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1. The 4 stages of Second Language Acquisition

 Tabors (1997) identifies four main stages in Early Second Language Acquisition (ESLA):

1. When the child first enters an environment where his/her home language is not spoken, he/she might still try to communicate with others using his/her language. This stage is normally fairly brief, because the child soon realises that his/her language is not understood by others.
   
2. The child then enters the silent or non-verbal period, in which he/she mainly relies on non-verbal communication. This stage typically lasts between two and six months and is characterised by the employment of active listening and speech processing, through which the child explores the words, rules and expressions that are typical of the new language. The child may practice the language on his/her own, but does not use it to communicate with others.
   
3. The silent period is followed by the telegraphic speech stage, during which the child utters his/her first speech productions in his/her second language (L2). The child communicates by using brief ready-made sentences that are typical of routine situations, such as “Happy birthday!” and “More water”. The acquisition of these formulaic phrases plays a key role in ESLA because it enables the child to interact with classmates and teachers.
   
4. The final stage of ESLA is referred to as interlanguage; the child manages to communicate in his/her L2 but still makes a lot of mistakes caused by interference from his/her first language (L1).