English as a second language: overview and applications

¶ … diversity of the world and even single countries today, learning and being able to communicate in a second language has become an increasingly common phenomenon. Usually, second language acquisition theory and fluency has focused on learners with foreign languages as their mother tongue aiming to learn English as second language.

Over the years, several theories have developed around the acquisition of a second language. To understand how one might become fluent in a second language, a study of the stages of second language acquisition (Haynes, 2005) is a good starting point.

Simple phrases and sentences are used. Fluency begins to appear at the intermediate level at stage IV. The vocabulary includes 6,000 active words, after which advanced fluency is finally achieved after about 4-10 years.

To gain a better understanding of how fluency in a second language, I interviewed Pamela Lang, a native Japanese speaker who came to the United States about ten years ago. When she first arrived, she knew almost no English, and her silent stage was quite long. Once she had reached the second stage of language acquisition, she moved rapidly towards the intermediate stage. To reach the advanced stage took her about three more years.

An interesting distinction Pamela made was between acquiring academic and social fluency. She gained social and colloquial fluency within about two years after her arrival in the country. Her journey towards academic fluency took about five years.

Assessment is an important part of student development, since it offers not only an indication of students' current abilities, but also a pathway towards future development and strategies that can best be utilized to this end.

In terms of assessment strategies for the beginning stage, for example, the oral phase of assessment could include a non-verbal component, where students use gestures to indicate that they understand the content. Flashcards can, for example, be provided with words, and students can point to drawings of these items. For a written component, flashcards with simple pictures can be used to assess students' vocabulary development. For the intermediate stage, the oral component could include repeating relatively complicated sentences as accurately as possible. A written component can include an assessment such as question and answer sequences, where students are required to use full sentences. For the advanced stage, flash cards depicting a somewhat complicated scene can be used, requiring students to write a short narrative. For the oral component, an open-ended question and answer sequence can be used to assess students' fluency.

Particularly during the beginning and intermediate stages, talented students can be identified by means of consistently high scores, achieved within a short time. Students who need extra assistance can be identified when there is a consistent lack of achieving progress.