Soran University
Faculty of Arts
English Department
4th stage
Second Language acquisition
“Language Learning-Acquisition Process”
Mohammed H. Mohammed
Feb.2025
Language acquisition
•Is language something we are born with, or do we learn it entirely from our environment?
•Why do children seem to acquire their first language more easily than adults learning a
second language?
•Can a child acquire/learn a language without ever hearing or interacting with others? Why or
why not?
Language acquisition
We are designed to walk… that we are taught
to walk is impossible. And pretty much the
same is true of language. Nobody is taught
language. In fact, you can not prevent the
child from learning it.
Noam Chomsky.
Language acquisition
• Learning a language is a difficult and complex process.
• Different stages
• Different elements and factors.
• Different theories
Language acquisition
L1 acquisition stages:
• Already in the womb (language melody)
• Four days (phonological discrimination)
• - three months (pre-babbling stage) (natural sounds, crying…)
• 4-6 months (babbling stage starts)
• 10-12 months (naming stage) (the first comprehensible words)
• 2.5 years (negation, imperative sentences)
• 3 years (a bank about 1000 vocabularies)
• 5 years (acquiring grammatical rules)
RECOGNIZING AND REMEMBERING WORDS
▪ 6 to 8 months
olearn to identify familiar words in context
▪ 8 months
oCan identify words with strong-weak stress patterns
▪ 11months
o Can identify words with weak-strong patterns
▪ Common words are remembered more
Recognizing and Remembering Words
▪ Nouns before verbs
▪ Content verbs before auxiliary verbs
▪ Meanings are over generalize or under generalized
o City name
o only the house they visit in city
o Dog
o Any four legged animal
▪ The ends of words learned more quickly
o -nana for banana.
Language acquisition
First language:
• A language that someone learns to speak first.
• Also, it should be distinguished between first language, native
language, primary language, and mother tongue.
• Language acquisition is the process whereby children achieve a
fluent control of their native language (Varshney, 2003:307)
Language acquisition
Second language Foreign language
• “A language learned by a • A language that there is no direct
person after native language, connection between the person’s
especially as a resident of an social and personal life.
area where it is in general • The choice largely depends on
use.” person.
Language acquisition
• How do children achieve language learning/acquisition?
• What enables them not to learn words but put them together in
meaningful sentences?
• How do bilingual children acquire more than one language?
Language acquisition
• Children all over the world acquire their first language without tutoring. Whereas
a child exposed to speak to an English-speaking community begins to speak
English fluently, the other one exposed to a community of Kurdish speakers,
begins to use Kurdish fluently.
Language acquisition
Back to the first language….
Is it First language
Native language
Primary language
Or
Mother tongue ???
Language acquisition
• There is no clear-cut distinction.
• A language that acquire before the age of three years old.
• The issue still is open to debate.
Language acquisition
Simultaneous bilingualism
Sequential bilingualism
Language acquisition
Simultaneous multilingualism
The acquisition of more than one language in early childhood (more than
native language is possible).
Sequential multilingualism
The learning or acquisition of an additional language after
learning/acquiring the first language.
Language acquisition
• Monolingualism (ability to use one language)
• Bilingualism (ability to use two languages)
• Multilingualism (ability to use more than two languages)
Language acquisition
G. Richard Tucker mentioned;
“There are many more bilingual or multilingual individuals in the world than
there are monolingual. In addition, there are many more children throughout
the world who have been and continue to be educated through a second or a
later-acquired language, at least for some portion of their formal education,
than there are children educated exclusively via the first language.”
Language acquisition
Cook (1999) claimed;
“L2 users differ from monolinguals in L1 knowledge; advanced L2 users differ
from monolinguals in L2 knowledge; L2 users have a different metalinguistic
awareness from monolinguals; L2 users have different cognitive processes.
These subtle differences consistently suggest that people with
multicompetence are not simply equivalent to two monolinguals but are a
unique combination.”
Language acquisition
• The statement suggests that individuals proficient in a second language (L2)
differ from monolinguals in various aspects. These differences include
variations in knowledge of their first language (L1) and second language
(L2), as well as distinctions in metalinguistic awareness and cognitive
processes. The accurate distinction consistently indicate that people with
multicompetence, or proficiency in multiple languages, are not simply
equivalent to two monolingual individuals but represent a unique
combination with distinct characteristics.
Next Class
Language Learning/Acquisition theories I