Acquiring versus Learning a Language According to linguists, there is an important distinction between the language acquisition process and the language learning process. Learning a language means analysing and exploring its intimate details until getting all the information about it. Language acquisition, on the other hand, is about coming to possess something. Acquiring a language means getting to know it intuitively, as we did at some point with our mother tongue. Anyone who has studied a foreign language in school knows that learning a language is a conscious process that requires practice and study. So when it comes to speaking a new language, learning it involves analysing the language, cutting it into pieces, and trying to decipher it. This is a process that specifically focuses on knowing the grammar rules that make up a particular language. Here the student is made to study vocabulary lists, as well as sentence structure and grammar. This is the most common method used in schools and language learning centres. Children, however, acquire language through a subconscious process in which they know nothing about grammar rules, but intuitively know what is right and what is wrong, or they learn by trial and error. They learn their native language just by being around other people, mainly their family. Although parents never explain grammatical concepts to them, children learn and master the language on their own thanks to the communicative context in which they are immersed. In fact, when a child is five years old, he can express ideas clearly and almost perfectly from the point of view of language and grammar. All of this without having received any formal instruction in the language.