Psycholinguistics:

Psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field of study that combines methods and knowledge

from psychology and linguistics. Many psychologists and linguists specialize in this field of
study.
Psycholinguistics is an integration of two disciplines; psychology and linguistics. Psychology is
the study of mind and behavior; linguistics is the study of language. So, in general,
psycholinguistics can be defined as the study of mind and language. It is concerned with the
relationship between the human mind and the language as it examines the processes that occur in
brain while producing and perceiving language.
Psycholinguistics covers three main points; language production, language perception and
language acquisition. Language production refers to the processes involved in creating and
expressing meaning through language. Language perception refers to processes involved in
interpreting and understanding both written and spoken language. Language acquisition refers to
processes of acquiring a native or a second language.
Psycholinguistics has provided numerous theories that explain the three points above. The
theories have been very useful in the field of language teaching. Some experts use them as the
basic theories in developing language teaching methods. It is known as psycholinguistics
approach. Psycholinguistic approach views that language and thought are related but completely
independent phenomena. Learning is viewed as a cognitive individual process happening within
the individual and then moves to the social dimension.
Psycholinguistics as a study of the psychology of language is realised in language teaching. It
helps to study the psychological factors that are possibly involved in language learning.
Psycholinguistics focuses on the application of the actual language and communication. It is
necessary to make a decision in applying various methods that allow students to easily
understand a language.

Acquisition and learning

What is Learning

Learning a language is usually a process of formal education where the educator uses formal
teaching methodology and gives the learners instructions facilitating their understanding of the
rules related to a particular language. When it comes to the teaching and learning process,
teachers focus more on emphasising the form of language rather than focusing on a particular
text. Therefore, when it comes to learning, the teacher can be seen busy explaining the grammar
rules to students while students are busy trying to comprehend those grammatical rules and
structures.

Learning, unlike acquiring, requires some conscious effort from the side of the learner.
Generally, learners are quite content when they get direct instructions. However, for someone to
be fluent in a language, the process of learning itself is not sufficient. For instance, if you are a
student learning French, you can learn the grammar rules and sentence patterns by conscious
learning inside a classroom, but you won’t be able to achieve mastery in the French language
unless you acquire more knowledge in French culture through subconscious reading and
listening.

What is Acquisition

The acquisition of a language is a non-conscious or subconscious process. A child first starts to

acquire his mother tongue from his mother or the surroundings. This language acquisition does
not involve learning grammatical rules or structures.

Whether it is a child or an adult, anyone who is learning a new language first acquires sounds
and vocabulary and then the sentence patterns and structures. However, a formal learning
process will be provided to him only in a formal setting like a school. Unlike in learning, in
language acquisition, the children acquire words and sentence structures without any kind of
formal or informal instruction.

What is Language Acquisition?

First language acquisition actually refers to infants’ acquisition of their native language. They
acquire language through a subconscious process and are unaware of grammar rules. Children do
usually not require explicit instruction to learn their first language. They just pick up the
language, the same way they learn how to roll over, crawl and walk.

Moreover, children may acquire more than one first language. For example, children who grow
up in a house where parents speak only English language will acquire only English. However,
children who grow up in a bilingual household (say French and English) will learn both
languages.

For children learning their native language, linguistic competence develops in stages, from
babbling to one word to two word, then telegraphic speech. Babbling is now considered the
earliest form of language acquisition because infants will produce sounds based on what
language input they receive. One word sentences (holophrastic speech) are generally
monosyllabic in consonant-vowel clusters. During two word stage, there are no syntactic or
morphological markers, no inflections for plural or past tense, and pronouns are rare, but the
intonation contour extends over the whole utterance. Telegraphic speech lacks function words
and only carries the open class content words, so that the sentences sound like a telegram.
Language comprehension
Language comprehension refers to an individual's ability to understand the different elements of
spoken and written language. This capacity changes from childhood to adulthood. There are also
differing capacities between individuals. An example of language comprehension is the capacity
of a child to gradually understand the language of the people around them by simply listening to
people speak over a long period of time.
From the moment they are born, kids are exposed to all kinds of spoken language that helps them
Understand and make connections to written language years later.

