Difference between a First Language & a

Second Language
https://www.basic-concept.com/c/difference-between-first-language-second-language

Language is the most significant aspect which makes us different from all other species.
Accordingly, language acquisition is the most impressive aspect of human development both in
psychological and cognitive perspective. However, all the normal human beings acquire the
language they first encounter as children. Then they might learn multiple languages but those
languages will always be different from the first language they acquired by being exposed to. So,
it is evident that there are a lot of differences between the first language and the second language
of a person.

Let’s explore the differences:

 A first language is the mother tongue or native language of a person while a second language is
a language a person learns in order to communicate with the native speaker of that language.
 The first language is like an instinct which is triggered by birth and developed with the
experience of being exposed to it. A second language is a personal choice of a person.
 There is no other alternative to a first language. A person cannot decide his/her first language. It
comes to him/her as an inheritance/legacy/birthright. On the other hand, a second language is
always fixed by the person. There are many alternatives to a second language. A
person/community can choose a second language among other languages.
 The acquiring process of the first language is very rapid while the learning process of the second
language can vary from language to language and from person to person, but can never be as
rapid as the first language acquisition.
 The first language is ‘acquired’ and the second language is ‘learned’. The difference between
these two words describes the qualities of the two languages. ‘Acquire’ means
“to come into possession or ownership of” which indicates that the first language is like a
dynamic and abstract property which comes into possession of a person. On the other hand,
‘learn’ means “to gain knowledge or skill by study, instruction, or experience” which indicates
that there is nothing passive in second language learning.
 A first language is completely acquired with 100% proficiency within 6 years from the birth.
However, a second language can never be learned as efficiently as a first language; though good
competence can be achieved in the second language, the process is slow.
 The first language acquisition is always natural and there is no need for instruction in acquiring
it. But a second language learning is not natural and it needs continuous guidance and
instruction.
 The first language acquisition begins with telegraphic speech. The term 'telegraphic speech'
deriving from the word ‘telegram’ was coined by Roger Brown, an American psycholinguist, in
1963. It refers to the two-word a child can utter when s/he is 18 to 24 months of age. Examples
of telegraphic speech: Mom see, Dad go, No ball, Daddy walk, Mommy milk, etc. On the other
hand, the second language acquisition begins with a full sentence. A child cannot start learning
the second language without being fully efficient in the first language.
  The first language is a natural part of a person’s everyday life. But the second language is a new
aspect of the person’s life if s/he chooses it to be.
 The first language does not require any conscious effort; the acquisition process of the first
language is subconscious. The second language requires constant conscious effort so that the
learners can internalize the structures of the second language.

Some factors of difference for the first language and the second language.

Age:

It is the most important factor that makes a second language totally different from the first
language. Children of the age of 6 who have already acquired full proficiency in their first
language are most capable of learning a second language. Adults usually find it difficult to learn
a new language when they become too accustomed to their first/native language.

Personality:

A child’s personality does not usually make that much of difference in the acquisition of the first
language. But it makes a huge difference in the learning process of the second language. In the
second language learning process, the learners with an introvert personality usually make slow
progress than the learners with an extrovert personality.

Culture:

The first language is one of the most important factors of a person’s culture. But a second
language is not that important in anyone’s culture. However, the second language has some
effects on the culture of a person but not significant enough to be counted as an element of that
culture.

Motivation:

It is an important factor for the second language learning. A learner with good motivation to
learn a second language is likely to learn that language faster. But the acquisition of the first
language does not require any motivation because it is a natural phenomenon. The first language
is acquired subconsciously and there is no need for motivation to acquire it.

Mother Tongue:

The first language is the mother tongue of a person. The second language learning depends a lot
on the structures of the first language. If the structure of the first language is similar to the
second language, it will be easy and fast for the learners to internalize it. For instance, an English
native speaker will find Dutch easier to learn than Hindi as a second language.

A first language and a second language both have their effects on each other. However, as we
have learned that the first language is natural and has a solid base in a person’s intellectual and
psychological development, the first language is not affected by the second language as much as
the second language is affected by the first language. Finally, we can say that the relationship
and the differences between a first and a second language are complex but constant.    

