ELTWeekly Vol. 5 Issue#21 | June 17, 2013 | ISSN 0975-3036
SLA is not merely the acquisition of the basic language skills, it has to take into account the question of acquiring the stylistic features of the target language. The theories of Chomsky and Krashen fail to address the question of acquiring stylistic competence in the target language. A non-native learner may be a fluent speaker of a second language, but he hardly develops the language sensitivity of a native speaker. Second Language Sensitivity (SLS) is the ability of a non-native speaker to respond to the stylistic features of the target language in an appropriate manner. Therefore, our objective should not be just ‘second language acquisition’, we should aim at developing the learners’ second language sensitivity which involves knowing not only the vocabulary, phonology, syntax and other aspects of linguistic structure but also when to speak, what to say to whom and how to say it appropriately in any given situation. Following Vygotsky, we have to admit that a second language learner can learn the target language within communities, rather than strictly as individuals. Can we make our language pedagogy more community oriented than language oriented?
About the speaker
Dr. Partha Sarathi Misra has a postgraduate degree in English Language in Literary Studies from the University of Nottingham, UK and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Calcutta. Prior to joining the University Resource Center, Dr Misra worked as an Associate Professor of English, Cotton College, Gauhati University and was the Director of English language Teaching Institute, Assam. His book An Introduction to Stylistics: Theory and Practice was published by Orient BlackSwan in 2009.