the second language can either be simplified or made harder. The second language can either borrow from the first language or not borrow at all; therefore the first language will have played a role either positively or negatively in the second language acquisition process (Gass & Selinker, 2001).
Second language acquisition entails the acquisition of a language after the first language also known as the native language. The first language is considered the language that one acquires first as the mode of communication. This language is always thought to be an individual’s mother tongue.
Any language that comes after the first language is then referred to as the second language, which is essentially the language that opens an individual to the outside world or rather to communicate with people outside his or her native background.
Most often than not, an individual’s background can be traced using the (Gass & Selinker, 2001) accent that he or she has in her foreign language as his or her second language accent can easily contain traces of his or her first language. It is therefore the case that first language can have both positive and negative effects on an individual (Ellis, 1985).
The second language can be easy to learn if there are some similarities between it and the first language. It is always the case that a French speaker can easily learn English as his or her second language because of the few similarities between the two languages, but a speaker of Chinese can find it a bit hard to learn English because there is a wide gap in terms of differences between the two languages (Gass &Selinker, 1992).
There will be more interference experienced (Ellis, 1994) from the Chinese language because of the difference in pronunciation than it will be the case with French.
It is therefore believed that similarities and differences in various languages play a significant role in the acquisition of the second language, the more the differences, the difficult it is to acquire the second language but the less the differences, the more easy it is to learn the second language (Gass & Selinker 2001).
Second language acquisition will be interrupted by the first language in a situation whereby the first language dominates much more in its usage than the second language. Whenever the first language gets more prevalence, then it is most probable that the use of the second language is minimal.
Practice makes perfect and therefore if the language acquired as a second language will find it as a challenge when the learner uses the first language more often because the learner finds it more comfortable to use the first language, then it will be hard reaching the target language.
Therefore the first language will have stood in the way of the learning of the second language and therefore its acquisition hindered. The first language will have stood on the way in the learning of the second language.
Errors can come up in the acquisition of the second language because of the interference caused by the first language (Dulay & Krashen, 1982). Most of these errors are caused by transfer of forms and meanings by a learner from their first language into the second language.
This is evident in practical measures when a learner wants to make it easier to understand a notion that is found in the second language that is almost similar to that found in the native language (Dulay & Krashen, 1982). Most errors are always linked to the first language caused by transfer.
In the acquisition of the second language, the learner either consciously or unconsciously finds himself or herself transferring rules from his or her first language into the second language. These rules May affect the acquisition of the second language either positively or negatively (Dulay & Krashen, 1982)
As propagated by the behaviorist theory that language learning is a process of habit formation (Gass & Selinker, 1992) whereby old habits from the first language are thought to stand in the way of the learning of the new habits found in the second language, this is referred to as negative transfer. This will in the wider picture lead into the formation of errors.
According to behaviorists therefore old habits that will have been formed in the learning of the first language contribute greatly in the learning of the second language and in as much as in the behaviorist context this will lead to formation of errors and it is evident therefore that there is a significant role played by the first language in the learning of the second language.
At times, the habits from the first language help the learning of the second language and make it easier because the contribution of the first language could have been strengthened the values found in the second language, this is called positive transfer. It is therefore true that the first language has a significant role in the learning of the second language.
Second language learners may in some circumstances exhibit habitual avoidance of some constructions in the second language due to the differences exhibited therein from their first language (Beebe, 1998). From their first language, second language learners will tend to concentrate largely on discourse or grammatical forms that do not pose problems with their first language.
Those that show a wide margin of difference will therefore be avoided in order to make it easy for acquisition of the second language, which is as per the learners. But avoidance of these constructions is in the long run attributed to the interferences of the first language.
Avoidance of the constructions that deem hard can affect the acquisition of the second language by the mere fact that the constructions that are avoided can cause major grammatical errors in the acquired language. These errors caused by transfer can seriously harm the acquisition of the second language.
In view of the cognitive approach to second language learning, the learners are thought to creatively use the knowledge that they already have from the first language so as to learn the second language on their own with minimal supervision. This is done by the learners coming up with patterns that are of their own making, making use of the underlying rules they borrow from the first language.
After formulating the rules they then try to fit them in the second language, if they are not relevant they rectify them and if they are applicable then they will have achieved in the learning of the second language. The learners therefore will have learnt from their own mistakes because partly they hold an active role in the learning process.
They will be in a position to learn on their own and acquire firsthand knowledge of the second language courtesy of the first language knowledge they will have had. Rules from their first language will have played a significant role in the general outcome of the second language learning.
The learning processes of both the first language and the second language are always not the same, because the first language always comes first and in a natural setting, the second language comes later and in most cases in a more formal setting but if it occurs in a natural setting the mechanisms used in its learning are not always the same (Sharwood 1994).
Whereas the acquisition of competence in the first language comes at relatively faster rate, those standards of the second language are relatively slow unless it happens in a relatively faster learner.
More often than not, when a learner gets exposed to the second language at a relatively young age, and incase the first language is not in constant use, the first language stands a chance of being dropped along the way because new rules of the new language tend to overshadow those of the first language.
But in case of comparison of both rules and applying them in the acquisition, then it is quite evident that both languages will have complemented each other (Sharwood, 1994).
When looking at the linguistic word order in a language, more often than not the first language affects the second language (Gass & Selinker, 1992). For instance in English, there is the ‘subject-verb-object’ agreement in word order in a grammatically correct sentence but for an English learner it may not be the case that his or her first language could be having this same word order.
