Language and Acquisition

Language acquisition is the process of learning a language without conscious effort; it happens naturally. We acquire our native languages, whereas second languages can be acquired as well as learnt. Studies have shown that language acquisition is more effective than language learning. Therefore, courses for teachers need to focus on how language acquisition can be encouraged in the classroom.rnSalient FeaturesrnLanguage acquisition has the following salient features: • It is very similar to the process of learning our first language. • It happens naturally & implicitly. • It is spontaneous & intuitive. • Formal teaching usually doesn’t help a lot. • Opportunities for using the acquired language are crucial; otherwise learning will not take place. • Fluency precedes accuracy. • Peer interactions help more than formal teaching or parental guidance. • It follows a natural sequence, where children first learn nouns & verbs, followed by adjectives & adverbs, & prepositions, conjunctions & articles come last. TESOL & Language acquisitionrnATI (American TESOL Institute) has launched a new course for teaching English – the TESOL program. TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. It covers both TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) & TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language). The TESOL program has researched the importance of Language acquisition & consequently, has made it an integral part of the course. Trainee teachers are taught the importance of language acquisition & how to help students to acquire the English language. The TESOL program focuses on teaching trainees to create activity-based curriculums, where both speaking & listening are integral parts. Students need lots of opportunities to use the language for acquiring it. This is very important for learning a new language successfully. So, good courses for teachers, like the TESOL program, always incorporate such teaching methods.rnCourse DetailsrnThe Diploma in TESOL program consists of 9 phases & has to be finished in 6 months. Each phase is followed by a set of assignments, which has to be completed within the given deadline. These are then graded by online tutors & returned to the trainees. Upon successfully completing a phase, the next one is made available. 8 phases have to be done in this way. The last phase is a research module, where the trainee has to write a paper. Finishing all phases successfully leads to the award of the Diploma Certificate.rnCourse fees are Rs. 10,000 or $225. The course certificate will be dispatched free of cost to Indian addresses but an additional charge of $25 will be levied for shipping it to an overseas address. Online teacher training courses have become very popular today as they provide an opportunity to do the course from the comfort of one’s home. Keeping this in mind, the TESOL program is offered in various modes to suit the needs of the trainees. They are: • Full time online modern• Part time online modern• Full time distance modern• Part time distance modern