LANGUAGE IN INDIA

What Is Most Important? Fluency or Accuracy?
Is Learning a Second Language a Conscious Process?

G. Vijay, M.A., M.Phil.

Is a Second Language Acquired or Learned?

Can any one say, "I learned language logically like Mathematics and other Sciences?" Language learning appears to a be fantasy or some such thing. People who speak the English language say that their learning was purely unconscious. Right from their schooling days, they have been listening, speaking, reading and writing English continuously. Only after this lengthy process, they are able to achieve the state of competency. But they are not confident to point out "Is language learned or acquired?" Though they speak language fluently, they are not aware of the major rules of the grammar. They simply accepted the usages that they were exposed to and unquestioningly imitated the same.

The Goal of This Paper

This paper has the objective of finding out the process which Non-native speakers of English adopt to acquire English as their Second Language. It concentrates on two important factors "fluency and proficiency". It supports the need for fluency rather than for proficiency. Feed back of the people who use the English language as a Second Language is gathered through interview method and used for the analysis.

Is It a Conscious System?

In spite of many theories introduced relating to language learning, it is still puzzling to think how language skills are acquired. Is it a conscious process? Is it related to the behaviour system? Many students still face difficulty in acquiring English as a second language. What exactly inhibits them? How long will it take to achieve fluency?

Fluency in Second Language

Spoken English training centres assure students that fluency could be installed in them with in a period of six months. They start with basic grammar and end with situational conversations. They devote two hours per day for teaching and training. Probably the trainees would be college students, housewives, and workers who would have crossed the flexible age of acquiring a language but are now interested in improving their career by learning English.

But linguists say that language should be internalized subconsciously so that one can have communicative competence. Ellis (1986:6) says that second language acquisition is the subconscious or conscious process by which a language, except the mother tongue, is learnt in a natural or a mentored set up. It covers the development of phonology, lexis, grammar and pragmatic knowledge.

If it is internalized consciously, only grammatical competence can be acghieved. Today's training centres and educational institutions render only conscious learning process which inhibits learners from achieving fluency as acquisition of accuracy becomes a great focus.

Students are introduced to the basic principles, techniques, and methods of learning a second or foreign language using modern linguistic principles and methods of linguistic description (Thirumalai, 2002).

Accuracy or Fluency?

It is an accepted fact that many educational institutions teach English as a subject rather than as a medium of communication. Right from the junior classes till the higher secondary, teaching grammar is a mandatory practice. Moreover, grammar is taught without stressing its role in real conversations and writings. Students are taught only the tactics of converting one statement into another and fill up the blanks by indentifying certain clues. For instance while teaching "Voice" the trainer teaches them only the rules of converting active to passive or passive to active rather than justifying the applications of those structures in real life usage.

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