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First language acquisition is a natural process that occurs with all human beings from the moment they are born. For the first several years of their life, language is acquired, and then once the child attends an educational system, it is then learned. This is important to understand when it comes to 2nd language acquisition in the context of attending a school for English language learning. This means that the student did not grow up acquiring English as a language, and therefore must fully learn the language through learning and immersion. Factors that affect the success rate of 2nd language acquisition include age, motivation, affective filters, and time spent. The affective filter can be a very prohibiting factor that is a barrier towards more language acquisition. If a student is uncomfortable, they will not perform as well. For this reason, it is important as an English educator to provide a comfortable and engaging environment for students to be able to reach their full learning potential. With first language acquisition, affective filters are not as common as young children are forced to learn how to speak as means of communication. Chomsky hypothesized that all humans have and internal Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that allows us to interpret and learn language. According to his theory, this makes first language acquisition possible. The necessity for at least one language of communication proves why learning a first language happens in the first years of a child’s life. In many european countries, like Germany and Sweden, second and even third languages are taught in school starting at a young age. Generally, a student will have better luck learning a second language the younger they are. This is often due to the linguistic elements that children can master at a young age. Once a human has become an adult, certain linguistic sounds from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) will be impossible to generate. As an English teacher, it is important to recognize the differences in groups of learners. For instance, teaching younger elementary aged children will end up in the children having an easier time acquiring and learning English. For adults who have attempted at learning English with no success, new problems will arise. For example, their is likely to be an affective filter with adult beginners because of factors that affect society in adult life that do not in a child’s life. They will have had access to English, perhaps with no boundaries to know what is right and what is wrong, which could make the process of learning a correct form of English difficult. There are also students who have no previous understanding or knowledge of a Latin-based alphabet. These students will require more work to bring them to a common understanding of the rest of the class who understands the Latin alphabet. Understanding the demographic of a classroom has an impact on second language acquisition, and a teacher should be able to provide a comfortable and engaging classroom that provides multiple effective ways for learning English orally, audibly, and visually. There are multiple facets to becoming an accomplished English teacher, and each educator must understand what it means to be a student who is acquiring a second or even a third language.