When do kids start developing language comprehension?

From birth to about age 6, children are considered pre-readers. They are learning sounds, letters,
words, phrases, and what all those things mean. They begin to learn about books, too: how to
hold one the right way and how to turn the pages. They go places with adults and experience new
things. Even commonplace things, such as shopping or taking the bus, provide new experiences
for children, especially if the adults talk with the children about what is going on. For example,
talking about what you have to do to take the bus, the colors of the packages at the store, or how
you pay for something provides new information for children to deposit in their language bank.
By listening, children also learn about grammar, or how to put words together correctly into
sentences, and vocabulary. They then bring what they know about the world, including topics
like science or history, and use that information to make connections and understand what they
read.

Why is language comprehension important for reading?

Imagine that a child’s language bank is full of vocabulary, knowledge of how words make
sentences, and information about the world. When the child begins to read, they will be better
able to connect the words on the page to all these things. If a child’s language bank contains
more than one language, there are even more opportunities for connection. It is believed that
students who grow up using multiple languages bring a great wealth of language knowledge and
cultural experience that can help them make those connections and become strong readers.

Language Production
Language production is a concept in psycholinguistics that describes the stages of speech from
the initial mental concept to the spoken or written linguistic result. Simply put, it is the process
of communicating through language.

An example of language production at its base is simple. Picture a person thinking of an apple,
then using their mouth to physically sound out the word 'apple', then another person hearing this
and perceiving the sounds that make up the concept of 'apple', then they have the mental
representation of the apple. This is the process of language production.

Language production processes can provide insight into how language comprehension works and
language typology—why languages tend to have certain characteristics more often than others.
Drawing on work in memory retrieval, motor planning, and serial order in action planning, the
Production-Distribution-Comprehension (PDC) account links work in the fields of language
production, typology, and comprehension: (1) faced with substantial computational burdens of
planning and producing utterances, language producers implicitly follow three biases in utterance
planning that promote word order choices that reduce these burdens, thereby improving
production fluency. (2) These choices, repeated over many utterances and individuals, shape the
distributions of utterance forms in language. The claim that language form stems in large degree
from producers' attempts to mitigate utterance planning difficulty is contrasted with alternative
accounts in which form is driven by language use more broadly, language acquisition processes,
or producers' attempts to create language forms that are easily understood by comprehenders. (3)
Language perceivers implicitly learn the statistical regularities in their linguistic input, and they
use this prior experience to guide comprehension of subsequent language. In particular, they
learn to predict the sequential structure of linguistic signals, based on the statistics of previously-
encountered input. Thus, key aspects of comprehension behavior are tied to lexico-syntactic
statistics in the language, which in turn derive from utterance planning biases promoting
production of comparatively easy utterance forms over more difficult ones. This approach
contrasts with classic theories in which comprehension behaviors are attributed to innate design
features of the language comprehension system and associated working memory. The PDC
instead links basic features of comprehension to a different source: production processes that
shape language form.

Psychology in relation to linguistics

Altmann (1997) describes the relationship between linguistics and psycholinguistics. 'Linguistics
provides a vocabulary for talking about the ways in which sentences are constructed from
individual words and the ways in which words themselves are constructed from smaller
components ... psycholinguistics attempts to determine how these structures ... are analysed to
yield meaning ... If linguistics is about language, psycholinguistics is about the brain.'
Psychologists then need to learn at least enough linguistics to have this systematic vocabulary
and conversely linguists need to have a grasp of cognitive processes and their possible neural
underpinnings.

The Stages of Language Acquisition

First language acquisition refers to how a child develops its ability to speak and use the language
of its environment: its native language or languages.

