SLA

SLA differs from FLA in terms of the biological and physical conditions under which learning takes
place as well as in their relationship to the success the learner is capable of achieving. The two terms
will be used interchangeably related to the use or study of the English language by non-native
speakers.

Although FLA refers to the learning of another language besides the native language, the term is
frequently used to refer to the acquisition of a foreign language after a person has reached puberty.
Whereas children experience little difficulty in acquiring more than one language, after puberty
people generally must expend greater effort to learn a foreign language and they often achieve lower
levels of competence in that language. People learn foreign languages more successfully when they
become immersed in the cultures of the communities that speak those languages.

SLA is a term used to describe the process that people go through when confronted by the need to
use a language other than their native one. Second language acquisition is the systematic study of
how second language is learned.

CHILD SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

 Child second language refers to the “acquisition of individuals young enough to be within the
critical period, but yet a first language already learned” (Foster-Cohen 1999, 7-8) or
“successful acquisition of two languages in childhood” (McLaughlin 1978, 99).

 Child second language acquisition is close to the natural way children acquire their native
language. They tend to accept the language as a unity as they acquire patterns without
knowing their grammatical structure. Since their cognitive system is not thoroughly
developed, children make the language structures simpler. That is why they use short and
simple utterances in the speech whose interpretation depends on the communication
context. They still have limited opportunities to receive and operate with abstract categories.
The process of acquiring and becoming aware of the language input drives from meaning to
form as from types of lexical chunks to gradual reasoning of their grammatical structure.

ACQUISITION vs. LEARNING (Krashen 1982)

 Acquisition Learning

 similar to child’s FLA formal knowledge of language

 “picking up” a language knowing about” a language

 subconscious conscious

 implicit knowledge explicit knowledge

 formal teaching does not help formal teaching helps