NATURE OF LANGUAGE AND LEARNING

Directions: Provide a lengthy answer of what are asked.

1. What is a language? What is nature of language? (25 pts.)

2. What is learning? What is the nature of learning? (25 pts.)

3. Differentiate language acquisition and language learning (25 pts.)

ANSWERS:

1. What is a language? What is nature of language?

 Language is a system of symbols, words, and/or gestures used to communicate
meaning. The nature of a language is a wonderfully rich vehicle for communication.
People use language to communicate or to convey their opinions and to formulate
ideas which could probably never arise if we had no language exists in many styles, it
offers different ways of speaking and writing appropriate for different occasions.
When people are talking to their friends they will use one style in speaking, and this
style has different sub-varieties depending on whether people are talking man to man,
woman to woman, man to woman, or woman to man. People use quite another style
when they are being interviewed for a job, a style that implies respect and perhaps
just a bit of deference. And people still use other styles in public address, in religious
services, with people older or younger. Though such differences is style are extremely
subtle and still very poorly understood, children start to learn enough to use one style
with their playmates, another style with their teachers, and perhaps still another style
with their parents.

2. What is learning? What is the nature of learning?

 Learning is a activity or process of gaining knowledge or skill by studying,
practicing, being taught, or experiencing something. Event or feeling by interpreting
our own words or actions use our newly acquired ability or knowledge in conjuction
with skills and understanding we already possess. The nature of learning occupies a
very important place in our life. Learning is the process of change which enables an
organism itself to the environment, it is therefore a process of development and
growth and it is characterized by flexibility because the individual has to adapt itself
constantly to the circumstances of the environment. Learning produces changes in
behavior. Learning is often defined as the modification of behavior. Learning
 involves problem solving, it helps to understand and discover relations between
different contents in situation. Learning is an automatic process. It takes place when
the child becomes active.

3. Differentiate language acquisition and language learning.

 Learning a language is analyzing and exploring it’s intimate details until you know
information about it. Language acquisition, or to acquire something is coming to own
something. Acquiring a language means to come to know it intuitively, like you did
with your mother tongue. Learning languages would entail analyzing the language,
cutting it up into pieces and trying to figure it out. What are the grammar rules that
make the words act like that? And so on. This type of language study would entail a
lot of memorization of information. You’ll gain knowledge about grammar,
pronunciation rules and so on. Language acquisition is seen as the way children come
to speak their first language. Since they don’t yet have a first language to use as a tool
to analyze the language, they’ll need to learn it instinctively and intuitively rather
than analytically. Then as the children get older and start attending foreign language
classes in school, they start “learning” a second language, using their first language as
a facilitator.