Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

Groups of language users
Both SLA research and language teaching need to be clear about the differences
between language user groups rather than treating all users and learners as the same.
Box 11.1 lists some of these groups. Illustrations come primarily from London.
The goals of language teaching
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Box 11.1 Language user groups
1 People speaking their native language.
2 People using an L2 within the majority community.
3 People historically from a particular community (re-)acquiring its language 
as L2.
4 People speaking an L2 as short-term visitors to another country or to short-
term visitors to their country.
5 People using an L2 with spouses or friends.
6 People using an L2 internationally for specific functions.
7 Students and teachers acquiring or conveying an education through an L2.
8 Pupils and teachers learning or teaching L2 in school.
People speaking their native language
Some people use their native language exclusively. So monolingual Londoners
speak English with each other and potentially with anybody else who speaks
English in the world; in London they make up the sea, so to speak. But native
speakers may also be an island in a sea; deaf people in London use British Sign
Language in the midst of the hearing. And, of course, many native speakers of one
language are L2 users of another language rather than monolinguals.
People speaking a second language within a majority
community
Some residents use a second language to communicate with the majority language
group, say, resident Bengalis in Tower Hamlets using English as a central language
for their everyday contacts with other citizens of London. Often this group is per-
manent and may pre-date the existence of the majority community, such 
as Aboriginals in Australia. They are using the second language for practical pur-
poses – the classic ‘second language’ situation – while having a first language for
other social and cultural purposes. In addition, many people living in multilin-
gual communities use the second language as a central language with speakers of
minority language groups other than their own, essentially as a local lingua
franca. The Bengali L1 shop owner in Tower Hamlets uses English for speaking
with Arabic L1 customers, both equally English in nationality, true of most of the

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L1 speakers of the 300 languages of London (Baker and Eversley, 2000). Sometimes
the L2 lingua franca crosses national borders. Swahili has 770,000 native speakers,
but 30 million lingua franca speakers spread across several African countries
(Gordon, 2005).