In acquiring English as the second language, the learner will find it convenient using the word order of the native language ignoring that of the second language (English). This is always the case when considering the theory of overgeneralization where the second language learner over generalizes, specifically the rules acquired from the first language.
This can be considered as a type of simplification that aids the learner in understanding and acquiring the second language. The first language will have therefore played a significant role in simplifying second language rules. Though this can be seen as interference from the first language, the end result is this will have aided in the understanding and acquisition of the second language by the learner.
Learners of English as a second language, most significantly French learners will in a way change the rhythm in English because their first language, that is French allows. The distortion of the language is mainly caused by use of words that could not be having the meaning they intend to pass across, for instance the misplacement of the word ‘for’ with a word like ‘since’.
An example in a sentence is, “I have been living here for the last four years and instead use “I have been living here since four years”. This is a case of syntactic borrowing from the first language into the acquisition of the second language (Gass &Selinker, 1992)
On the basis of the first language, it is easy to detect areas of the study of the second language that will be of difficulty to the second language learner and those that will not be difficult (Ellis, 1994). The underlying factor is for the second language learner to understand the finer details of the language, so that a line is drawn between the first language and the second language (Gass & Schachter, 1989).
One needs to invent a mechanism that can help avoid the kind of confusion that can arise as a result of errors that arise through overgeneralization and transfer. It is evident that some errors realized in the acquisition of the second language are as a result of the first language influence. Therefore a line needs to be drawn between the rules of the second language and the native language.
Accents are usually carried by the leaner from their fist language into the learning of the second language. In this case, a learner will always tend to pronounce sounds in the second language as if they were in their first language (Gass &Selinker, 1992). This can be seen in languages that share particular words even though the meaning and pronunciation could be different.
This can be seen for example to be in existence among French and English languages. The learners of either of these two languages may find themselves carrying the accents of either of the languages into the other. This will happen if one language comes after the other as a second language.
Therefore borrowing of accent from the first language can always be traced if the native speaker competence of the second language is not achieved (Gass & Selinker, 1992). Thus, this leads to the passing judgment on the origins of an individual through this particular individual’s accents.
In the field of second language acquisition, it is always the case that the learner of the second language achieves the status of being able to communicate with people outside his or her native boundaries of the native language. But at times the second language speaker may find it difficult to get the right words with which to communicate with the speakers of the second language.
This learner will find himself or herself using first language phrases in order to pass a point or rather to say what he or she intended to say (Gass & Selinker, 1992). In most cases this is accompanied by signs and gestures which will aid the listener in understanding what the reader intends to say.
This helps in the expression of oneself in the language that one is well equipped in but with accompaniment of body language, then he or she is well understood. For instance, when one finds it hard to use the word university in the acquired language and has got that word in his or her first language, then with aid of the first language together with facial and other extra linguistic devices, the whole meaning will have been arrived at.
During encoding and decoding of messages, most second language learners find it easy encoding it and giving the messages their own interpretations in their first languages and thereafter find the suitable words to employ in the second language. This is so because before one gives a response, he or she needs to internalize the encoded message after which he or she needs to decode the message.
Apparently before a response is given many processes do take place which in return contributes to the communication cycle to be complete (Gass & Selinker, 1992). The second language in itself cannot be sufficient if the learner has not yet acquired all the vocabularies that aid good communication, before the learner acquires second language competence it is therefore always the case that the first language is helpful.
In case the learner does not get the right vocabulary, then he or she can decode the message in the first language after which it can be given an interpretation that is required in the second language.
The use of the first language, in as much as the initial studies posed as a hindrance to the acquisition of the second language serves as a measure that bridges the gap left by lack of the right words in the second language, but it is this same first language that will serve as a ‘bank’ where borrowing of words takes place to aid encoding and decoding of information for easy communication.
Some linguists view the first language as less important in the acquisition of the second language and that instead of being a positive factor in second language acquisition; the first language seems less important (Beebe, 1998).
If just left aside, as a major factor that contributes positively to the acquisition of the second language, then an individual’s fist language will have been done harm, this will be seen as means of killing the first language after the acquisition of the second language (Gass & Schachter, 1989).
It is therefore wise to see the acquisition of these two languages as complex but equal processes that needs reinforcement in either way. The underlying factor in this case, at all levels and stages of the acquisition of both first and second language acquisition, both of the two languages need each other.
It should be noted that both the first and the second language complement and need each other (Beebe, 1998). Any language of the world plays the role of communication and expressing oneself so as to be understood and to understand other members of society.
The acquisition of a second language in the natural environment of the first language can see the first language being used in making incorrect assumptions concerning the second language but that notwithstanding (Gass & Schachter, 1989), it can be used in making the acquisition of the second language a lot easier.
Both of these two languages need each other in a healthy way in order to strengthen each other, one way nit to make the first language distinct and secondly to make the second language helpful in aiding the first language speakers open up to the outside world of communication
References
Beebe, L.M. (1988). Issues in Second Language Acquisition: Multiple Perspectives. New York. Newbury House Publishers. Ed.
Dulay, H., Burt, M. & Krashen, S. (1982). Errors. Language Two. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R. (1985). Learner Strategies. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 164-189
Ellis, R. (1994).The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford. Oxford University.
Gass, S. & Schachter, J. (1989). Linguistic Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. Eds.
Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (1992). Language Transfer in Language Learning. New York, Routledge.
Gass, S. & Selinker, L. (2001). Second Language Acquisition: An introductory course. New York. Routledge.
Sharwood S. (1994). A quick tour around, Second Language Learning: Theoretical Foundations. London: Longman. pp. 3-21.