Language is part of the environment that a child is born into, and it is even part of the
environment before birth. Therefore, first language acquisition begins at or before birth. This
means we have to begin by talking about babies.

There are roughly six stages of acquisition:

1. Prelinguistic Stage
2. Babbling Stage
3. First Words
4. Two-word Stage
5. Telegraphic Stage
6. Beyond Telegraphic Stage

1. The Prelinguistic Stage

The prelinguistic stage ranges from birth to approximately 6 months. Noises in this stage include
crying, whimpering, and cooing. These sounds are not considered language because they are
involuntary responses to stimuli. Linguists consider human language creative – as free from
internal or external stimuli. Since these noises do not fit within the definition of language, this
stage occurs before language is produced by the child. It is, therefore, the prelinguistic stage.
During this stage, babies’ vocal tracts are more like an animal’s than an adult human’s. The
larynx is high, there is no pharynx, and the epiglottis and velum can be in contact with each
other. Additionally, the velum cannot firmly close off nasal cavity, so all sounds are nasalized.
The tongue fills the entire mouth and is controlled by external muscles. Extrinsic muscle control
of the tongue only allows the tongue to be "shoved" in and out, up and down, as a whole. Some
muscular contractions of the tongue itself are possible, but tongue body constrictions are the
only ones that can be produced. This accounts for nature of (early cooing).

One development in the ability to produce sounds seems to occur in this stage. At about two
months, infants seem to be able to coo voluntarily, whereas previously they were only able to
make sounds involuntarily.

Even though infants can’t produce linguistic sounds, they can perceive them. This stage might
more appropriately be called the pre-production stage. Infants alter their sucking patterns when
presented with a phonetic distinction in sounds. The alteration in sucking shows an awareness of
the change in sound, but infants do not seem to attach meaning to the changes in sounds. They
only register that they notice them. This awareness is exhibited as early as one month old.
Infants can differentiate between sounds that are allophones in a language that adult speakers of
that language have learned to ignore, such as [p] and [ph].
2. The Babbling Stage
The babbling stage begins at approximately 6 months of age and continues until a child is about
one year old. One key development leading to babbling occurs during the prelinguistic stage;
around 4 months of age, larynx starts to drop, creating pharyngeal cavity. Once the larynx has
dropped, more varied constrictions can be formed, which leads to a new stage of vocal play or
babbling.

The child is also more able to raise and lower the jaw. A lower jaw also lowers the tongue,
creating the possibility of more vowels. Raising the jaw allows for more lip and tongue tip
constrictions.

2 Types of Babbling May Occur:

1. Repetitive babbling - same syllable in each successive cycle

2. Variegated babbling - variation in syllables in successive cycles

Universality of the Babbling Inventory

Essentially, all children use the same sounds when they babble, no matter what the language
around them is. "The consonants that occur with substantial frequency in the babbling of
infants, regardless of language environment are:

/b/ /d/ /g/ /p/ /t/ /k/ /m/ /n/ /w/ /j/ /h/

Vowels in babbled syllables tend to be low front:" /æ/ "or central:" /a/.

The universality of babbling makes sense when you realize that the easiest way to make a sound
is to simply open and close the mouth. It is not surprising that stops will be highly prevalent in
the inventory since they are produced by closing the oral cavity, which happens when closing
the mouth occurs. The rest of the difference between the stops is where in the mouth the tongue
contacts the other parts of the vocal tract. For example, depending on whether a child rests the
tongue on the bottom of the mouth behind the lower teeth or whether it rests in the middle just
behind the front teeth accounts for the difference in the production of bilabial and alveolar
sounds in babbling. All the child has to do is open and close the mouth, and different sounds
will be made.
Think of the words (we'll use English here) that we use to refer to many baby items and
caretakers:

 Mama (mother)
 Nana (grandmother)
  Papa (father)
 Dada (daddy)

These utterances show repetitive babbling of the low central vowel with stop consonants. Now
add the high back round vowel:

 Bubu (hurt)
 Mumu
 Nunu
 Pupu (poopoo)
 Dudu (doodoo)

These utterances also show repetitive babbling, but with a different vowel sound. The two
different syllables can be mixed together:

 Mami (mommy)
 Papi (Poppy, often used for grandfather)
 Pupi (poopy)

These utterances show variegated babbling.

