What is language?

For being ESL teachers, it is really important to have a clear concept of what a language is, this basic concept will have direct implications in our classroom, and probably define our job successfully or not. We could say that language is a system within the study of phonology, semantics, morphology, syntax, discourse, pragmatics knowledge, which will be used as a tool to communicate and interact with others. In addition, to plan our classes we should consider the purposes of our students that probably differ from passing levels to learn a second language for communication purposes. However, we just cannot modify the curriculum establish by the government, but we can choose the main topics we should go through to reach our objectives, by teaching global varieties of a language. We have been trained under Vogotsky’s theory, which refers to adapt to different zones in order to use our new knowledge and involve in new environments; in the same way, researchers mention the fact that people have an innate module in their mind responsible for development of language. The environmental, social and historical factors are some of the issues students are faced to. Unfortunately there is not available yet a magic wand we can use for teaching any subject, and on the other hand, the ability teachers have to adapt to new situations and stimulate our students will make the difference in acquiring new knowledge. Teaching process is not just the transfer of knowledge, it means to interact and encourage our students to use their knowledge in context. As someone mentioned: Mistakes are essential for learning.