Reflective Blog

Exploring L1 and L2 Learning with Emphasis on the Impact of Exposure Some aspects that affect the learning process are age and exposure time. Most L2 learners are adults, and L1 learners are babies. It appears that this relates to the amount of exposure to the language. As written by Lightbown and Spada in How languages are learned: “L1 learners spend thousands of hours in contact with the language or languages spoken around them.” The fetus starts to hear during the third trimester. As soon as the baby is born it has already been exposed to the L1. The baby can already make a distinction between their mother’s voice and other people's. They also notice specific phonetic sounds that their L1 possesses. For L2 learners their exposure to the language is much more limited. Young L2 learners seem to be prone to hearing the language more as they might hear it in the classroom, in the playground, or on television. Adult L2 learners usually learn in a classroom a few hours a week and th