Nature of Language LearningLanguage learning is different from other kinds of learning. Some people say it’s born naturally, so anyone could speak fluent language. Others believe that language learning is based on experience, and developing gradually. This essay is focused on the nature of language learning, in order to improve our learning efficiency.Language learning mainly involves two aspects, the natural ability and social experience. These two elements relate to each other and play important roles in our language learning process.Natural ability means the learner’s capacity while learning a language. Here we just discuss learn one’s mother tongue.For the animals, they are not able to produce any languages, in that they don’t have physiological structures in their brains、throats or nerves as human beings. There do exist some animals like parrots,producing a few words. That is because they have part of the physiological structures resembling human’s, which make them could imitate some words. However, they don’t know the meaning of what they say, let alone a language.For other human beings, we are born with genetic structures, making our speaking possible. But there are exceptions. In 1920, two wolf girls were discovered in a wild forest in India, who had been brought up by wolves. But after training, they still can’t say fluent language. The reasons are lack of communication with society, and missing the critical period during their learning process.For our normal people, except the genetic structure, the learning age, the universal grammar (UG), and the language acquisition device (LAD) also count very much.Some researchers find that children master the basic grammar, pronunciation etc. at about 5 or 6. They believe that there may be a critical period, especially for first language learner, and if one misses this period, you can’t master your mother tongue any longer.Also, one linguist called Chomsky says that all people have UG in their mind. If not, neither first language acquisition nor second language acquisition can be completed. If a child makes some grammatical mistakes while learning language, their parents should not correct them, for children are born with their language learning ability.In addition, Chomsky insists that we can also make use of the LAD, when children learn to speak. They can produce and deal with language materials they receive and speak naturally.Then let’s talk about how social experience affects language learning.The first one is input. Generally speaking, grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary etc. is involved. Here we just focus on three kinds of input: the mother talk, the teaching talk, and the foreign talk.We are familiar with mother talk for its simplicity and comprehension. Mothers tend to say some simple words for babies. And also, in class, when a teacher teaches English, they may use “Right? OK! ” to communicate with students clearly. With the students’level developing, it will also be advanced, but only under the circumstance that it is comprehensive. If you learn a second language and meet anative speaker, what they say may not be grammatically correct, like “I go to a park with my friends yesterday.” All above prove that the input should be comprehensive enough.The second social experience is interaction. It can be called processing equipment. During interaction, we should use some strategies to store、analysis、communication and thus make language learning develop further. Especially in class, teachers must bear in mind to create a communicating atmosphere, and try to provoke students’ motivation and interest.The third one is output. It corresponds closely with the input and the interaction. We all know that what we learn should be practiced and embodied by using it in our daily life. That is, an efficient feedback is needed. Let’s take the so called “Dumb English” for example. We pay too much attention on the written form years ago, making us students dumb in speaking gradually. The good news is that such trials as “Crazy English”emerges as required, which give us a chance to practice what we have leaned.The output also shows its importance in the following aspects. It has a noticing function, whereby we can know what our advantages and disadvantages are which helps us to make more progress. It also helps to develop one’s own style of speaking by what we say and practice. What’s more, by output, we can judge what we know former, and conclude the forms, the structure and the meaning we suppose.So we can see that socialistic factors are significant in language learning. We should pay attention to them and let them pave way for us.In conclusion, language learning is a long process, in which many factors areconcerned. It is both naturally and affected by social factors. What we should do is perfecting our learning ability, by hard work and useful strategies. Anyway, may everyone be a good language learner.。