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Differences between L1 and L2 acquisition

Ellis 94 (based on Bley-Vroman 1988); updated in Cook (2009, click above SLL&LT
link)
Feature L1 acquisition L2 (foreign language)
acquisition
VC's objections
1. Overall
success
children normally
achieve perfect L1
mastery
adult L2 learners are
unlikely to achieve perfect
L2 mastery


All implicitly see
'success' in the sense
of what a
monolingual native
speaker does, not an
L2 user
2. General
failure
success guaranteed complete success rare
3. Variation
little variation in
degree of success or
route
L2 learners vary in overall
success and route
4. Goals
target language
competence
L2 learners may be content
with less than target
language competence or
more concerned with
fluency than accuracy
5.
Fossilisation
unknown common, plus backsliding
(i.e. return to earlier stages
of development
All L2 users too have
L1 attrition
6.Intuitions
children develop clear
intuitions about
correctness
L2 learners are often unable
to form clear grammaticality
judgments
But bilingual
children are better
at this than
monolinguals
7. Instruction
not needed helpful or necessary
All depends!
8. Negative
evidence
correction not found
and not necessary
correction generally helpful
or necessary
Recasts are in fact
based on L1
acquisition ideas
9. Affective
factors
not involved play a major role determining
proficiency
Again measured
against monolinguals
Cook, V.J., Long, J., & McDonough, S. (1979), First and second language learning, in G.E.
Perren (ed.) The Mother Tongue and Other Languages in Education, CILTR, 7-22 online here
1. The childs language is a system in its own right rather than being a small fragment of the adult system
2. The learning of a first language has many sides and is not simply a matter of learning syntax and
vocabulary
3. The use of the first language goes hand in hand with the childs needs and interests
4. Wherever there is a relationship between cognition and language development, language depends on
cognition
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5. The childs use and learning of language is partly determined by mental capacity
6. There are particular stages of development through which all children progress, even if the rate of
progression varies
7. The child learns to adapt its language use to particular situations
8. Adults adapt their speech in systematic ways when talking to children
Extract from V.Cook (2000) 'Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition:
One Person with Two Languages
'
, in Aronoff & Rees-Miller, Blackwell Handbook of
Linguistics
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 of please 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; dAnglejan & 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 Thats 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.

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References
Cook, V.J. 1969. The analogy between first and second language learning. IRAL VII/3, 207-
216, on-line version
Cook, V.J. 1973. The comparison of language development in native children and foreign
adults. IRAL XI/1, 13-28, online version
dAnglejan, A. & Tucker, G.R. 1975. The acquisition of complex English structures by adult
learners. Language Learning, XV/2
Larsen-Freeman, D. & Long, M. 1991. An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition
Research. Longman, London & New York.
Schachter, J. 1988. Second Language Acquisition and its relationship to Universal Grammar.
Applied Linguistics 9, 3, 219-235
Wode, H. 1981. Learning a Second Language. Tbingen: Narr