Successive Bilingualism - Early Stages

While young children are capable of learning and assimilating new knowledge at impressive speeds, each is unique in their abilities of language acquisition. Motivation and personal aptitude can play as big of a role in the speed of acquiring a new language as frequency and consistency of exposure. While some kids become proficient in a second language within the first year of exposure, 2-4 years is a more common timeframe to achieve such mastery for most children.

For a child quiring a second language, personal and social relationships with speakers of the new language are extremely important for linguistic advancement. In the initial stages, the child's production remains limited to basic vocabulary and common phrases heard in the course of these social interactions. The pattern involves listening to the language, identification of repeating patterns, and inferring clues from these patterns as to meaning.

Pretending to understand is an important step in actually being able to understand, and is used by the child to establish relationships and build confidence. An other-directed communicator will use the few words and phrases they know in the new language, as well as a wide range of non-verbal cues in order to get their message across. An inner-directed communicator, however, will focus more on the meaning of what they hear instead of trying to join in the conversation. They are equally engaged in the process of communicating, but is more focused on analyzing the speech of others than expressing thoughts of their own. The inner-directed learner will tend to talk to themselves in private, where they can practice what they have heard and make connections with new concepts.