Generally, the term sequential bilingualism applies only if the child is approximately three years old before being introduced to the second language (L2).
[2] Circumstantial bilinguals, on the other hand, are those who are forced to learn a second language due to their social, geographical, or political situations.
For circumstantial bilinguals, child learners will enter a "functional" stage of learning the language after about two years of being in a new country.
Informal language learning on the other hand can take place in a variety of settings outside of a classroom, including in the home, through media, or at work or school.
[3] The main characteristic that defines informal language learning is that it involves unstructured acquisition and it mostly occurs through daily social interactions.
[4] In terms of phonological competence, some studies have used measures of accentedness where subjects are rated on a scale from "native speaker" to "strong foreign accent.
It also includes knowing how to interpret an intended message in an utterance with more than one possible meaning difference.
In first language acquisition children implicitly learn how their linguistic actions relate to the reactions of others.
[8] Similarly, sequential L2 learners have knowledge of basic interactional capabilities when their starting to learn a second language.
[9] Especially in societies like the United States, where multilingualism and ethnic diversity are not particularly valued, language-minority children encounter powerful forces for language shift or assimilation when they enter the majority-speaking world of the classroom.
At the same time, they are motivated to stop using their L1, all too often long before they have mastered the second language, all due to the internal and external pressures from their environment.
For children in language-minority communities, maintaining their ancestral language preserves ties to their grandparents and keeps open the option of experiences that build ethnic identification and pride, as well as cultural continuity.
[12] Parents cannot easily convey to them their values, beliefs, understandings, or wisdom, and about how to cope with their experiences.
All these encompassed the possibility of making mistakes, resulting in embarrassment, and such anxiety can block the ability to receive and process new information.
[17][18] Thus, high self-consciousness and a reluctance to reveal their weaknesses and faults, coupled with feelings of vulnerability could greatly impede second language learning.
Speakers who are exposed to L2 after puberty or in early adulthood are still capable of reaching nativelike fluency, showing a pattern of learning that is inconsistent with Lenneberg's original model.
Thus, in order to operate socially in the community and become one of its members, one has to be sufficiently proficient in that target language.
For example, United States being a political and economic powerhouse, the motivation to learn and acquire English is huge.
In addition, opportunities for language use should come in diverse forms, like spoken or written, and in various contexts, like in school, at home or during peer interaction, so that the child would learn how to adapt to and apply the language appropriately in different situations, using mediums, with different people.
Parental and family support are important because they are the key providers to the child's L2 learning and acquisition opportunities.
Formal instruction only increases learners’ learned knowledge, but makes no contribution to acquisition.
The interaction in the classroom settings also facilitates acquisition by exposing students to language in a communicative context.
Newmark (cited in Ellis, 1994) pointed out that instructors of foreign language classes should stop interfering with the learning process and propose that classroom instruction would be successful if the environment is naturalistic.
Technically, interactional modification helps boost second language acquisition by making input more comprehensible.
Interactions between teachers and students would also bridge support, which weakens learners’ affective filter and may result in better learning.
Teachers' questions push learners to interact and simulate real communication in an artificial context.
Feedback from students’ performance enables instructors to control the progress and adjust following instructions.
Secondly, topic selection ensures that the complexity of the input is under control and is adapted to learners’ language competence.
As Corder (1976, cited in Ellis, 1992[45]) proposed, “Efficient foreign language teaching must work with rather than against natural process, facilitate rather than impede learning.
Teachers and teaching materials must adapt to the learner rather than vice-versa.” Ellis[45] proposes several general suggestions to offer an acquisition-rich communicative environment.