Amazing Discovery

Being an ESL (English as a Second Language) educator wasn't my dream at the beginning and I guess for many of my college mates too. However, my interest in teaching develops after I went for my practicum teaching...and here I am now training the new teachers to teach English as a second language.

As a teacher trainer and language educator, I have the opportunity to explore and research on how one's acquire language. I still remembered that one of the questions received with regard to the language development given by one of my professors - "Language: Nature vs. Nurture. Is acquiring a language an innate ability or is it nurtured? What do you think?

I love observing how young ESL learners acquire and learn their languages. Since English language is significantly emphasized in my home country, most parents tend to send their children to an English medium kindy. The children are given exposure to English as a second language at an early stage.

One interesting observation that I gathered was the confusion or rather the transfer of language rules from their first language (L1) to second language (L2) or vice versa. It was amazing to see a 5 year old child wrote:

MALAY WORD (L1)	SPELLED AS	ENGLISH WORD (L2) USED
KUDA (horse)	KU-THE	THE
CAWAN (cup)	CA-ONE	ONE

In this case, I guess the child was associating the words and the sounds that he had learnt from his L2 into his L1.

I wonder whether parents or friends out there have encountered some other interesting language experience with their children learning L1 and L2. I would love to hear from all.