Second, the cognitive approach emphasizes how the learner interacts with language. An effort is made to make language acquisition a more active process. Instruction is based on activating prior knowledge and allowing the learner to build the cognitive skills required to understand, process, and interact with a language. Effective opportunities to learn a second language with the cognitive approach can be divided into three stages: a) comprehensible input, b) interaction, and c) comprehensible output (Plass and Jones, 2005).