Twenty-second week – thirty-first post

the weeks results?

Very good results, indeed. Apart from the next ten collocations in memory, I had many opportunities to converse and listen to conversations. I was very happy with how much I understood :)

and also happy with how much I recognised the collocations in their speaking.

Expanding on original language acquisition

Babies initial steps to learning a language are sounds. Sounds linking to other sounds (collocations) and then sounds linked to contexts. Consider a baby learning the sounds “ahh” and then learns to put their lips together, producing an 'm' sound before. Putting them together, the child produces the sound “Ma”. Then the baby needs to join two together to produce the word “Mama”. Then child then sees the reaction from people around it and it learns that 'mama' refers to a person,thereby linking sounds to context.

Now, within an adult or Second Language Acquisition (SLA), they already know most, if not all, contexts connected with languages. The fruits of the first language acquisition. The adult mind learns words first, able to see and identify them before being able to produce the sounds required.

It seems that the process of initial language acquisition is opposite to that of SLA.

This has been my experience at least. And now I seem to be at a point where I need to focus more on connecting sounds (producing or receiving) to known collocations. Basically I just need to listen to more native speakers.

Next week?

Another ten collocations, more native Spanish films. Only another four weeks before this blog comes to a end. I hope you have been enjoying it :)

enjoy this vid :)