Language is best acquired when students are relaxed and focused on something interesting to them. In order to build long lasting proficiency, where using the language to communicate is the goal, we as teachers must teach for acquisition, not learning. Acquired proficiency comes from our internal mental representation of the language, a linguistic system we build in our minds, not from learned facts, preplanned lists, or formulae.
Nothing is more powerful than expressing yourself. Being able to do that in more than one language opens doors – doors you might not have known were there. I used to believe knowledge was power; now I believe knowled