The Role of Writing in Classroom Second Language Acquisition, Article Review Example

The article discusses on the importance of writing to understand and improve acquisition of second language. The author Linda Harklau exclaims that the learning atmosphere in regards to second language is typical in the classrooms and the major objective of the paper was to identify the factors such as pace of acquiring second language in the class rooms. The author extracted various data analysis techniques like input of spoken language, structure of tasks, ways of interaction and negotiation to study the objective and after executing many research techniques, deduced the best way is to study classroom talk.

The paper draws the evidences of spoken language development in the history through applied linguistics, structural linguistics, anthropology of linguistics and development of child language.

As a part of conducting research, author witnessed many class room conversations in high school where second language learner learned through written scripts rather than oral talks or peer discussion. The reason they attributed is the reviewable means which can take as much time as required. The author stated that the second language speakers are literates from the beginning unlike the first language speakers. She further emphasizes the importance of writing as communicative modality in places where communication and subject acquisition is through literacy. The author draws observations where some of the classroom learning is emphasized through verbal communication disregarding the writing as auxiliary source of learning.

I agree with the authors’ argument in justifying the importance of second language acquisition through writing. Although communication is primary means of learning, writing equally plays a role in language acquisition and socialization especially in the classroom based education.