Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Zehua Zhang


Discuss the difference between learning and acquisition discussed in the reading. Has it been true to your experiences?  explain

                                                      
Talking about the difference between learning and acquisition, before reading this passage, I was absolutely no idea, even can’t separate the differences between the two concepts. I am a student from China and had never been studied abroad. So without any compares, I can’t see more kinds of views on teaching. But this passage gives good contrasts on several ways of helping students on learning and acquisition. And when I linked them with my own experience, I found that it was so similar and noteworthy. It gives two questions: Is written language acquired naturally or learned consciously and Can people acquire a second language. On discussing each of the question, three leaning parts were introduced.


Firstly, the two ways of learning reading are discussed. One is called recognition view which mainly means reading must be learned. The other one is socio-psychological view that illustrates reading could be innate people can acquire the ability by learning. The main difference between the two ways is how to construct the meaning of the articles. The recognition view concentrate more on identifying words and make printed words into oral language while the socio-psychological view holds that learning reading is like oral things. Obviously the second way of learning reading is more helpful on acquisition. I had been learning English since I went to primary school, but until I decided to study in the U.S, all of my teachers pay more attention on how could I just ‘read’ the articles, every time I learn a new passage, teachers would ask me to read aloud for once or twice. After that, I found myself could understand the meaning of the article. But when I have tests or just reading fictions, I don’t have enough time or suitable situations to read aloud, so the speed of reading comes down and I would get puzzled with the acquisition of the reading.


Secondly, it introduces two ways of teaching writing. Similar to the reading, there are also two ways,learning view (traditional way) and acquisition view (process way). Within the traditional way, students learn how to produce good pieces and was taught to begin with parts of the essay and then build up to write the whole text. Teachers use this way are more interested in correcting spelling mistakes and conventionality. However, the process way is totally different on both the goal of leaning and teachers’ concentration. In this way, students have to produce both good writing and knowledge of writing process. Teachers produce background knowledge and create real writing circumstances to help students find their ways of constructing meaning, understanding and expressing ideas. Frankly, my idea about these two views is clear: the traditional way is more like real teaching which means how much do the teachers tell students, students could learn. It would be helpful to form correct writing habits and students would be able to write straight and narrow essays, but can’t be creative and innovative as the students who were taught in the second way. The process way is more like ‘teaching students to get the ability of writing things instead of teaching them how to write things.’ Although they will make mistakes, but the core thing, acquisition of writing is familiar to them.
The third example is about views on learning a second language. The theory of Krashan was given directly that we have to use what we learned recently in different circumstances in case of forgetting them. We learn from getting information and transfer or link them to what we have known in order to understand them. We have to do both input and output in order to acquire on natural setting by receive relevant comprehensible input. The other theories also illustrate some other negative effects on acquisition, such as boredom, anxiety, time limit,social distance and fossilization.



These are the main meaning of acquisition that I understand. 

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