Second Language Acquisition

SLA is such an interesting thing to look at. I am a Bilingual Education major so I have heard of a lot of the terms and concepts used throughout the readings we had this week. It was good to have solid definitions of them though. Multilingualism is something I feel that most of the population in the U.S. lacks. The reading mentioned Canada and their success in being a multilingual nation with the way they have set up their education system to foster it. It really is surprising how many people in the U.S. are monolingual. A couple semesters ago I did a research paper on English Only and how many people oppose the fact that there are so many different languages that are actively used in our country. It is disheartening that so many people do not see the benefits of multilingualism.
         It is so interesting What, Why and How we acquire language. These readings made some great points, for example about if a child is adequately exposed to more than one language throughout their first three years of life, that they will have two native languages, or simultaneous multilingualism. This ability changes though if we do not start learning a language until later in life. My personal experience is that I did not start learning my second language, Spanish, until I was 12 years old. At that point in time, I did not intend it to ever be my second language. As I progressed though, I realized I wanted to learn more and became more motivated. As the readings stated, motivation is a factor in SLA, especially when the language is not acquired until later in life. Once I was motivated to learn the language I started working harder and immersing myself more in the language. I feel like a big difference between a two year old learning a second language and a 12 year old is that the two year old already has the environment they need. If a two year old is acquiring a second (or two native languages) it is because of the people and environment around them. For a twelve year old, in most cases there must be motivation for them to learn because in the U.S. we are mostly focused on foreign language acquisition.
       Another point I found intriguing was the part about our innate ability as humans to learn language. I never knew that at six months old we are all capable of making sounds in every language, but after reading that it makes complete sense. We don't learn language based on our DNA or our heritage, we learn it based on our environment. So it makes sense that we all must start with the ability to learn any language we are surrounded by; in another sense we can adapt to learn any language. This of course is as a baby, but it is motivating even as an adult to know that we as humans are capable of acquiring so much knowledge and that we are so capable of learning not just two, but multiple languages.
These readings were great review for me, but also presented things in a new and interesting light. What I love about this field is that there is always new research and ideas that can change and alter the way we look at it and what we know. It will never get boring!