A reflective essay about my experience of learning second language
A reflective essay about my experience of learning second language language has been defined variously by various scholars. Generally, language is taken as the means of human communication. Learning a language is a mysterious task of human beings. Especially first language learning is too much amazing task. Sapir (1921:8) defines, “language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.” Language is the unique property of human beings because humans are only able to use language for the purpose of communication. Acquisition of the first language is easier in comparison to the second language because of lot of the natural exposure. So, the knowledge of first language is much more stronger than the knowledge of the second language. In first language acquisition there is strong motivation to the acquirers because he/she has to live with the language users. As originally from Brahmin community of hilly region I didn’t get a chance to learn the languages other than Nepali. So, Nepali is my first language that I acquired subconsciously. Now I am not able to remember the process of the learning of my first language because it had happened completely in natural setting. Because of the lot of exposure from parents and elders it became easy for me to acquire my first language. Even without knowing the word grammar I was able to communicate in my first language with the scholars of that language at the age of three. As I lived in remote place and had very little access to technological devices. It was until the age of eight that I was monolingual. It was in class four when I was introduced with English as a foreign language which is my second language. Gass and Selinkar(2009,p.7) define SLA as the term that “refers to the learning of a language after the learning of the native language. As with the phrase ‘second language’L2 can refer to