Second Language Acquisition Essay

Language acquisition is one of the essential as well as fascinating aspects of human development. It is also one of the abilities which human beings keep possession of throughout their life spans. Moreover, with ever-increasing globalization and population movements, different cultures come into more frequent contact, resulting in the need to refine communication processes between societies. Even though having the ability to acquire first language (L1) is in itself extraordinary, it is more often than not, not enough for one to become successful in professional life. Thus, acquiring second language (L2) has become as essential as acquiring the first one because L2 usually represents dominating societal language, such as English without which

According to Wang (2014), first language acquisition is “the process of a child learning his or her first language” (pg. 57). The same author further claims that it is not only the first language that the child learns, but also his or her second, third, fourth or even fifth language. The discipline which refers to the patters of learning abovementioned languages is called second language acquisition (SLA). Before delving further into the topic, it is important to make distinction between SLA and foreign language learning. Nation (2003) defines the latter as a process of learning a non-native language in a native environment, while SLA refers to the process of learning a non-native language in a non-native environment. Small, but nevertheless important distinction which had to be made due to the fact that foreign language learning will not be further addressed in this paper. Finally, the basis of both FLA and SLA is the word acquisition. People acquire both first and second language, they do not just learn them