Introduction
It is widely agreed that the earlier one starts to learn a foreign language, the better is the chance for one to master a language, especially in the field of phonetics. It is observed that children do not learn the language, they acquire it. This process of acquisition is completely different from that of learning of adults.
Children have a magic ability to absorb a language. It is surprising to see how fast a child can learn and use a large amount of vocabulary and sentence structures over a short period of time. Why does it happen that way? A lot of research which has been done in this area leads to an agreement that "There appears to be a period during which language learning can proceed easily, swiftly, and without external intervention or teaching" (
Fromkin et al, 1988). During this period, language acquisition occurs naturally. So what is the difference between acquisition and learning? We say we adults learn a language but children acquire a language. It can be said that acquisition is "a subconscious process that happens when we engage in meaningful interaction in much the same way that children pick up their first language without any interaction to form" (
Truong and Bao, 1997). According to their research, the lateralization of the brain (the term used to ‘refer any cognitive functions that are primarily localized to one side of the brain or another’) appears to be connected with the language-learning abilities of children. It may be that this ‘critical age’ (
Fromkin et al, 1988) for first language acquisition coincides with the period when lateralization is taking place and ends when it is complete. According to
Lenneberg (1967), this period ends at puberty, which appears to be a crucial limit for ease of acquisition. On the other hand, Krashen (1973) has argued that "the period may be complete at the age of five".
Perhaps this is why the child has already acquired so much grammar by that age. It is observed that the amount of vocabulary and some simple sentence structures children acquire by the age of five is equivalent to the sum that they can learn in the rest of their lives!
However, in reality this process does not happen in a simple way, as we might think. Acquisition of a first language is not repeated in our lives. For first language acquisition, according to
Fromkin et al (1988), the process can be divided into four main stages:
The babbling stage: This lasts up to about one year. It is considered as a pre-linguistic period, in which children makes any number of sounds that are interesting to them. They do not depend on the language produced by others; their stock of language is not limited to the linguistic input they are exposed to. They can produce all sorts of language sounds existing globally, which are very much similar in all the world’s languages. As a consequence, they do not produce only the same sounds as those of the environment.
Children in this period also show their capacity to recognize the significance of intonation. If they are exposed to sounds with different intonations, they can respond with the same sound and melody, with the ability of a perfect imitator.
After that, when children gets to the age of one to two years old, they come to the holophrastic stage, during which they produce their first utterances. Their every word conveys a message or a request. At first the child speaks one-word sentences, in which one word can convey the meaning of one whole sentence. For example, when a child says "Car!", the word can be understood as "I like the [toy] car", "Where is my [toy] car", "It’s a car", "Let me get in the car", etc; during this period, the mother is the best "interpreter" of the child. So the child begins to realize that sounds represent meaning and concept.
A few months later, there comes the two-word stage, when the child puts two words together, but these utterances are not" random combination of words"
Fromkin et al (1988); the words have definite patterns and express grammatical and semantic relationships.
Still later, in the telegraphic stage, longer sentences appear, composed primarily of content words and lacking function or grammatical morphemes. The child’s early grammar lacks many of the rules of the adult grammar, but eventually it mirrors the language used in the community" (
Fromkin et al, 1988).
This natural language acquisition process is independent of the ethnic background of the child, but depends on the language used by the community where the child is living. If a Vietnamese child was born and grew up in Australia or America, it is certain that the child would be a native speaker of English. If the child’s family did not use Vietnamese with the child, they would have to learn Vietnamese as a foreign language.
So, it can be concluded that children have a gifted language skill. On the other hand, if a child does not learn any language at all up to some certain age, the ability of acquiring and using a language can be impaired, or even lost. The story of Tarzan, who grew up in the forest from birth to 18 years old and learnt to be a "forest boy" is a very beautiful story of bravery and humanity. It has been a dream of millions of teenagers all over the world. However, it is really hard to believe that after he came back to human society, he could ever learn to speak the language easily and could make up for the time lost in the forest. Scientific research shows that this could not have happened. Human history shows many cases of children who were abandoned for some certain reasons and lived with animal communities until people found them. Some cases of children being isolated before puberty can be taken into consideration as follows:
The Wild boy of Aveyton, who was aged 12 in 1797 when he was found living with animals. He did learn to respond with some words, but never spoke properly.
