3 The Awareness Of Melody In Language
3 the awareness of blendings (called “phrasing� when taking place between words); and 4 the awareness of an overall melody, of which there seems to be more than one. The two observations mentioned above, while confirming the two basic components of human speech, highlight for us the fact that the melody of a language is the easiest for children to imbibe, and, that all of us make ourselves vulnerable to it first. When involved in learning our first language, we do not have any preconceptions. In our innocent wisdom, we do only what we can do. Thus we deliberately, and altogether, avoid doing that which might make the learning of our first language an impossible task. All children everywhere seem to have that wisdom, and so, all learn to speak their mother tongue as well as it is spoken by others in their environment. The conformity of the speech of children in a community to that of the others in it, makes a lot of sense when language acquisition is understood as melody first and vocabulary later. *** When we consider second language acquisition, the challenge is totally different. On the whole, students of a second language are no longer babies. They have developed intellectual habits in their schooling which do not seem to be very helpful, as is obvious from the number of those who try a new language and do not get very far in it. In fact, most learners of a new language go to some school where their teachers are generally selected because that language is their native tongue and because they are willing to teach through the curriculum and the materials their employers have adopted. Such students are no more the alert learners they were as bababies. They ahve preconceptions and adhere to them. They do not question the way they are taught and blame themselves for failing to learn the new language. They very often abandon their efforts which consumed their time and their money for nothing.
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