First and second language acquisition: A brief comparison

https://www.uni-due.de/ELE/FLA_SLA_brief_comparison.pdf

First language acquisition Second language acquisition

An instinct, triggered by birth A personal choice, required motivation
Very rapid Varies, but never as quick as FLA
Complete Never as good as a native speaker,
thoughgood competence can be achieved
Natural (no instruction) Natural or guided (for synthetic
languagesgrammatical instruction is
required

Note the following facts concerning first and second language acquisition
1. The level of competence acquired with SLA (second language acquisition)
depends notso much on the time spent learning a language as the time at which
one begins.
2. In general linguists maintain that a first language is acquired, i.e. that knowledge is
storedunconsciously, and that a second language is learned, i.e. that knowledge is
gained byconscious study of the second language’s structure. However, this
distinction is notwatertight and SLA can involve acquisition to a certain degree.
FLA (first languageacquisition) does not, however, learned as no instruction is
required. Remember that youknow your first language before you start school.
3. There is a critical period, that of puberty, around 12 or 13 years of age, after which
it isdifficult, if not impossible to acquire a second language with the same degree
ofcompetence as the first language. The decline in ability to acquire a second
language mayalso be connected with the lateralisation of the brain just before
puberty, i.e. with thefixing of functions in one or other of the two halves of the
brain. The decline inacquisitional ability after lateralisation/puberty is a
widespread phenomenon and affectsother activities such as sports, playing music,
etc.
4. Because SLA is very largely conscious it is dependent on factors such as
motivation andpersonality. This does not apply to FLA which is triggered by birth,
i.e. it is an instinct inthe biological sense of the word. Remember that no-one ever
refuses to acquire one’sfirst language and that no-one dislikes one’s own first
 language. Because FLA is aninstinct there is no choice involved, contrast this with
a second language.
5. Note that something which is acquired does not require conscious decisions
whenactivated. However, if you have learned something, like the rule of chess
then you must think consciously about how to move the pieces. An unconscious
activity, apart fromlanguage, acquired in childhood would, for instance, be the
ability to ride a bicycle.
6. Your first language is acquired without too much input from your
surroundings.Furthermore, this input does not have to be ordered: children make
sense of what theyhear and create the order needed to stored knowledge of their
first language themselves.It is not necessary to speak to young children in a
babyish way: children do not end upspeaking like this anyway.
7. First language acquisition is not dependent on intelligence or special ability
forlanguages. Everyone acquires their native language fully and properly. What is
true, ofcourse, is that some people have a greater stylistic range and larger
vocabulary in theirnative language, but that is not connected with first language
acquisition. You learn stylein school when you learn how to write the standard of
your language and you learnspecialised words consciously after childhood.
8. First language acquisition is connected to cognitive development with the
latterpreceding the former somewhat. With the second language (acquired after
puberty) youhave all the cognitive structures necessary to deal with the language.
9. You cannot forget your first language, although it may become inactive if you
spend manyyears speaking just a second language. Backsliding, reverting to a
lower level ofcompetence, making mistakes you know mistakes, are features of
second languageacquisition only.
10. There are certain phases in first language acquisition: one-word, two-word
andmulti-word stages. Furthermore, in early childhood children make maximally
simplergeneralisations about language, e.g. that all verbs are weak. After a while
they correctthemselves (when they just hear the adult forms). Once they have
acquired the latter theyremember them.
11. In FLA children make errors, systematic ill-formed structures based on the level
ofacquisition on which they happen to be. In post-puberty SLA individuals make
mistakeswhich are often random and erratic, though a degree of regularity can be
recognised here.With SLA there can be interference from the first language, i.e.
structures from L1 arecarried over into L2 where they do not occur natively.
Interference obviously does notoccur in FLA.
12. FLA children build up competence, the internalised knowledge of one’s native
language,from the performance of others, i.e. by accepting spoken input from
those peoplesurrounding them. The parents are obviously important here, but
siblings and playmatescan play an equally important role if they are present.
13. In the strict sense bilinguals are those individuals who have acquired two
languagessimultaneously in early childhood. Normally, one of these languages
 will be dominant, but the degree of competence in the non-dominant language is
still very high and far exceeds that of a second language learned after puberty.

Competence versus Performance

How do we know that students have learned a language?  We can assess students using formative and
summative assessments but how do we know that students will actually be able to use their language in
real-life, authentic situations?  In short, how do we know that our students are competent in the target
language?  One way to judge this competency is through students’ performance.  However, how do we
know that this performance is an accurate measure of what students actually know?  In this section we
will examine these questions further by looking at competence versus performance.

What is the difference between competence and performance?

Chomsky separates competence and performance; he describes  'competence' as an idealized

capacity that is located as a psychological or mental property or function and ‘performance’ as
the production of actual utterances.   In short, competence involves “knowing” the language and
performance involves “doing” something with the language. The difficulty with this construct is
that it is very difficult to assess competence without assessing performance.  
Why is it important to make a distinction between competence and
performance?

Noting the distinction between

competence and performance is
useful primarily because it
allows those studying a
language to differentiate
between a speech error and not
knowing something about the
language. To understand this
distinction, it is helpful to think
about a time when you've made
some sort of error in your
speech. For example, let's say
you are a native speaker of
English and utter the following:

We swimmed in the ocean this

weekend.

