SECOND LANGUAGE

ACQUISITION

Prof. Miguel Villanueva

Coaguila
The process of acquiring a second or foreign language
Taken from Applied Linguistics Dictionary Oxford

It is the process by which people learn a second language in

addition to their native language(s).
Taken from www.wikipedia.com
Second language acquisition (SLA) is defined as the process of
becoming competent or proficient in a second or foreign
language, from the first use of a language item to its advanced
applications at a later stage
The purpose of SLA studies is to
describe and explain the way
second languages are learned in
terms of both linguistic and
communicative competence.
From a sociolinguistic perspective, acquisition through
organized instruction occurs in classrooms with the
help of teachers and instructional materials. Acquisition
through immersion occurs in social situations using
contextual clues.
Klein identifies ‘spontaneous’ and ‘guided’ acquisition. The first focuses
on everyday communication, whereas the second targets the mastery
of the language system.
Krashen distinguishes between ‘acquisition’ and ‘learning’. In his analysis
of the process of mastering a second language, he reserves ‘acquisition’
for the subconscious process of learning a language by being exposed to it.
‘Learning’, according to him, is the conscious process of mastering a languag
by studying it.
Chomsky focuses on the results of SLA, which he defines as ‘competence’
and ‘performance’. According to him, ‘competence’ in a second language is
the mastery of the internalized grammar that the ideal speaker or hearer,
not a real one, has of the whole language.

Performance’ in Chomsky’s Generative Transformational Grammar,

on the other hand, refers to a person’s actual use of a language in
the understanding and production of sentences.