And we’re back to Baby Talk. Baby talk has two different meanings:

1. It is the way that babies themselves talk, and when baby talk is used with this meaning, it
refers in particular to the babbling stage and the first words stage of language
acquisition, universal stages for all infants in all languages.
2. It is the way that adults talk when they talk to babies. When baby talk is used with this
meaning, it captures the fact that adults accommodate their speaking style to that of the
child. They help the child attach meaning to their utterances by using the same utterances
with the meaning attached.

Even deaf children babble. The hand gestures of deaf children occur in repetitive patterns the
way that the babbling of hearing children repeats. Deaf children babble in sounds, too, but it
seems different than the babbling of hearing children.

In other words, deaf children babble in sign language and just make noises with their mouths.
Hearing children babble with their mouths, and just make gestures with their hands. For hearing
children, language is produced with the mouth, and extralinguistic communication with the
hands. For deaf children, language is produced with the hands and extralinguistic
communication with the mouth.

3. The First Words Stage

Stage 3, the First Words Stage, starts at about one year and continues for approximately 6 to
12 months (up to approximately age 1-1/2 or 2 years old).

This stage is also referred to as the Holophrastic Stage because a "one word = one sentence"
pattern seems to exist in the utterances produced by the child. Babbling may overlap with the
production of the first words, and indeed the first words often exhibit the same structure as
babbled syllables, with a CV (consonant-vowel) syllable used as a word. However, at this stage,
meaning is attached to the syllables produced by a child, and this characteristic distinguishes a
babble from a word.

Examples of some first words include:

1. [no]
2. [da] (dog)
3. [ma] (mom)
4. [dæ] (dad).

The words produced are primarily noun-like (e.g. [da] (dog), [ma] (mom)) with verbs second
(e.g. [go]) and adjectives [ha] (hot)) third. Words also include displeasure/rejection words (e.g.
[no]). Words include social interaction words (e.g [bai bai] (bye-bye) [nai nai] (night-night)).

As children begin to produce utterances that count as words, they continue to develop their
abilities to produce more and more individual sound segments. The sounds they produce are
typically sounds in the language of their environment, and they add to their repertoire in a
systematic way.

Developmental order of sounds articulated:

1. The full range of vowels in the native language is produced before the full range of
consonants

2. Consonants are typically added in the following sequence of manner (examples of sounds in
each category come from English): Nasals [m] [n] [ŋ], Glides [w] [j], Stops [p] [b] [t] [d] [k] [g],
Liquids [l] [ɹ], Fricatives [f] [v] [s] [z], Affricates[tʃ] [dʒ]

3. Consonants are typically added in a front to back order of place, with certain front sounds
being delayed: labials (sounds produced with the lips) come first, then alveolars (sounds
produced just behind the teeth), then velars (sounds produced near the back of the roof of the
mouth), then alveopalatals (sounds produced behind the teeth and a little further back).
Interdentals (sounds produced by placing the tongue between the teeth) come last.

4. New contrasts generally show up in the initial position first. That is, when a child adds a new
sound segment to his/her repertoire, he/she uses it as the first sound in a word, then puts it in
other positions later (i.e., in the middle or at the end of a word).

Children can perceive more sound segments than they can produce. As a result, they will often
substitute one sound for another in their own utterances. The substitutions or alterations they
make are systematic in nature; they will always use the same sound as a substitute for their
intended sound, such as always using [w] for [l], producing [wajk] instead of [lajk] for like. The
substitutions and alterations make articulation easier until they can develop more control over
the vocal tract. As control develops, more sounds are added and a vocabulary is constructed.

