Steps for learning a second language

Steps for learning a second language
This past week we had an awesome in school training about English as a second language teaching strategies and English Language Learners myths vs. truths. One of the myths that we discussed was that the process of learning a second language for a child is the same as the process of learning their native language. We argued and discussed that the steps for learning a second language as a child and even an adult are the same as the steps everyone of us had to take in order to learn our native language. The conversation got headed up because my co-workers and I were thinking beyond the spoken language; we talked about the learning of the English language grammar, phonemic structure as well as the pronunciation and reading.
English is my second language, I speak fluent Bulgarian which was my native language, but in the same time right now I am in the process of learning Spanish which would be my third language. Based on my language exposure and experience I felt like I can speak about whether or not the steps for leaning different languages have been the same or different within my personal experiences. I have noticed that as I am learning Spanish right now the steps that my brain follows tend to be similar to when I was first learning English. First I was able to understand English before I could speak it, I am noticing the same pattern with Spanish now; I understand Spanish better than I could speak it. After I learned to understand English very well than I felt more comfortable speaking it and eventually I was able to lean the grammar and structure of the written English as well. I am noticing that learning Spanish now comes in the same order for me. I am starting to slowly feel comfortable understanding Spanish and I am hoping to soon get to the point of being able to talk back in a conversational Spanish. I shared that experience with my co-workers and some of them disagreed that the brain follows the same steps for each language.
The point of that ELL training was to understand what kind of struggles and steps our ELL students are going through in order to be able to learn English as their second language. I thought it was beneficial to know that learning a language take five years and that there is no way for us as teacher to speed up the process, even though many of us might want to try to do so.