I．Brainstorming

We are English learners. How do we learn English?

II. What is SLA?

What is language acquisition?

 The natural process of children’s language development. Children’s language development is a natural subconscious process. It is different from language learning.

 Four stages of language acquisition: Babbling (articulating certain speech sounds) – holophrastic (using single words to represent various meanings) – two-word – telegraphic (using phrases and sentences composed of only content words).

Krashen make a distinction between acquisition and learning:

 Acquisition is learning a language in F2 (the language being learnt) language environment. SLA is picking up L2 naturally and subconsciously.

 It is different from foreign language learning, which is learning a language in F1 language environment. 

 The major difference is the environment.

What is second language acquisition (SLA)?

SLA is the process by which a language other than the mother tongue is learnt in a natural setting or in a classroom.

Foreign language teaching (FLT) and second language teaching (SLT)

In a bilingual or multilingual community, the language other than one’s mother tongue is called a second language.

In a monolingual country, the language one learns is foreign language.