Learning English as a second language can take place at two points in an individual's lifetime:
- as a child who has probably migrated to a predominantly English-speaking country from a non-English speaking territory or is enrolled in a school whose curriculum provides for teaching English as a second language
- as an adult who has also migrated to an English-speaking territory or who needs to learn English as a second language in order to be more effective at his or her job
Teaching methods for the two groups should vary because the learning curve of the two groups and their ability to take in new knowledge is not the same. For adults, many English as a second language (ESL) schools adopt a practice of learning by exposure wherein students are exposed many English language materials in order for them to become familiar with the rules of the English language.
Many children who are also learning English as a second language are placed in English-speaking classrooms in a move to give them a lot of exposure to English. However, this may backfire because children understand very little or even nothing of what they are hearing. This is a sort of a “sink-or-swim” approach where the best learners eventually learn to adapt while those who are not so fast in adapting to the rules of using a new language eventually flounder.
The idea of radically exposing a learner to a language is fallacious because it actually slows down the children's ability to learn significantly. According to information given in the web page http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/easl.htm researchers Thomas and Collier (1998) found that an average native English speaker gains an estimate of ten months of academic growth in one academic year consisting of ten months. If new learners of English are put in the same class, they must learn more than the native speaker by making one-a-half year's progress in English in six successive school years. Therefore, in order to develop skills that can keep up with those of native English speakers, English as a second language learners must make the equivalent of nine years' progress in just a span of six years.
