Acquisition is the subconscious process by which linguistic competence is developed as a result

of acquiring language for real communication, it can be monolingual or bilingual.

According to Ellis (1990) Language acquisition is associated with cognitive, social and linguistic
development. Therefore, to acquire their first language, babies need to go through important stages,
which are:

 Pre-linguistic stage: during this stage, babes only way of communicating is by crying,
then cooing and finally babbling (0-12 months);
 Holophrastic stage: babies use a single word communication
 Two-words stage: by the age of 12 months, the babies are able to use two words
combination.
 Telegraphic stage: the babies’ vocabulary in terms of words increases and they are able
to use 2 word 3 word utterances
 Intermediate development stages: before five years, children can comprehend an
incredible quantity of linguistic input, they chatter nonstop.
 Adult stage: by five years, children start to internalize increasingly complex structures,
expand their vocabulary and sharpen their communication skills and they also learn the
social functions of their language.