1. Summary
Despite the language, ethnicity or social class; all people have acquired an L1. As
children’s language development is a universal phenomenon (Freeman, 2004 p.5)
which due to its complexity many theories have tried to explain it.
Away from the behaviourist view of language learned as the result of a process of
stimulus and response, Freeman(2004) has dealt with how children go from
babbling to producing full sentences through fields such as Developmental
psychology which focuses on what a child acquires at different stages of his
cognitive development, Sociology which explains how language is essential for
social interaction and Linguistics which focuses on what a child is acquiring when
using his innate capacity for language but when it comes to written language and
L2 acquisition if this capacity is innate, should we learn or acquire them? The
answer according to Freeman (2004) is that in both cases people should be
encouraged to acquire rather than learn them consciously.
L1 and L2 do have general aspects like age, context and exposure which
distinguish each other. However, for many years the question has been debated
whether L2 learning is the same as L1 learning (Cook,1979 p.1). Cook presents
issues about learning in an educational context declaring that in substance they
are basically the same in terms of the learner’s needs and interests, cognitive
development and mental capacity; stages gone through while developing the
language and the process of building their own language system while learning.
In spite of L1 and L2 acquisition seen as separated processes. L1 do interact with
L2 acquisition, what’s more Krashen(1981) points out that due to first language
interference, L2 learners make syntactic errors. However, the cure for interference
is simply the cure for ignorance: learning (Newmark, 1966 cited in Krashen, 1981
p.67) due to the fact that this phenomenon seems to indicate low acquisition.

2. Evaluation
L1 and L2 acquisition is such a broad topic which Cook (1979), Freeman (2004)
and Krashen (1981) have covered from diverse perspectives, there are some
points that they all have stated.
First, the importance of the learner’s motivation, needs and interests while learning
or acquiring and L1 or L2. Cooks (2011) presents L1 usage as a reflexion of child’s
own world, therefore it reflects his interests directly, and it responds to his needs to
interact with people around him.
On the other hand, Freeman (2004) points out that L2 students even acquire not
easy to understand messages when they are engaged and receive meaningful
input; or on the contrary, Schumann explains how the lack of motivation towards
the culture related to a language affects the acquisition.
Secondly, As an ESL/EFL student and future teacher I always thought that
correcting errors was right, effective and necessary but the studies reflect that in
the case of L1, Children who were corrected frequently did not use error-free
language, instead, their language did not develop as well as children whose
parents or others focused on understanding and extending the children’s meaning.
(Freeman, 2004 p.9) Similar is the case of L2 learning therefore, in the future I will
focus myself on encouraging students to continue reading and talking instead of
correcting them constantly so that they eventually will learn the language properly.
Regardless of all the brilliant points all the authors make in the documents when
Krashen(1981) argues about the role of L1 in L2 acquisition, especially in how bad
and damaging L1 interference is. However, there is another way of seeing this
phenomenon because in fact, sometimes L1 can be really helpful while acquiring
an L2. This is case of, for instance, Spanish speakers learning perfect tenses or
conditionals in English. The unconscious rules of L1 could make learning these L2
features much easier. It is true that many errors, especially syntactic errors are
linked to L1 interference but I would investigate on how L1 can interfere positively
when acquiring an L2
In the field of language learning or acquisition so much has been said but there are
still so much more to investigate and to find. Fortunately, the old behaviourist view
of language learnt like any other else or just by imitation is far away the actual
views. Hopefully there are more precious findings to come which would help
language teachers to understand the acquisition/learning process in order to foster
out methods while teaching.

3. References
Cook, V, Long, J & McDonough, S. (1979). First and second language learning.
(3ed)
Retrieved March 27, 2013 from
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Papers/L1&L21979.htm
Freeman, D. & Freeman, Y. (2004).Essential Linguistics What you need to know to
teach reading, ESL, Spelling, Phonics, Grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
Krashen, S. (1981).Second Language Acquisition and Second Language
Learning.University of Southern California.