What does it mean to learn a language?

Previously published in The Island (Wednesday 30^th September 2009)


The cue for writing the following came from Susantha P. Hewa’s well written piece “Improving fluency: thank Vs ‘thank karanna’” (Midweek Review, 09.09.09). Susantha’s thesis, as I understand it, is that one’s ability to liberally intersperse one’s mother tongue conversation with English words does not reflect one’s fluency in the English language and that one’s fluency in a language comes (to quote the writer’s own words) from “… acquisition or unconscious assimilation, which involves a number of automatic adjustments that a learner would experience over a period of time the length of which would depend on such factors like age, exposure and immediate language environment”.

This, I think, is a valid observation to make on an existing state of affairs among Sinhala speakers who have experienced some association with English. Such (intentional or unintentional) mixing of Sinhala vocabulary with a copious dose of anglicisms is probably an inescapable consequence of the psychological, sociocultural, economic, and political power that English exercises on us. English is still seen as a means of achieving and demonstrating social distinction in our country where most people harbour a diehard class-consciousness (a situation that must change sooner or later, sooner rather than later). But it also reflects a relaxed attitude towards a foreign language that was once feared as a ‘kaduwa’ ( ‘sword’- a symbol of inaccessibility as well as oppression).

But what makes us identify such anglicized utteranes as specimens of the Sinhala language? Though Susantha does not himself pose this question, a potential answer to such a query is implicit in his references to Sinhala suffixes such as eka, ekak, karanna as “agents of ‘sinhalizing’ those English words” introducing “the all important structural adjustments to fit all those English words into Sinhala” (italics mine).

The examples given in that article, though with a preponderance of English words, are recognized as Sinhala sentences because of their characteristic Sinhala linguistic structure. The structural adaptation of English words to the requirements of Sinhala morphology and syntax is achieved through the use of typical Sinhala elements such as the affixes eka, ekak, karanna.

In the study of language, structure refers to the patterned organization of linguistic features such as phonology (speech sound patterns), morphology (formation of words), syntax (the way words are combined into sentences), and semantic (sense or meaning) relations . The organization of these structural elements is rule-governed. For example, there are phonological rules, morphological rules, etc.

This is a highly complex phenomenon, and is what distinguishes human language from animal signifying systems. That language is biologically and genetically specific to the human species has not been conclusively disproved yet (This statement is subject to verification by the latest findings in the field, though). Humans are endowed with an innate capacity for language. Each of the thousands of different languages found in the world is a particular realization of this innate linguistic faculty in us humans.

All normal children have the unique human ability of acquiring the language spoken around them by unconsciously discovering the structural rules of that language, and applying them to construct the grammar of the language (i.e. they acquire what linguists call linguistic competence, or the declarative knowledge of language) which is stored in their long-term memory; but children must also learn the rules concerning how language can be appropriately used in a social cultural context, which capacity is called communicative competence or procedural knowledge of language. Learning a language involves the mastery of both of these competencies.

It has been proposed that the critical age for the acquisition of languages is from birth to age 7 years. Children are believed to be capable of unconsciously ‘picking up’ more than one language easily during this period, when the conducive environment for such language development is available.

The question has not apparently been resolved whether a second language (or even a third) is usually acquired in the same unconscious way or consciously ‘learned’ by adult learners (i.e. –for this essay- those who have already learned their first language, and also passed the critical age for language development). However, various theories about second language acquisition/learning have been offered. For example, Stephen Krashen (early 1980s) presented his acquisition/learning hypothesis. He drew a distinction between acquisition (the unconscious process through which children acquire their mother tongue) and learning (conscious study of the rules of a language that is done by language learners in a school, for instance). According to Krashen, conscious learning does not contribute to the acquisition process which, he maintained, is triggered by the learner’s exposure to natural communication in the target language. The learner’s conscious knowledge of the rules of the particular language functions only as a ‘monitor’ that checks the accuracy of the target language utterances that the learner makes by drawing upon his or her acquired linguistic system. (The tightrope-walk-like strenuous mental effort I made as a ten-year old, born into a non-English speaking family, trying to practice speaking English ‘correctly’, was perhaps due to this, I reflected much later.)

The acquisition/learning hypothesis is a basic assumption that underlies Krashen’s Natural Approach to second language teaching. One of the fundamental pedagogical implications of the hypothesis is that learners should be presented with an abundance of comprehensible input for the development of the ‘receptive’ skills of listening and reading at the initial stage; speaking is expected to ‘emerge’ subsequently.(This situation is supposed to parallel natural language development in children).

An alternative theory is that second language acquisition results from the activation of the same innate language learning mechanisms that cause first language acquisition.

These and various other hypotheses have both their advocates and their detractors. Though none of these ideas could claim anything like absolute validity, they nonetheless provide some strong strands of useful ideology for the formulation of practical pedagogies.

In a mass English-as-a-second-language teaching situation, we cannot solely depend on natural acquisition for success, because, though that would be ideal, it will clearly prove a luxury we can hardly afford in terms of time and resources. We need to resort to a golden mean. Opportunities for conscious learning (through overt teaching) and quasi-communication activities (in classroom generated ‘authentic’ situations) through English must be made available for the learners. In other words, a proper balance of acquisition and learning opportunities should be contrived.

In Sri Lanka today, there is a lot of English in use; it is no longer a menacing bogey. (The trend towards the emergence of a people-friendly English learning environment is being encouraged by the new English teaching project launched under presidential initiative.) English is becoming a familiar part of our day-to-day life. Hence perhaps the propensity among many to pepper their speech with some English words when they communicate in their native tongues, though in most cases this demonstrates a desire to flaunt a knowledge of English that they don’t really possess!

If the practice of seasoning their speech with a sprinkling of anglicisms replaces a serious attempt to learn the language by those who need to do so, such a scenario is only to be regretted as harmful to the future of English in this country as well as our native tongues. However, the penchant for communication in English evident among our people can easily be channeled in the right direction if the authorities provide the necessary leadership and guidance with the collaboration of the public.


Rohana R. Wasala