Second language adquisition essay

Factors Affecting Second Language Acquisition
The level Learner is affected by many factors in the second language acquisition process of cognitive development, socio-economic and culturalbackground, and the ability to acquire a language, age and motivation of the learner’s can be expressed as the factors affecting second language acquisition. To talk about age in learning a secondlanguage is a controversial issue because for years, the correlation between age and language acquisition has been studied and debated. Why is it that young children can learn a language with suchease, requiring no formal instruction, while far more intellectually developed adults study the details of grammar, syntax, writing, reading, and conversation, and a majority of the time they fail toachieve any level of fluency?
Now there are three basic factors related to the problem of age in second language acquisition; biological, cognitive and affective. It is easy to claim that once aperson hits puberty, he or she loses the ability to fully and successfully acquire a language due to biological changes and occurrences in the brain. This makes sense, especially in conjunction withthe theory that humans are born with an innate, biologically pre-determined ability to acquire a language and communicate. Yet, at the same time, the decline of language acquisition after pubertycan easily be connected to the influence of social and societal factors that affect a much more abstract and emotional aspect of human beings. Children acquire their first native language in aninformal and subconscious manner, learning from the people communicating around them, as well as their surroundings. Adolescents are much more conscious of their language learning, and in the context of asecond language classroom, many restrictions and inhibitions impose themselves on the mind and ease of an adolescent that impairs his or her acquisition. With their Universal Grammar and their...