L1 - First Language; Native Language & L2 - Second Language; Foreign Language

What are the similarities between L2 learning and L1 acquisition?

A continuing theme has been whether people acquire a second language in the same way as a first. If the L2 stages outlined above are also followed by L1 children, both groups are probably using the same learning process. The L2 sequence for English grammatical morphemes was similar, though not identical, to that found in L1 acquisition by Brown (1972), the greatest differences being the irregular past tense (broke), articles (the), copula and auxiliaries (Dulay, Burt & Krashen, 1982). Other similar sequences of syntactic acquisition have been found in L1 and L2 learning. L2 learners, like L1 learners, start by believing that John is the subject ofplease in both John is easy to please and John is eager to please and only go on to discover it is the object in John is easy to please after some time (Cook 1973; d’Anglejan & Tucker 1975). L2 learners, like L1 children, at first put negative elements at the beginning of the sentence No the sun shining and then progress to negation within the sentence That’s no ready (Wode 1981).

A sub-theme underlying several of the questions discussed here is that L1 acquisition is completely successful, L2 learning is not. Take two representative quotations: ‘Very few L2 learners appear to be fully successful in the way that native speakers are’ (Towell & Hawkins 1994: p.14); ‘Unfortunately, language mastery is not often the outcome of SLA’ (Larsen-Freeman & Long 1991: 153). The evidence for this deficiency is held to be the lack of completeness of L2 grammars (Schachter 1988) or the fossilisation in L2 learning where the learner cannot progress beyond some particular stage (Selinker 1992), both familiar ‘facts’ in some sense. Part of the interest in SLA research is explaining why L2 learners are usually unsuccessful. However, this alleged failure depends upon how success is measured, as we shall see.

The answer to the question is far from settled. While there are many similarities between L1 and L2 learning, the variation in situation and other factors also produces many differences. One difficulty is filtering out differences that are accidental rather than inevitable. L1 children mostly acquire language in different settings with different exposure to language than L2 learners and they are at different stages of mental and social maturity (Cook 1969). It may be inherently impossible to compare equivalent L1 and L2 learners. A more precise version of this question asks whether adults still have access to Universal Grammar in the mind.