1. Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción.
Facultad de Educación.
Pedagogía en Educación Media en Inglés.
“Reaction paper: The relationship between First and Second
Language Learning Revisited”
Iris Roa.
English learning and acquisition.
Juan Castro.
Maria Lagos.
Concepción, April 1st
2014.

2. Summary
The relationship between L1 (first language) and L2 (second language) is an
important and crucial issue in terms of development and acquisition of the second
language learning. Linguists have been done many researchers to investigate how we
acquire a second language. They had investigated and compare the factors that
influence the acquisition of first language (environmental aspects, interaction with the
language, feedback, etc.) with the learning of a second language.
Cook (2010) pointed out that there are many ideas about the developed of L2
learning that has been borrowed from L1 to name but two: the stages of the learning,
which indicate that children learn in a sequence as well as adults or young people do it
when they learn a second language, the sequence is not the same but it is very
similar, and the grammatical aspects that state that L1 and L2 learners do not speak
immediately using all the grammatical rules.
As we mentioned before, linguists have tried to imitate first language acquisition
process and apply it into the L2, but there are some differences that we cannot avoid
or eliminate. First of all, L2 learners are older than L1 children. Second, the place
where we acquire our mother tongue is with our families in our homes, second
language learners learn it in a classroom with classmates and a teacher. Third, L2
learners already have another language in their minds, and this first language could
interfere in the L2 learning process.
Finally we could find many factors that influence the lack of success in the L2
learning such as the overall success, the general failure, the fossilization process,
affective factors, among others.

3. Evaluation
People nowadays have the need to learn more than one language. This is because
societies around the world are sharing their culture, economy, education, among other
thing all the time. That is why learn a new language is so important. Nonetheless, we
also have to consider that learning another language is a process that has different
approaches. This research helped us to understand how the processes in our minds are
when we learn a new language.
As we could see in Cook (2010), he supported his ideas on many different
researches, from different points of view. Cook dealt with language learning problems
and explains why those problems happen.
There are many hypotheses and researches that describe the process of learning
other languages. Firstly, we focused on the case of the term “Interlanguage” introduced
by Selinker. He stated that the language has different stages and that the fact that a
speaker has a low level in their second language does not mean that its language is
deficient (Selinker, 1972, as cited in Cook 2010). In relation to this approach we can
add that the fact that the mother tongue influence the process of learning another
language is normal as it is the basis of communication in our brains and the second
language will be introduced as a progressive process. So we can infer that in a more
advanced stage the influence of mother tongue will be less influential and the second
language will have more autonomy.
Moreover, taking into account Cook and Newson`s statements that refers to what is
important is the final result and not the order of the steps (Cook and Newson, 2007, as
cited in Cook 2010). We can add that according to our own thinking we agree with that
statement because we believe that in the case of second language learners the order in
language acquisition probably will not be the same of L1 learners. Perhaps they will
develop first writing ability. But, in relation with that, independently of the order in which
they acquire it, they will learn the new language too. Follow the same line we have
Chomsky`s plea who argues that the knowledge acquired is the crucial issue, not the
order in which language is acquired. (Chomsky, 1986, as cited in Cook 2010).
Now, we also have to analyze the influence of external factors in the learning
process because they play an important role. Bellugi and Brown emphasize with the

4. process of "expansive imitation" in which adults corrects mistakes by repeating to
children the correct grammatical way (Bellugi and Brown, 1964, as cited in Cook 2010 ).
We are convinced that this teaching method is also effective for learner of L2 in a way
that teachers correct their students’ mistakes giving them correct structures of
language.
To conclude this evaluation, we have found many of these theories very interesting,
and we can adopt some of them, for example to adapt the language to the learner’s
cognitive level. In many ways this research was important for us, we clarified doubts,
learnt knew issues about L1 and L2 that are going to be always present in our work as
teachers.

5. Reference:
Macaro, E. (2010). Continuum companion to second language acquisition. New York:
Continuun international publishing group.