The Wolf-Boy, Shamdev, who was 15 when he was found in 1978. He was never able to learn any language.
An Ohio girl, who was six years old when she was found in the 1930s. Having had community interaction, she was unable to speak and understand language, but after a period of training and communication with a community, she still made up what she had missed and spoke normally in the long run.
So, it can be seen that acquisition occurs naturally only up to a certain age, and sometime after puberty we lose the ability to acquire naturally, quickly and easily the language to which we are exposed.
As a result, it can be seen that if we start to learn a foreign language when we are still very young, we can enjoy many advantages, especially in terms of phonetics. As adults, we can no longer acquire a language; we have to make a lot of effort to learn a language. So, different from acquisition, "learning is a conscious process of study, attention to form and error correction, most typically in formal language classrooms" (
Truong and Bao, 1997). Moreover, "acquisition is a more important process, and learning cannot turn into acquisition" (ibid.).
However, one should not be disappointed when beginning to learn a foreign language after puberty. When learning a foreign language as an adult, one can enjoy some advantages as well. The first is that learners already know a language, know what language is used for, and that language has a system of words and rules. Secondly, they can be aware that the target language they are learning is different and be willing to take on the challenge. Thirdly, they study in an analytic way, being willing to analyze in a cognitive way what they are learning.
Nevertheless, the disadvantages seem to outweigh the advantages. When learning a foreign language as an adult, one has to face many troubles. Some are the following:
The natural language ability is lost
Speech organs have formed a habit and the speech for organ position to pronounce the mother tongue sounds have become a natural response
Rules of first language have become a habit that influences language competence: new rules have to be learnt consciously
Learners suffer from interference from the first language, in terms of foreign accents and grammatical rules.
Therefore, learners are greatly influenced by the mother tongue, especially in terms of pronunciation and rules of phonetics. Perhaps the most difficult problem in learning English for the Vietnamese is pronunciation. English has some sounds, which do not exist in the Vietnamese phonetic alphabets. Some can be taken as examples, such as /æ/, /q /, /¶ /, or /Ù /, or aspirated sounds /kh/, / th/, or nasalized sounds, or even some similar sounds but still somewhat different such as /t/, /tr/ or /p/ , and /d/ .
Another not less serious problem is the special characteristics of English with word stress and sentence stress. Vietnamese is a mono-syllabic language, whereas English is a polysyllabic language; so each Vietnamese word in a sentence will receive a single stress but in English only some content words or emphasized words will receive stress. This leads to the fact that English is spoken with regular beats to form rhythm, at the same time some segments are uttered quickly or weakly which the Vietnamese find it so difficult to understand. Intonation is also another challenge. English has a rich system of intonation that is used to express different meanings and attitudes in various contexts.
Many Vietnamese learners of English are interpreted as indifferent, abrupt, and even impolite because they employ mostly the falling tone at the end of a sentence, as they do with Vietnamese. In contrast, the English learners of Vietnamese find it extremely confusing and nearly impossible to imitate the six tones of Vietnamese. They can understand that tu (with level tone = to be a monk), tï (with low falling tone = jail), tïu (rising tone = nice-looking) tò (rising-falling = cupboard) can bear completely different meanings, but find it almost impossible to remember the tones and distinguish the sounds.
Furthermore, to learn a foreign language outside the environment in which the language is used, one must memorize the language without using them in practice.
It seems clear then that the earlier one attempts to learn a foreign language, the better. However, can this be applicable to children in a non-English speaking country? Can they acquire English naturally from the time when they are young? The answer is yes and no. As a teacher of English (and being encouraged by the ‘critical age hypothesis’, I am ambitious in helping my children to be good at English when they are very young, so when they grow up they can use the language without much effort. For a long time, I have been trying to expose them to the language, in the hope that they can learn the language unconsciously. However, I don’t want to force them to learn (and how can you force children to learn anyway?). I can see that they have made a lot of progress with their pronunciation and their ability to imitate is even better than that of adults (including me, a rather experienced teacher of English!). When I showed them a video of an ice cream, they said: "Mum, they do not pronounce it like you, the ice /ais/ is much shorter than the way you say it!" They are completely right, simply through observation, while I know very well from the theory that when a vowel is followed by a stop consonant, the quality of that vowel will be shorter. In addition, they speak short sentences easily and with appropriate pronunciation.
