Canagarajah's article and Ch. 7 from Lightbrown and Spada did a great job of summing up what we learned throughout the course of this semester. Canagarajah's article touched on Brown's four major themes. The part of the article that sparked my interest was the brief section that discussed motivation. What are our motivations for learning an L2? Are they intrinsic or extrinsic? I'm sure they vary from culture to culture and even from person to person. I plan on writing my paper about this, that's why it caught my attention. After reading both, I really got thinking about how languages are learned. I obviously don't remember my own L1 acquisition, but was able to relate this information to my own L2 acquisition experience.

Lightbrown and Spada review that languages are not learned mainly through imitation. I agree and disagree. Personally, the imitation factor came into play later when I was trying to sound less "American" and more like a native Spanish speaker. I would imitate how natives pronounced words in Spain. I found myself walking down the street repeating words that I heard. I probably looked and sounded silly, but it really helped.

Another interesting point of review was point #8. "It is essential for learns to be able to pronounce all the individual sounds in the second language." The book talks about the 'melody' of the language rather than the ability to articulate each individual sound. It's not about being perfect, it's about being able to communicate and convey meaning in a properly and be understood.

I would also like to emphasize how important error making is! We are human beings and are going to learn from our mistakes. It is impossible to be perfect. We learn from our mistakes! Errors help teachers too. It allows us to see our students' strengths and weaknesses and gain more insight to what they are thinking and understanding.

How would our learning experience be different if we never made mistakes? However, what if we were never corrected? How would that affect us? Would we be forced to learn through imitation and observation?