Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Second Language Acquisition

I have just finished reading the short book "Second Language Acquisition" by Rod Ellis. The book was a survey of linguistic analysis of learning a new language.

Apart from the mundane issues of talking to another person, the study of language is interesting from a conceptual poiint of view. As Chmomsky suggested that language is an inane part of humans, rather than a skill that is learned, it is interestingy to study how people learn a second language. I found the book interesting, I was frustrated by the fact that none of the experimental studies ever concluded anything. people have tried to see whether children can learn languagaes better than adult, or whether some people are better at languages than others. There was no conclusive evidence.

Of course, some of the few people who read this blog will be thinking, "er how does this help you speak German. We are tired of speaking English." Look I am theorist, I like to understand how stuff works.

As it happens the only reason I have time to write this post, is that the University hast postponed the German test that was scheduled fro Friday. I was almost certainly going to fail the test. Based on only getting 20% correct on last Friday's practice test.