Stage 4: The Two Word Stage

The Two Word stage normally begins at around 18-24 months (1½ or 2 years) and
continues for several months, perhaps shifting into the next stage at about 2½ years
old.

During this stage children continue to increase the repertoire of sounds and
vocabulary they can produce according to the order of development that was begun
in earlier stages. Some notable benchmarks and features in the production of
language in this stage include:

 11 consonant sounds are typically included, the specific sounds depending

on the native language being acquired.
 A vocabulary of 50 or more words marks the beginning of this stage, with
more words being added.
 Clear syntactic and semantic relations begin to appear, but not syntactic or
morphological markers.
 There are no inflectional affixes and pronouns are rare.

Since the linguistic nature of the child's utterances is now unmistakeable, it is

interesting to note how meaning is attached to the utterances, for although they are
clearly linguistic in nature with meaning attached, they are still unlike the
utterances of adult native speakers. The utterances are different because they lack
full syntactic markings and because the limited vocabulary size is insufficient to
capture an adult perspective of the world. What is uncertain, however, is whether
the child's perspective is constrained by the lack of vocabulary or whether the size
of the vocabulary is constrained by the childish perspective. (Note the
interrelationship of language and thought in this conundrum; you should be able to
see both the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and Vygotsky's theory here.)

The pictures and captions below capture some of the details and provide examples
of the thought/language conundrums present during this stage.
An utterance can carry more than
one meaning because of the absence
of syntactic and morphological
markings. The word order of the
two words matches the word order
an adult might use, but for the child,
the same two words in the same
order could have more than one
meaning. The full meaning must be
derived from the context in which
the words are uttered.

Example: Mommy sock can
mean Mommy is putting my sock on
my foot, or There is mommy’s sock.

Words are associated with meaning

in several ways, and each way
displays a limited
vocabulary/perspective:

a) Whole Object: A word refers to

the whole object, not to any of its
parts or to any of its attributes. Does
this mean that a child doesn't break
down objects into individual parts at
this stage of cognitive development?
Very possibly.

Example: sheep will not
mean white or woolly or leg.

b) Type: A word may be used to

refer to the type of thing, not a
particular thing. This could be a
kind of overgeneralization or
overextension. That is, the child
might misunderstand the meaning
of the word sheep and think it
refers to all animals. It could also
be that the child doesn't perceive
the individual variations betwen
two types of animals and
conceptually lumps them all
together. Or it could be that a child
simply doesn't know the words for
all the different kinds of animals
and makes do with the name of
 another one.

Example: A child may

take sheep to mean any animal, not
just that particular kind of animal.

c) Basic level
assumption: a word
refers to types of
objects that are alike
in basic ways. Adults
will recognize a
child's meaning even
when an incorrect
word is used (from the
adult's perspective)
because the word used
by the child will share
the same basic
features as the word
an adult would use. If
a child doesn't know
the word for an
animal, he/she will
likely choose the
word for something
else that is alive and
moves around.

Example: sheep might
be taken to mean any
animal, but probably
won’t be taken to
mean rose or flower.

Contextual clues are extremely important for attaching meaning in this

stage. An adult may need to follow a child's gaze or their pointing in order
to determine the exact meaning of an utterance. Or an adult might need to
observe what the child is doing in order to determine the meaning of the
utterance. Likewise, a child in this stage needs to use the context to make
sense of what an adult is saying.
5. The Telegraphic Stage
The Telegraphic stage occurs around the age of 2 1/2 years.

In this stage, children begin stringing more than two words together, perhaps three or four or
five at a time. However, the style of speaking children use in this stage resembles the way of
writing that used to be used in telegrams. That’s why this stage is called telegraphic. In the past,
every word in a telegram cost money, so people used to write the shortest possible messages to
save money. For example, to send the message "We arrived in Paris on Monday," someone
might write "Arrived Paris Monday." Function words (pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions) and
even grammatical morphemes (-ed) are typically absent.

