First of all, I would just like to say, isn't language amazing? I just find it fascinating how we acquire it and are able to express ourselves in ways that others can understand us, but then, at the same time, we are not able to understand others because they have their own language. I look forward to learning more about the ways that we acquire language (as in Chomsky's Theory), because it certainly does puzzle me.
I'm glad the book gave us an overview of definitions of concepts and introduced us to what we would be learning about. I was unaware that 'secondary' and 'foreign' languages were two different things, and found their definitions to be useful, especially since I am going to be a Spanish teacher. As I continued reading the chapters and the article, I thought of a family I had met before, and how this pertains to them. The mother moved to the United States from Germany in her mid 20's, met her husband (an American) who learned German and now speaks it fluently, and had 3 children. All 3 children are fluent in both English and German, but also Spanish because they grew up in a very Hispanic neighborhood. The girls were very easily able to pick up the languages, because they all learned them during that critical period when their brains were like sponges. However, it was clearly more difficult for the dad to adopt an L2. This raised another question in my mind -- which would be the dominant language for the girls? Has the mother's linguistical process changed at all after being in the United States for 25 years? And finally, would you teacher a 30 year old man the same way you would teach a 12 year an L2?
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