Is this error due to competence

or performance? It is most
likely that as a native speaker
you are aware how to conjugate
irregular verbs in the past but
your performance has let you
down this time.   Linguists use
the distinction between
competence and performance
to illustrate the intuitive
difference between accidentally
saying swimmed and the fact
that a child or non-proficient speaker of English may not know that the past tense of swim is
swam and say swimmed consistently.

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How do competence and performance apply to the language classroom?

As we have learned, competence and performance involve “knowing” and “doing”. In the recent
past, many language instruction programs have focused more on the “knowing” (competence)
part of learning a language wherein words and sentences are presented and practiced in a way to
best help learners internalize the forms.  The assumption here is that once the learners have
‘learned’ the information they will be able to use it through reading, writing, listening and
speaking.   The disadvantage of this approach is that the learners are unable to use the language
in a natural way.  Having been trained to learn the language through “knowing”, learners have
difficulty reversing this training and actually “doing” something with the language.   In brief, it is
difficult to assess whether the learners’ insufficient proficiency is due to limitations of
competency or a lack of performance.

In order to focus learners more on the “doing” part of learning, which allows a more accurate
measure of learners’ language proficiency, a more communicative approach to teaching can be
used.  This type of approach concentrates on getting learners to do things with the language.  If
we think of B-SLIM we can see that this relates to the Getting It and Using It stages of the
model.  By encouraging students to eventually “learn through the language” as opposed to
strictly learning the language there is a more balanced focus on both competence and
performance.

Competence Versus Performance

The concept of competence versus performance is fundamental to the study of language. This
distinction recognizes that the “mistakes” people make when speaking (performance) may not
accurately reflect what they actually know (competence). We all have made “slips of the
tongue,” where we substitute a word or sound for another or use a different grammatical form
than intended, with sometimes humorous results. For example, you might say you need to go
“shake a tower” instead of “take a shower,” ask someone to be “pacific” rather than be
“specific,” or accuse someone of telling a “lack of pies” rather than “pack of lies.” Performance
errors can also be found in comprehension, such as mishearing “just a position” for
“juxtaposition.”

These kinds of mistakes do not mean that we have an inaccurate knowledge of language. Rather,
a variety of conditions, both internal to the individual (i.e., memory limitations or fatigue) and
external (i.e., distractions or interruptions) can cause a difference between what people know
about their language and how they apply that knowledge in real situations.

Noam Chomsky defined competence as the underlying knowledge each speaker-hearer has about
the language of his or her community. As such, competence is an ideal, which presupposes a
“completely homogeneous speech-community.” It is hypothesized as a psychological or mental
property or function and therefore cannot be directly observed. In contrast, performance refers to
an actual communicative act of speaking or hearing. In this distinction, performance is  an 
incomplete  and  inaccurate  demonstration  of what an individual knows about his or her
language.

The competence-performance distinction is an important one in linguistics. One of the major

goals of linguistic research is to discover how children develop language. Another is to
understand how language functions within the human brain. One difficulty in conducting these
types of language research is that actual speech contains errors. In 1965, Noam Chomsky argued
that the focus of linguistic theory must be on the underlying language system (competence), not
the act of speaking (performance). While performance errors may illuminate how language is
perceived and organized in the brain, the goal of a theory of language is not a description of what
people  actually say. Rather, it is to describe the cognitive mechanism by which humans can
produce an infinite number of sentences, many of which they have never heard, from a finite
number of words and grammatical structures. Therefore, it is crucial to differentiate between
competence and performance.

Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance has undergone some criticism,
such as for the emphasis on grammar in his definition of competence. Subsequently, Dell Hymes
and others have introduced the concept of “communicative competence,” which refers to an
individual’s knowledge of how to use language appropriately in different social and
communicative contexts. The focus on language use has emerged in recent years in a variety of
areas, including language socialization research. This type of study examines how children from
different backgrounds are socialized to use language in culturally appropriate ways and how they
develop understanding of the social organization and  worldview  of  their  cultural  group
through  the development of their community’s language.

The distinction between competence and performance remains important to many areas of study
(i.e., artificial intelligence and second language acquisition) and is widely applied. Nonetheless,
as with the theory of language for which this distinction was originally proposed, many questions
and controversies remain. Yet, for many, this is a useful heuristic device that allows us to
consider and explain how in terms of our language abilities, as in many other areas of human
cognition, we may know more than we can demonstrate through our actions in daily life.

http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/developmental-psychology/education-and-
learning/competence-versus-performance/