Some Myths You May Have Heard about First Language Acquisition

This article focuses on three assumptions that have been made in recent work on second language acquisition about first language acquisition: Comprehension precedes production; children acquire language in a systematic, rule-governed way; and the impetus behind first language acquisition is communicative need. Research on first language acquisition challenges these assumptions. Empirical evidence indicates that the relationship between comprehension and production is not unidirectional, that children's first steps toward acquisition are haphazard and piecemeal, and that children acquire at least some aspects of language simply because it is there. Links that have been posited between first and second language acquisition and inferences drawn from them should be reviewed in the light of this evidence.