Stages Of Language Acquisition
You may wonder, particularly in the early stages of immersion education, if children are really learning one or both languages. They are! There are four acknowledged stages of language acquisition that children in immersion programs move through, and, depending upon whether your primary language is the target language, these stages vary in terms of when students experience them. Variation may be attributed to the topic, interest, relevancy, experience, and the home environment of the student, student performance cannot be consistently placed in one stage or another.
These language acquisition stages are:
1. PRE-PRODUCTION STATE — THE SILENT PERIOD
Children begin to develop listening skills and competence in the second language but do not speak. Children should not be forced to speak.
2. EARLY PRODUCTION STAGE
This is a period of limited speech production and limited comprehension. Children may speak in one or two word phrases. Children begin to show their competence in vocabulary they’ve acquired.
3. SPEECH EMERGENCE STAGE
A period of expanded speech production; error correction should be limited to modeling. Children who have strong home language skills may demonstrate higher literacy skills in both languages. Second language literacy will be delayed for children lacking home language literacy skills because strong language skills facilitate the acquisition of a second language.
4. INTERMEDIATE FLUENCY
This is a period of continued vocabulary expansion to develop higher levels of language use in content areas. Children show little or no hesitancy to speak.
