Second Language Acquisition

Research claims that second language acquisition takes many students 1-3 years to learn "social" and 5-7 additional years to learn academic language. Multilingual learners have a double cognitive load in school: they are learning English, and they are learning in English. Due to the extra effort in the classroom to learn, behaviors, such as delayed responses, struggle for word recall, or distractibility, are often mistaken for disruptive. Many of these behaviors can be caused by the language acquisition process as opposed to a behavior or disability. Included are some key components of second language acquisition. They can help recognize strengths and needs in and out of the classroom. 

Sources:

http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/26751 

https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/language-acquisition-overview

The Six Stages of Language Acquisition

• Pre-production:

This is also called "the silent period," when the student takes in the new language but does not speak it. Depending on the individual, this period often lasts six weeks or longer.

• Early production:

The individual begins to speak using short words and sentences, but the emphasis is still on listening and absorbing the new language. There will be many errors in the early production stage.

• Speech Emergent:

Speech becomes more frequent, and words and sentences are longer, but the individual still relies heavily on context clues and familiar topics. Vocabulary continues to increase, and errors decrease, especially in every day or repeated interactions.

• Beginning Fluency:

Speech is pretty fluent in social situations with minimal errors. However, new contexts and academic language are challenging, and the individual will struggle to express themselves due to gaps in vocabulary and appropriate phrases.

• Intermediate Fluency:

Communicating in a second language is fluent, especially in social language situations. The individual can speak almost fluently in new situations or academic areas, but there will be gaps in vocabulary knowledge and some unknown expressions. There are few errors, and the individual can demonstrate higher-order thinking skills in the second language, such as offering an opinion or analyzing a problem.

• Advanced Fluency:

The individual communicates fluently in all contexts and can maneuver successfully in new contexts and when exposed to new academic information. At this stage, the individual may still have an accent and misuse idiomatic expressions at times, but the individual is essentially fluent and comfortable communicating in the second language.