LEARNING ENGLISH AS SECOND LANGUAGE

Learning English as Second Language

Learning English as Second Language

Although on its surface the issue may appear simple, the question of how long it takes schoolchildren to learn English well enough to use it effectively in school is not easy to answer definitively. This entry reviews some of the research findings on the subject, with appropriate cautions as to how authoritative any type of answer may be. Consider the case of a middle-class, English-speaking child whose parents also speak English and are high school graduates. How long, typically, would it take such a child, if unburdened by unusual extraneous factors, to become academically proficient in his or her native language? The answer, of course, depends on how we define proficiency. The proficiency of a kindergartner is quite different from that of a second, fourth, or sixth grader. Learning and polishing language skills, even for native speakers of English, is a process fostered by parents and schools beginning at birth and continuing for 17 or 18 years if the college or university attended keeps with the normal conventions of English course taking. If the student then goes on to a college or university that keeps with the normal conventions of English course taking, he or she will be required to continue the study of his or her native language for at least 2 more years en route to a bachelor's degree.

For simplicity's sake, let us assume that a typical native speaker of English has gained a better-than-average command of English (or proficiency) by the time he or she enters middle school; that is, around the age of 10 or 11. How different is the challenge of learning English for an immigrant child; for example, a young boy who begins attending an American school in the third grade? Assuming that this child has only recently arrived in the country, he has missed 7 or 8 years of experience using English. Comparatively, native English speakers can be expected to use the language more expertly. When it comes to language learning, such a head start is difficult to make up, although it is done every day by students who participate in good programs designed to help them do so.

Some of the research in this field, such as the work of Stephen Krashen, has found that the process of learning one's first language is substantially different from learning a second or third language later on. This research argues that we acquire our first language around the hearth, where we are surrounded by and immersed in that language, often without any other. In short, the first language is not learned by studying it in school as a subject; granted, its mechanics are improved and its formal conventions examined and refined through high school and college, but the basic and essential command of the spoken language is acquired before adolescence. The immigrant child in our example did the same with his home language—Chinese, perhaps. Having come to the United States and entered a school where ...