Universidad Catlica de la Santsima Concepcin

Facultad de Educacin
Learning and Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language






Reaction Paper
Cook and Nations presentations







Students Names: Nayareth Hernndez H.
Karen Utreras M.
Teachers Name: Roxana Correa P.
How first language can affecting the second language learning is not only the main
problem for second language acquisition research, but also for teaching a second language
in a classroom. This summary concentrates on the main ideas of two authors: Paul Nation
and Vivian Cook.
Nation points out problems that teachers face in a classroom and gives solutions that they
should have to resolve those problems. According to Nation (1997) one of the main
difficulties is the excessive use of the mother tongue in the activities. To resolve this issue,
Nation proposes the measured use of the first language to negotiate the meaning of words
and misunderstandings and the change of circumstances during the activities to increase the
students motivation, among others.
One the other hand, Cooks paper deals with different theories and research techniques how
L1 and L2 acquiring the language and how it affects when people learn another language.
Cook explains the concept of Interlanguage the existence of a separate linguistic system
(Selinker, 1972, as cited in Cook, 2010, 5). In addition to this, cook explains the learners
language system is not a defective version of the native speaker (2010, 5).Finally, he gives
some differences between first and second language acquisition. For example, the L2
learners are older than L1 Children, L2 learners have one language is their minds. L2
learners have more awareness of the language that they are learning. But the most
important difference is the fear to fail in the second language acquisition. Cook remarks
that L2 learners do not need speak like a native speaker, L2 learn the language in different
circumstances, different people, years and they have others abilities like code-switching
and translation, that a native speaker does not have (2010,62).
To start we need to say that both texts were a contribution to understand and clarify our
knowledge and misunderstandings about the process of how first and second language are
acquired and taught. Now we are going to give our analysis about Nation and Cooks
papers.
We consider Nations presentation has a more pedagogical point of view; he gives more
advices about how we can solve some typical issues in a classroom like the use of the first
language during an activity. It is very important for us as a future English teacher because,
we are going to face the difficult job of teaching a foreign language in a country where
children do not like English or believe that it is very difficult. He proposes the use of
mother tongue to teach what is useful because if the students understand an activity they
can have more success and that could increase their motivation. Moreover, we think that
Nations paper has a good organization and also is easier to read it. Additionally, as far as
we are concerned this text has a more practical intention. On the other side, Cook explains
in a theoretical way the connection between the first language and second language
acquisition. However, to our mind Cooks paper is more difficult to read than Nations
paper because it has an excessive use of quotations. He quoted many authors in one
paragraph, and sometimes we could not find the connection between the main idea of the
paragraph and the different authors opinion. That is why it is more complicated to
understand.
We would say that this assignment changed our opinion about the process of second
language acquisition. Before this reading we thought that first and second language
acquisition were the same. Nevertheless, Cook demonstrates with researches that there are
similarities but there are more differences. According to our experience we consider that he
is totally right because our process is different from children language acquisition process.
Children first learn to listen to and then speak, and when they start their formal education
develop reading and writing skills. Nonetheless, in our case as an English student all of us
have one skill more developed than the others. That demonstrates the acquisition of first
and second language is totally different one of the other. Because it is not a natural process
is a learning process.
Another Cooks idea that caught our attention was a bilingual person is better
grammatically than a monolingual person because is more aware of the grammatical
structure. Currently, we are more conscious about our own language. Now we notice
grammatical mistakes that people usually make when they talk and write.
In our opinion, and Cooks ideas are very important because before reading it we thought
that we have to speak as a native speaker and that is not true because we are a foreign
language students, we have only a one official language and it is not English, we have
another environment, experiences, age, motivation. Therefore, we can think that everyone
acquired the language in a totally different way.

























References

Cook, V. (2010). Relationship Between First and Second Language Acquisition Revisited.
In E. Macaro (Ed.), The Continuum Comparison to Second Language Acquisition.
(pp. 137-157).
Nation, P. (1997). L1 and L2 Use in the Classroom: A Systematic Approach. In TESL
Reporter.(pp- 19-27).