: Assessment of the Language Learning Process: Natural Acquisition of Language.

Provide a 6 pages analysis while answering the following question: Assessment of the Language Learning Process: Natural Acquisition of Language. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. An abstract is required. As a matter of fact, “some researchers theorize that children are born with an innate biological “device” for understanding the principles and organization common to all languages” (Mahoney, 2008). The most important factor for educationists, however, remains that the very natural devices can be adopted, enhanced, and used pedagogically to make the academic training of language learning possible. Language learning, therefore, entails both natural and academic processes. Generally, language is acquired by the reinforcement of the child’s natural ability to learn the language. For this reason, a child will not be able to speak any native language if he or she lives in say the forest since infancy and never hears anyone speak. In the same way, a child who was not born with a natural language acquisition device cannot speak any native language no matter the effort put into making the person speak. This means that the language learning process is indeed a two-way affair.

The cultural background of any child is very instrumental in the language learning process of that child. Indeed, there are research works that “demonstrate that values and customs are manifested not only in non-verbal communication but also in verbal communication in that native language influences the speakers’ ways of using a non-native language” (Gao, 1998). They’re also those who argue that culture affects language acquisition most when it comes to second language acquisition as compared to first language or native language acquisition. To this end, Shoebottom (2000) opines that “there is some evidence that students in situations where their own culture has a lower status than that of the culture in which they are learning the language make slower progress.” Culture may also affect the language learning process in other ways such as the availability of native language. Thus, children who learn a language in the midst of several other native languages are likely to master a particular language slowly.