Children's Language Acquisition

Conditions of children in language acquisition also apply to adults in their language learning.
Adults need certain clues to be able to begin learning a foreign language just like what children need in their language acquisition. Adults need frequent exposure to the foreign language. They should always be in an environment where they can hear conversations using the foreign language and they should also be given the chance to converse using the language. Adults also need to be exposed to objects or situations that they are already familiar with using the translation of those objects or situations into the foreign language. Using this technique will help them remember the foreign language because they can relate the meaning of these objects and situations and therefore will help them retain these words in their memories because the words now make sense to them. I remember our Spanish classes. We really needed to ask our professor several times the meaning of a particular Spanish word. We could not really remember them unless she tells us the meaning of those words in English. The Spanish words become more familiar to us if we see the pictures of the objects in our handouts. The illustrations accompanying the Spanish words really helped even if it is just a picture of a ballpen. Because sometimes when we forget that it was the Spanish word for that English object, we remember it because we remember the picture associated with it, which really helped us in learning those Spanish words. Also, our professor always converse with us using the language so we had been familiar with the Spanish words. She also often asks us to read Spanish sentences every meeting, to listen in Spanish songs and conversations on tape, and to have skits as exams. Because of those, the unfamiliar terms, which do not make sense to us at first, since we always use them in these activities, they now make sense to us. Up to now, some of those terms that we often used before still linger in my memory especially the words we often used like Como es, Me nombre es, Que mal, and those other simple Spanish sentences.
I think, however, that there is a difference between adults and children in learning a new language. I think that children naturally acquire a new language faster than adults acquiring a foreign language. Children do not filter ideas coming into their minds. They are open to everything that is being presented because they are still on the stage of exploration. Almost everything is new to them. They pick up things around them naturally. They learn about something, not because they need to, but because they want to. Adults on the other hand always discriminate information that they want to discriminate because they already have prior knowledge about everything. You can’t just force them to learn something they do not want to learn. They always want to have reasons for everything and they also always try to relate everything into something. They learn something because they need to and they have to because they know they have a reason for learning that something. Like learning a foreign language, they know they can use it when they go to other countries or when they apply for work. Another reason is that adults want to learn so much for just a short period of time. I think that is the reason why information overload happens so that they do not know which information they want to learn first. At the end, they tend to forget most of the information. Children on the other hand seemed satisfied with gradual acquisition of information. They are satisfied with something offered to them first. At the end, they become very knowledgeable about it. That could be a reason why people are already fluent with certain language or languages when they are grown up.