Child Second Language Acquisition In Current China

Second language acquisition (SLA) is a hot issue concerned by many language scholars and learners in China in recent years. Parents want their children to speak a second language in order to have a better development. Adults want to learn a second language for a better job or gaining a chance to go abroad. But many adult learners cannot learn as well as native speakers even after years of learning in China. So, many scholars begin to change their attention to child because the study of first language acquisition show that child can learn a language without difficulty in a few years after it was born. So child can learn a second language as well as a first language. Because of this, many Chinese preschools change the school names to bilingual schools saying that children will become a bilingual if they learn a second language before primary school or before certain age. But this point of view also give rise to many objections that classroom teaching cannot cultivate real bilinguals.Starting from these different opinions, the author begins this study of children second language acquisition on the basis of age and environment. First according to the Critical Period Hypothesis theory, the neurological capacity for understanding and producing language, which initially involves both hemispheres of the brain, is slowly concentrated in the left hemisphere for most people. The increased difficulty which older learners supposedly experience was seen as a direct result of this neurological change. But this theory is mainly based on the first language acquisition study. Even if there are researches on second language acquisition, it is mainly experimented in the natural language environment. But in China, learners learn a second language mainly in formal class. So, Shan Xingyuan, professor of Harbin University of Science and Technology, proposed Non-Macro Language Environment Model(2003)which means when learners lived in a sub-language society which is different from the whole language society, we call this acquisition a Non-macro Language Acquisition. According to this theory, language learners can acquire any language as possible as one can in theory, but because of the limitation of real contact with language, this cannot be realized easily. Most children learn English in formal class in current China. This can hardly bring children to a fluent bilingual in non-natural target language environment.With the comparison of the definition of second language acquisition and bilingualism and from the observation and comparison of different age groups of second language learners, the author finds that almost all the learners can acquire the rules of a second language but this cannot prove that they can communicate with others in natural language environment and become bilinguals in non-natural language environment.The study of child second language acquisition has a profound significance in helping scholars and learners of China realize the situation of second language teaching and learning as well as improving the method and level of teaching and learning. But because of the limited knowledge of the author, this paper still has some shortcomings and the problems need further research.