Without the help of the Central South University Press, Bernard Spolsky and many other experts and friends, there would have been much difficulty in the publication of the book Second Language Acquisition: Details and Designs, covering aspects of second language vocabulary acquisition depth and breadth frequency effect, 开(kai) and its cognitive polysemic network in the scene-oriented model, English pragmatic competence and learning motivation correlation, Chinese and native speakers of English requests performance differences, class size and English learning efficiency correlation, subjunctive mood and distanciation problems and solutions, English intensive reading and the SCTPPP instruction model.
Reading the book here surely demands an explanation of the difference between learning and acquisition. The two words differ sharply though not explained clearly enough as many previous definitions and analyses lack their unitive categories for evaluation. In the Chinese phrase学习for instance学is something like learning while习is something like acquisition. 学习is an intact phrase, exhibiting the scientific relationship between learning and acquisition. Language learning refers to gaining knowledge of or skills in the language by study, practice or being taught; language acquisition refers to gaining by skill or ability, by ones own efforts or behavior in the course of things like language or other things than language. If language learning and language acquisition come together, they are considered in aspects of the procedure of personal development, whose intersection lies in the fact that “by ones own efforts” in acquisition includes “by study, practice or being taught” in learning. Thus, learning might become a laboriously conscious process of acquisition and acquisition might become an extremely unconscious process of learning, though in these two cases the differences between acquisition and learning have already been understood. And the by-products of learning are aspects of acquisition of something else than the knowledge of or skills in the school subject, like the case of gaining knowledge of or skills in Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice, where the learners attitudes towards people may have changed for the better, which also implies the byproducts like acquisition of personality developments. In the same way, learners in the school who learn about Portias personality may acquire a lot of beautiful language items like “The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that giveth and him that taketh. Tis mightiest in the mightiest.” Albert Einstein once said that education is what remains when one has forgotten everything learned in the school. In this case “what remains” are aspects of acquisition while “everything learned in the school” are the aspects of learning itself. And also, when what Henry Thoreau said “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor” is used in aspects of language for the task of translation, acquisition of language items including spelling, punctuation, capitalization as well as grammar, rhetoric and difference in translation between the two languages takes place as it is a gaining by skill or ability, by the students own efforts or behavior. That is why in this book are the articles crossing learning and teaching of the English language under the name of language acquisition.
Best wishes to the readership that will manage to study the specific situations where the difference between learning and acquisition matters most of the time and then in time will surely offer unselfishly their own sharp insights and viewpoints as well as criticisms! Their advice and suggestions are to be sincerely appreciated and all authors of course, whether mentioned or not, should be and are forever to be acknowledged.
Zhanjiang Normal University