However, I soon recognize they are too young to learn grammatical structures. The only way for them to develop their skill is to practise. It seems a simple truth, as we usually say "Practice makes perfect". So, if practice is what they need, I should let them do a lot of practice. The question is then: with whom should they practise? No one speaks English in authentic situations with them except the teachers, their mother and sometimes some foreigners. They learn after the method of behaviorism, what they learn will soon be forgotten unless it is reinforced by practice. At first I was disappointed and thought that maybe my children were not gifted linguistically and they did not have a sense of language. However, as time goes by, as they go to school, they learn some English there and they become more confident. My daughter is nine, and she is more conscious of learning the language. My son is seven, and he just learns according to his own ways of thinking and fancies. One day he came home and said: "Mum, my teacher is funny. I did my test very well, but she only gave me 8 out of 10. Of course she is wrong, but I don’t want to argue with her". I asked him to show me his paper. The teacher asked him to write from 1 to 20 in English. He did it correctly from 1 to 10, then instead of eleven, twelve he wrote one-teen, two teen, three teen because he said the teacher had told them to put teen after ten onwards. I find it so amusing. The child sounds logical in his argument. Once again, theory has been supported by reality: children learn a language not only through imitation and interaction with the community but also through their thinking patterns in their own way, by forming their own rules.
On the basis of the above argument, it can be seen that the acquisition of a language from a very young age in a community using that language is a wonderful way to get to know a language. It is so desirable for us to have that magic ability during our adulthood to learn other languages that we want to. However, even when young children make great efforts to lean a foreign language they can enjoy some certain advantages but they also have to face with a lot of difficulties.
Children can learn easily but they can forget easily, too. When they are very young, they just learn orally by imitation and through interaction with other members of the community for remembrance. Unfortunately, in a non-English speaking country, the children do not have enough facilities to apply the foreign linguistic knowledge they already learn. Short, pleasant, interesting or useful phrases soon fade out of their memories. Even in the case of those who learn English or French everyday for a while, how long does it take for all this knowledge to vanish when they no longer have the foreign language teaching? It is hard to say. If we want the language to be acquired, the process must be natural. However, in a non-English speaking community, these children have to learn the foreign language by the same process as adults, so there is the dilemma. An adult has an analytical mind to analyze the grammatical structures or unusual language phenomenon they are faced with. For children, it is impossible to explain to them that love is present and loved is past tense, a book and 2 books but one woman and 2 women. They must reach a certain age to understand all these regular and irregular cases. So, it is of no use to force young children to learn grammatical rules at a very young age. However, to give them practice in pronunciation to get close to native accents is good enough.
It is not easy to learn a foreign language, no matter at what age one begins. As can be seen from the above arguments, adults also enjoy some certain advantages when learning a foreign language. Each age has its own advantages and disadvantages, though it seems more difficult for an adult learner. The question here is that when one learns a foreign language, one should be aware of his/her strong points and weak points, then look for an appropriate method to study the language the most effectively and pleasantly. The learner should not feel disappointed and discouraged if s/he is starting to learn a foreign language when s/he is already old (and another question is How old is old). No one is ever too old to learn. It is not a slogan but is the truth. So one should enjoy the advantages as an adult learner. A learner should not try to speak like a native speaker. Research shows that no matter how we try, we just can move close to a native accent, but can never coincide with those of a native speaker. In addition, the foreign accent is charming, in some way. It helps us identify ourselves, and shows that we are speaking another language besides our mother tongue. It is something worth being proud of as well. We just imagine that if a foreigner can speak or use the Vietnamese language as we can manage with English, we must admire that person a lot. So, we foreign language learners should be proud of ourselves and do our best to learn English better and better.
References
Fromkin, V et al. (1988). An Introduction to Language. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston
Krashen, S. (1973). Lateralization, Language learning, and the Critical Period: Some New Evidence. Language Learning 23, 63-74
Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological Foundations of Language. New York: John Wiley.
Truong Vien and Bao Kham. (1997). Learning and the Learners. Hue, Vietnam: Hue University.
