Native Competence In Native Language

In order to proceed further with this topic a closer look into the language itself and learning processes is required. Native language bears the greatest significance as it is a part of our personal, social and cultural identity. People acquire it through a full immersion, being acquainted with it shortly after birth when their cognitive abilities begin to surface. The first stage is audible acquisition where simply hearing and memorizing phrases is the main focus. At this point it is still too early for the child to dwell into graphic and grammatical structures let alone recognize them on its own. This is the first case of gradual learning in a person 's life where practical learning develops into theoretical as they progress. Native speakers need not to be perfectly familiar with the grammatical principles to be considered an authority on their given language as they mostly follow their intuition provided by their life-long experience. However, as stated in later chapters, native competence does not equal teaching qualifications. Native language also doesn 't necessarily need to be the

A person 's second language refers to the language used in addition to native in the given locale. The defining difference between a first language and second language is the age the persons learns it, however in most cases they never achieve the fluency and understanding as in their first language. This is connected to the "critical period hypothesis" (Lenneberg, 1967) which is a topic of a constantly reoccurring debate among the linguists concerning whether age affects language acquisition and if so, to what extent. It says that there is a designated period of growth in human life in which they can achieve full or near full native competence of the language they practice. And as mentioned before, older people struggle to achieve perfect comprehension, accent or fluency in other languages than their first. This is believed to be caused by them already being past the critical