Learning English as a Mother Tongue

Vasant Venkatesh Hebbar

Abstract

Learning the mother tongue is like one of the basic instincts which cannot even be suppressed. The encouragement given to the child by the grown-ups also acts as a stimulus to his language acquisition. Linguists say that the innate language learning ability of the human mind enables the child to learn the language by constructing the grammar of the language in his/her mind in a natural way. The goals of teaching and learning mother tongue are different from those of teaching and learning a second language. Mother tongue is the language that a child learns from its mother. He begins learning this language in his infancy. He gets familiar with the components of language in the natural process of growing up. He is in constant contact with the sounds of the language. Objects and actions in the surroundings are described to the child in a oversimplified language at first and later in explanatory utterances. All this results in "producing" the language. In this way adequate exposure before actual production is one of the conditions available in the first language acquisition. We can say that the mother tongue is not taught but caught. A child learns the first language from the speakers in the immediate environment and it is learnt naturally. Learning the mother tongue is like one of the basic instincts which cannot even be suppressed. Linguists say that the innate language learning ability of the human mind enables the child to learn the language by constructing the grammar of the language in his/her mind in a natural way.