Myths About Second Language Learning

As the title implies, the article, “Myths and Misconceptions about Second Language Learning” looks into the subject of five commonly held myths about children learning a second language: (1) children learn second language easily and quickly, (2) the younger the child, the more skilled in acquiring an L2, (3) the more time student spend in a second language context, the quicker they learn the language, (4) children have acquired an L2 once they can speak it, (5) all children learn an L2 in the same way. I personally recommend reading this article because even though the evidence may not seem adequate and is therefore, worthy of questioning, the article offers an interesting perspective of second language learning for children that would allow

However, the article challenges this idea by revealing that social and psychological factors can come into play, and that in many cases adults perform better than young children. With the second myth, the article reveals that younger children may have better pronunciation, but older children may be able to approach an L2 better due to memorization skills. Regarding the third myth, the article reveals that time of language exposure do not necessarily reflect language competence, and that promotion of home language could also allow better literacy skills. In busting the fourth myth, the article expresses that good oral skills are not always reflected in reading and writing. Last but not least, L2 learners do not learn language at the same rate, the matter of culture, social class, attitude, personality, can all become factors that influence the learning rate of a child. Each busting of a myth implies that educators should not have unrealistic expectations of children learning an L2 regarding their

Speaking from personal experience, I was pretty easily embarrassed as a child, and the drive for me to learn English as a kid was to not having to feel embarrassed while communicating with others. Even though fear of embarrassment can become a matter of motivation for me, it works differently on different individuals. For example, a kid in my class is often singled out and being corrected of simple mistakes. Although rationally speaking, the mistakes were not big and were probably easy to correct on his part, improvement has not been made much because he was uncomfortable being called out publically for his mistakes. These instances of language correction, or for him, situations of embarrassment, has ended up making him a more reserved English speaker which prohibits his willingness to learn and improve. I therefore think the article is right about not having premature judgements about a child’s ability to overcome failures or