Second Language Acquisition Strategies

Second language learning or second language acquisition refers to the process of learning a second language besides the native language. Thus when people are in the quest of learning a new language besides their native language, it is called second language acquisition.

There are various second language acquisition strategies that have been developed by language experts and the success of a language learning process depends on the effective use of these strategies. The second language acquisition strategies have been divided into the two categories; communicative strategies and learning strategies, however there are various other ways to categorize the strategies.

Learning strategies: these strategies are techniques that are used to improve or enhance the learning of a language by using mnemonics or a dictionary. Mnemonics is the way of learning things by associating them with pictures or objects that can be remembered. A dictionary can be used to find meaning and pronunciation of new words of the new language.

Communicative strategies: communicative strategies are those strategies that are used by native speakers or learners to communicate or get the meaning across when they are unsure of the correct word usage. Non-linguistic means like Mimes is an example of the communicative technique.

It has been observed that in the process of second language acquisition, learners coming from diverse cultures use different strategies in different ways. This difference is also seen in the approach of male and female learners. If we go by the study reports, females are adept at using the learning strategies more intensively than males. Also, statistically females enjoy better language learning skills than males.

Second language acquisition strategies are steps that are used by learners to improve their acquisition, storage, retention, recall and using of the new gained information. Different people have different ways of assessing strategies like maintaining diaries, thinking aloud, doing surveys and by observations.

Second language acquisition strategies that are used by language learners are:

* Meta-cognitive techniques that are effective in focusing, organizing and evaluating what has been learnt

* Affective strategies that can be used to handle attitudes and emotions

* Social strategies which are helpful in cooperating with others in the process of learning

* Cognitive strategies that are used to link the new information to the present scene of things and for their analysis and classification

* Memory strategies that are used to enter new information into the memory and later retrieving it as and when required

* Compensation strategies which are gesture or guessing strategies that are effective in overcoming deficiencies or gaps in the language knowledge.

Thus these are the effective second language acquisition strategies and these accompanied with the learning styles are the prerequisites of an influencing performance while learning a second language. The role and the effectiveness of these styles and strategies need more investigation, but one thing is very important at this stage and that is the usage of these strategies by teachers through appropriate teacher training. Teachers should be able to design instructions or preferences as per the requirements of individual students as this can help the students in improving their second language acquisition.

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