When we talk of language acquisition and learning language the two words seem identical at first, but when we examine or listen to linguistics there are these two are no doubt dissimilar things.

When we were children, we all must have experienced in our life, that there was nobody to teach us the basics or rules to utter our mother tongue. It is the meaningful interaction with our parents and people around us that made us speak when we were may be four or five. May be this is why none of us seem to be surprised when we see a five or six year old child speaking without being trained anything. They convey their ideas and thoughts quite well according to the grammar and vocabulary they are familiar with. Their utterances show their excellent command over the language with the complex patterns and rules of the language. The root of the entire thing is that it is because of the exposure to the meaningful communication that helps them gain their first language without any systematic studies.

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Meaningful discussion is essential to learn a language

Second language is also learned alike, where usually the school teachers of children teach them. Though, rules and grammar are emphasized upon at this time also, but the focus is still on meaningful interaction and communication. That is to say, it is on the whole the natural communication that helps a person and teachers are very much conscious of this fact. The main spot of focus is therefore on ‘what is being said?’ than ‘how it is being said?’ So, when the children improvise with the course of time, the accent gradually shifts to the grammatical part. We can say that students who are learning get exposed to a lot of ‘on the job’ training when they converse with their classmates and this is what helps them develop their language.

Problem with adults in learning a language

On the other hand adult students have a tendency to completely ignore the aspect of communication and generally focus on the drillings, patterns, grammar, memorization, repetitions and other things. In fact they do not even have any human interlocutor to converse with; perhaps this is the reason why they end up being puzzled in most cases. The courses they engage in are mainly the ones that do not give them any chance of meaningful interaction. It is just like the commonly found language courses through CDs. This makes them only memorize things and utter them as a parrot, but when it comes to communicating with a human being, they are confused and don’t know what to say. Hence, we should all understand that it is the real and meaningful communication and not the grammar and other rules that can make you speak a language.