Second Language Acquisition

Language contact plays a role when people learn a new language. Speakers who want to communicate in a language they are acquiring are very likely to use various strategies that involve aspects of the languages they already know. For example, what we call a "foreign accent" is, essentially, people using the pronunciation they are used to from their native language, when speaking a second or foreign language. Learners' version of the language they are learning will therefore be different from the one spoken by native speakers. Situations involving second language acquisition without any formal teaching are particularly challenging. Immigrant workers, for example, are often more concerned with communicating effectively than with learning a "correct" version of the target language. They therefore devise various communication strategies, in other words, they act as creative communicators, not just as passive learners.