It is a truism to say that a child learns to speak through verbal interaction with his/her parents. Therefore it can be said that language acquisition is the outcome of ongoing dialogue between the two parties.

This paper is going to focus on the forms of dialogue/interaction that lead to the development of communicative ability in a very young child in a second language. It is assumed that the role of the parent in creating a multifaceted and linguistically rich dialogue will be equally important in first and second language acquisition and learning. I will try to demonstrate when the form of dialogue, or more precisely the discourse strategies used within it, foster second language learning and when they inhibit it. (Following Krashen's (1981) distinction, here the term “learning” is preferred to the term “acquisition”, as this refers to subjects learning L2 in an instructional setting).

The role of parent-child dyads in L1 acquisition

The assumption that language is acquired through verbal interaction between a child and his/her parents is maintained by the interactionist view of language acquisition (e.g. Newport, Gleitman and Gleitman, 1977; Tomasello, 1998). According to this position, language develops through the interplay of a child's cognitive abilities and the linguistic input that he/she receives as well as the things which he/she observes, touches or uses. This means the child acquires words for particular objects or actions when he/she hears them labeled, and hypothesizes about the rules of language when his/her interlocutors rephrase his/her speech.