Successive

Successive bilingualism applies to children who are learning a second language after the first language is established. There are a series of stages to learning a second language or second language acquisition. Often, these are children who have had little or no exposure to English before entering preschool. Thus, they are not considered "receptive" bilingual; they are learning English as a second language more or less “from scratch”. Children acquiring a second language generally move through the following four stages (Tabors and Snow, 1994):

• Home Language Stage
• Observational/Listening Stage
• Telegraphic/Formulaic Speech Stage
• Fluid Language Use Stage

It is important to note that not all children go through all stages and that very often the same child will "weave" in and out of each of these stages, depending on the situation. As a result, it may be difficult to characterize where a child is at any particular point.

See the chart below for a diagram of these Stages of Language Acquisition:

* The names of some stages have been modified to reflect current thinking.