Articulation of sounds continues to develop in order described in earlier stages. 20

consonants are articulated, and all vowels are articulated by approximatey 3 years of age. All
vocabulary development processes continue, and more words are added. Utterances exhibit
phrase structure, that is, they tend to follow the grammatical rules of the language.

6. Beyond The Telegraphic Stage

The Beyond Telegraphic stage begins around the age of 3 years and continues into fully
developed language skills.

Vocabulary development continues, including its strategies of overextension. In fact, a similar

pattern of overgeneralization is used for morpheme development: -ed, meaning past, shows up
in such utterances as goed, or putted. Derivational affixes and compounding show up early in
this stage: age 3 or 4. Inversion in questions comes in later.
To conclude, children go through approximately six different stages in learning their native
language.

The next question is, "When are they finished?" That is, "When can we say that a child has
learned language?"
Theories of First Language Acquisition
For Behaviorists L1 acquisition is “Say what I say” 

for Innatist Theory, “It's all in your mind 

and for Interactionist Theory, “A little help from my friends” 

L1 acquisition. From these phrases, we can conclude that each theory has different explanation
as to how we acquire our L1.

According to the Behaviorist Theory, Skinner (1985) equated learning a language to verbal

behavior. Therefore, he believes that language acquisition like any other behavior can be
observed, rather than trying to explain the mental systems underlying these types of behaviors.
To him, children are born with a blank state of mind or tabula rasa. Children acquire L1 through
stimuli given to them and the responses of children are conditioned through reinforcement. A
positive response will be conditioned through positive reinforcement like reward or praise and
vice versa for a negative response which is conditioned with punishment.

However, this simplistic view of L1 acquisition received criticisms, mainly from the advocates
of Innatist Theory, among whom Chomsky (1959) believed that children are equipped with an
innate template or blueprint for language, which is called the Language Acquisition Device
(LAD) which accounts for the swift mastery of language among children despite the extremely
abstract nature of language. It is believed that children do not start from scratch when it comes
to language learning as they can acquire complex grammar quickly and without any particular
help beyond the exposure to L1.

The concept of Universal Grammar (UG) explains the commonality of how children acquire
language by learning rules in L1 which are presumed to be universal. Again, this theory also
receives criticism, specifically (as cited in Pascual-Leone, 1996) who insist that language is not
a separate module of the mind as language represents the knowledge acquired through physical
interaction between the children and the environment. Vygotsky (1978) also supports this view
by stating that the conversations that children have with adults and other children are important
as these conversations constitute the origins of both language and thought, where thought is
essentially internalized speech and speech emerges in social interaction. Bloom (as cited
in Ekehammer, 1974) also criticizes the Innatists' pivot grammar, as the relationship between a
pivot word and an open word are not of the same nature. Bloom further concludes that children
learn underlying structures and not superficial word order.

Implications for Teachers

For teachers, classroom management and the pedagogical techniques in the classroom will
pretty much be influenced by how the teachers view L1 acquisition and L2 learning. If the
teachers adopt the Behaviorist Theory, they would most probably rely heavily on rote learning
using repetition to fossilize the behavior of students. To substantiate, if the students answer
correctly, the teacher would praise the students to positively reinforce the desired behavior. On
the contrary, if the students make some mistakes, the teacher would put negative reinforcement
into effect such as reprimanding the students or repeating the students' answer but with applied
correction. Teachers who adopt the Behaviorist Theory in their language teaching would view
language learning as a learned behavior which can be altered, modified, and reinforced by
means of positive and negative reinforcement.

