This paper deals with the main components of language and some approaches and methods that are indispensable to second language acquisition or learning. It gives a brief note on the differences between linguistic, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approaches to second language acquisition. Moreover, the five levels of converting input into output according to the views of the psycholinguistic approaches are considered. Some challenges to language education policy, especially the difficulties in learning three or four languages simultaneously, are pointed out. Finally, the implications of introducing a language only as a compulsory subject (without considering it to serve as a medium of education) are pointed out.

Language is a socially invented instrument of communication. While learning a language, one is required to develop the four language skills: listening, speaking, writing and reading.

The following are some basic issues in second language acquisition or learning:

• What second language learners acquire or learn;
  
• How learners acquire or learn a second language;
  
• Fundamental reasons for differences in the way individual learners acquire or learn second language; and
  
• Effects of instruction on second language acquisition or learning.

Second language learning is the construction or creation of a language system additional to the mother tongue. It is the construction or the creation of its phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Second language learning serves as the basis for the study of the nature of language and human mind, for the methodologies of second language learning, and for many issues relevant to language education policy. Second language learning addresses the question: How is a second language learned?

The following are the main components of language:

Phonology is the study of the sound system of a language that includes the inventory of sounds and rules for their combination and pronunciation. It is also the study of the sound systems of all languages.

Phonological knowledge permits a speaker to produce sounds that form meaningful utterances, to recognize a foreign “accent,” to make up words, to add the appropriate phonetic segments to form plurals and past tense, to produce aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops in appropriate context, to know what is or is not a sound in one’s language, and to know that different phonetic strings may represent the same morpheme (Fromkin et al., 2003, p. 274).

A speaker’s phonological knowledge includes information about what sounds can occur at the beginning, at the end and next to each other in a syllable.

The study of the relationships among letters and sounds is a complex engagement.

In almost all the cases (in English), one phoneme (sound) represents many graphemes (letters), for example, the consonant phoneme /ò]/ represents the grapheme cea in ocean, chi in machine, chu in parachute, cia in social, cie in proficient, cio in precious, sch in schedule, sh in wash, sio in tension, ssio in expression, ssu in pressure, su in sure, tia, in partial, tie in patient, and tio in station.

English Studies Journal, Indian English Short Fiction, Bhasha Literatures, Autonomous Forms, Indian Short Story, Indian Language, Montage Patterns, Women Writers, Social Milieu, Postmodernist Movements, Global Communities, Joint Family System, Indian Women Writers.