Second-Language Acquisition

Second-language acquisition (SLA) designates a broad field of interdisciplinary inquiry into the process and product of instructed language learning. It addresses acquisition of languages in typical classroom settings, drawing on theories and methodologies from linguistics, psychology, sociology, or anthropology. Translations to teacher training, which includes instruction in SLA, fall within research on education. Language education concerns sequential multilingualism. Since multilinguals, particularly schoolchildren, constitute a significant proportion of referrals to specialist care, findings from both learning and teaching are relevant to communication sciences and Speech–Language clinicians, in order to understand what, how, and why learners are taught and assessed on, as well as whether and how communication in a foreign language is fostered.

SLA terminology can be vague or misleading, exemplified by each of the terms in its label. The word second is a relic from assumptions that language learners are monolinguals acquiring a single language after their first. Terms like L2 or nonnative language are used synonymously with second language, and defined in opposition to first language, L1, mother tongue, or native language, which likewise substitute for one another as presumed definitions. All terms remain in use in the singular, although they may refer to more than one language. The ambiguity of the word second [Page 1645]mirrors that of the word bilingualism to mean either two languages or more than one. It may designate one or more of the native languages of simultaneous multilinguals, that is, those acquired from birth, or those acquired simultaneously in school, as in educational curricula across Europe. The terms second and foreign sometimes distinguish the acquisition of a language that is used, or not used, in the country of instruction, respectively.

The word language gives no indication of which variety of a language is being taught, although it commonly refers to standard varieties found in, for example, textbooks and learner dictionaries or grammars. The word acquisition may be used, as opposed to learning, to mean natural versus structured language development, for example, at home or through informal social contact versus in school or through formal tutoring. Alternatively, the two terms may refer to native versus nonnative language development, respectively. The focus of SLA on instructed second-language learning makes these distinctions irrelevant. In this entry, L1 and L2 refer to learners’ native and nonnative language(s), respectively, cognates of the words learn and acquire are used interchangeably, and SLA refers to further language learning, simultaneous or sequential, regardless of the number of languages involved.