Teachers who believe in the Innatist Theory would most probably adhere to a more student-
centered classroom where the students feel at ease and are not threatened by the teacher and
their peers. The teacher would ensure that the students' anxiety about embarking on a new
voyage of language learning would be safe with ‘life-jackets’ and ‘buoys’ which students can
grasp in moments of ‘near drowning’ from the unknown and confusion of unfamiliar terms and
grammar rules of the L2. The teacher would also most probably delay the inevitable language
testing to avoid students clamping shut when it comes to communicating. The teacher would
foster a ‘silent period’ where the students are not required to provide output, instead they would
just receive the input for an inordinate amount of time. Eventually, students would muster
enough courage and confidence to gather all the input received and provide reasonable output.

Teaching Language
The fact that there is a relationship between age and language development suggests that the age
of the learner is an important factor in language teaching.

The fact that language development begins as early as birth suggests that even preschool
environments shouldn’t ignore language, especially spoken language.

 The question arises whether learning a second language is the same as or different than
learning a first.
 The question also arises whether learning two languages at the same time follows the
same developmental patterns in the same time frame.

These issues and questions form the basis of methods of teaching language and
differentiate L2 teaching from L1 teaching.

Course work

Compare and contrast the behaviorist and mentalist theories of first language acquisition.
Comparison of First language acquisition and Second Language learning.
 
Similarities:
 In both first and second language acquisition, universal grammar may influence learning. 
In second language learning, universal grammar may influence learning either
independently or through the first language.
 In both first and second language acquisition, there are predictable stages, and particular
structures are acquired in a set order.  Individuals may move more slowly or quickly
through these stages, but they cannot skip ahead.
 In both first and second language acquisition, making errors is a part of learning. 
Learners need to make and test hypotheses about language to build an internal
representation of the language.  In the initial stages of learning, learners may use chunks
of language without breaking them down or processing them as independent units.  In
later stages, they may make new errors as they begin to process the parts of each chunk
according to the rules of their language system.  For example, a learner may start out
using the correct form of an irregular verb as part of a language chunk, but later
overgeneralize and place a regular affix on that same verb.
 In both first and second language acquisition, the learner uses context clues, prior
knowledge, and interaction to comprehend language.
 In both first and second language acquisition, age is an important variable affecting
proficiency. 
 In both first and second language acquisition, learners can often comprehend more
complex language than they are able to produce.  In the initial stages of learning, learners
go through a silent period. 
 In both first and second language acquisition, a learner's proficiency can vary across
situations.
 In both first and second language acquisition, learners may overgeneralize vocabulary or
rules, using them in contexts broader than those in which they should be used.
 In both first and second language acquisition, learners need comprehensible input
and opportunities to learn language in context in order to increase their proficiency.
Differences:
 In first language acquisition, the basis for learning is universal grammar alone.  In second
language acquisition, knowledge of the first language also serves as a basis for learning
the second language.  There may be both positive and negative transfer between
languages in second language learning.
 In first language acquisition, children spend several years listening to language, babbling,
and using telegraphic speech before they can form sentences.  In second language
acquisition in older learners, learning is more rapid and people are able to form sentences
within a shorter period of time. 
 In formal second language learning in older learners, learners are able to use more
metacognitive processes in their learning.  They can consciously analyze and manipulate
grammatical structures, and they can explicitly describe how language works.  This can
speed the learning process.
 In second language learning in older learners, learners bring more life experience and
background knowledge to their learning.  They have more schemata and more learning
strategies to help them learn the second language.
 In second language learning in older learners, there may be less access to universal
grammar, and sensitivity to phonological distinctions not present in the native language
will be reduced.  Students learning in a classroom setting may also have fewer
opportunities to learn language authentically.  These factors may reduce the likelihood
that second language learners will attain native-like proficiency.  First-language learners
always attain native proficiency, unless they have a disability that affects language
learning.
 In first language acquistion, learners have many chances to practice with native speakers
(especially caregivers).  In second language acquisition, learners may or may not have the
opportunity to practice extensively with native speakers.
 Almost everyone acquires a first language, but not everyone acquires a second language. 
Acquiring a first language happens naturally, while acquiring a second language often
requires conscious effort on the part of the learner.