Language Acquisition vs. Language Learning

By Manuel Jiménez Campos

There is an important distinction made by professionals between language acquisition and language learning. Children acquire language through a subconscious process, during which they are unaware of grammatical rules. This is similar to the way they acquire their first language. They get a feel for what is and what isn’t correct. In order to acquire language, the learner needs a source of natural communication ( realia) . The emphasis is on the text of the communication . Young students who are in the process of acquiring English get plenty of “on the job” practice. They are going to  acquire the language to communicate with classmates.

Language learning on the other hand, is not communicative. It is the result of direct instruction in the rules language. And it certainly is not an age-appropriate activity for your young learners. In language learning, students have conscious knowledge of the new language and can talk about that.  They can complete the blanks on a grammar page. According to research  it has shown, however that knowing grammar rules does not necessarily result in good speaking or writing. A student who has memorized the rules of the language may be able to succeed on a standardized test of English language , but may not be able to speak or write correctly a good example would be the information processing theoristists commonly argue that language competence consists  of both a knowledge component described as (“knowing that”) and skill component as ( “knowing how”). 

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