Adeola Abdulateef Elega

Hearing: This is communication skill unlike listening which requires maximum 
attention is just passive rather than active. When you sit in a class for instance and 
two people passed by the pavement talking about something. Since the class 
atmosphere already conditioned your mind to listening to the teacher, then you are 
only hearing what the passerby’s are saying. This is not to justify also that when you 
are in the class you are listening. Some people hear what the teacher is saying in 
class. A situation where you are trying to listen to a new song in class when the 
teacher is talking, your attention is divided so you can only hear and not listen to the 
teacher.
Speaking: Speaking is a very important communication skill, the difference between 
learning the first language and learning the second tells one what it is to develop 
speaking. Learning the first language is always easier than the second. Only with the 
exception of related languages. According to Navarro (2009), learning how to speak 
the first language while still very young is very much easier than learning as an adult. 
However, he submits that it is so because as adults you get too concerned about so 
many things to be learned at once. A child bothers about nothing when trying to 
speak (Navarro, 2009 p.86). 

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Second Language acquisition is the acquiring of a new language, this new language 
is learnt in the environment where the language is spoken. A Nigerian in North 
Cyprus learning Turkish language is in the process of acquiring a second language. 
This is different from foreign language acquisition. Acquiring foreign language is 
learning a new language in your own environment. A Palestinian learning English 
language in Palestine is learning a foreign language. This is mostly done in a 
classroom set up where you are taught by a teacher. This is because most times since 
it is a foreign language there are no speakers of the language everywhere. So learning 
formally will be the most suitable. Second language acquisition is usually referred to 
as L2. This means a language that is learnt after learning the L1, (first language). 
Second language acquisition may not be formal; it mustn’t be learnt in a classroom 
set up. One can learn from speakers of the language in his environment (Gass & 
Selinker, 2001 p. 5). 
As to what effect are the roles of first language in second language acquisition? So 
many studies have been done in this area of knowledge. As far back as 1960; there 
were doubtful submissions that problems faced learning second language is a result 
of basic errors in first language. The assumption was that when the two languages are 
dissimilar, there is the possibility of first language stepping in the second. And when 
there are no major differences the first aids the second. This was tagged ‘language 
transfer’. Contrastive analysis was also designed and was used to detect the errors of 
second language as a result of first language. Findings from research showed no 
basic errors traced to first language. However, since findings from this researches 
were against the assumption. The role of first language as a barrier was less faulted 
(Ellis, 1995 pp 6-7). This is to say errors from learning Turkish cannot be faulted on 

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English language for Nigerians students, especially because of the fact that they are 
unalike.