From Exposure to Acquisition: Input, Interaction, Corrective Feedback, and the Conditions for Second Language Development

This article examines a central question in second language development: under what conditions does exposure to English become acquisition? It argues that exposure is necessary but insufficient, because language contact produces development only when it becomes processable input, is converted into intake through attention and comprehension, is negotiated through interaction, and is refined through corrective feedback that preserves learner agency. Using logical and qualitative reasoning, the article synthesizes scholarship on input, interaction, output, noticing, and corrective feedback to offer a conditional account of acquisition. Three analytical results are advanced. First, exposure becomes acquisitional when learners attend to, interpret, and incorporate linguistic material into their developing interlanguage. Second, interaction gives input a dialogic structure by requiring learners to clarify meaning, test hypotheses, modify output, and repair misunderstanding. Third, corrective feedback supports development when it is intelligible, selective, timely, developmentally appropriate, and humane enough to sustain participation. The article concludes that second language acquisition is not a linear transfer of knowledge from environment or teacher to learner, but a mediated, recursive, and socially situated process. Development occurs when learners can notice language, act upon it, revise it, and reuse it with growing accuracy, confidence, autonomy, and communicative control over time in practice.

کلیدواژه ها:

second language acquisition ، input ، interaction ، corrective feedback ، learner development.