Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning
    Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning
    Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning
    Ebook503 pages7 hours

    Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning

    By Carmen Muñoz

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This book examines the various ways in which age affects the process and the product of foreign language learning in a school setting. It presents studies that cover a wide range of topics, from phonetics to learning strategies. It will be of interest to students and researchers working in SLA research, language planning and language teaching.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMultilingual Matters
    Release dateJul 7, 2006
    ISBN9781847699770
    Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning

    Related to Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning

    Titles in the series (100)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Linguistics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Why Brits Are Monoglots

      Mar 5, 2021

      spectator.co.uk We Brits are often belittled for being terrible at learning foreign languages, says Rory Sutherland. But there is a reason for this. Consider the questions: do I need to learn another language? And what language should I learn? Swed

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Why Kids Learn Languages More Easily Than You Do

      May 28, 2018

      LEARNING A SECOND LANGUAGE IS TRICKY AT ANY age (and it only gets tougher the longer you wait to crack open that dusty French book). Now, in a new study, scientists have pinpointed the exact age at which your chances of reaching fluency in a second l

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How Bilingual Brains Switch Between Languages

      Sep 11, 2018

      Researchers have uncovered what’s happening in the brain when we switch between different languages. The finding provides new insights into the nature of bilingualism. “A remarkable feature of multilingual individuals is their ability to quickly and

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Art of Teaching Writing

      Sep 9, 2020

      The Art of Teaching Writing
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In The Americas, Right To Learn A Second Language Gains Support

      May 30, 2019

      Mexico recently cleared the way for citizens to learn a second language, and debate is going on in Canada as well. What is prompting the shift?

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Penpals Are Back

      Jun 19, 2023

      Penpals Are Back
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Finding One’s Tongue

      May 23, 2022

      Finding One’s Tongue
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Great Reading Rethink

      Aug 13, 2022

      The Great Reading Rethink
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Great Reading Rethink

      Aug 12, 2022

      The Great Reading Rethink
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Secret Military Test, Coming Soon to Your Spanish Class: A powerful, precise language aptitude test is entering civilian life.

      Apr 17, 2014

      Imagine a test that could tell you how good you can ultimately get in any foreign language, from Hindi to Welsh, from Igbo to Spanish, before you’ve even learned how to say “hello” or “please pass the butter.” Très alléchant, non?1 Most adults would

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Spreading The Word

      Sep 11, 2022

      Spreading The Word
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Babies Know That Other Languages Are For Communicating

      Jan 25, 2018

      Infants recognize that speech in a language not their own is used for communication, a new study indicates. The results offer new insights into how language is processed at a young age. “By their first birthday, babies understand that foreign languag

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      New Research Debunks Myths About Multilingual Students

      Jun 14, 2018

      Multilingual students, who speak a language or more than one language other than English at home, have improved in reading and math achievement substantially since 2003, according to a new study. This new research debunks a common myth that multiling

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Overcoming Language Barriers

      Mar 16, 2024

      English is overwhelmingly the operative language in academia, business and science worldwide – and being educated in English opens up numerous benefits and opportunities, both locally and globally. However, there are also many challenges associated w

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning - Carmen Muñoz

      Introduction

      The widespread belief that the younger the better in second language acquisition is partly grounded in informal observations of immigrants in natural settings, as well as in evidence from majority language children in school immersion settings from Canada to Catalonia. Certainly, empirical research in those contexts has shown that individuals who begin to learn a second language very early in life generally attain higher levels of proficiency than those who start at a later stage. However, an inferential leap is made in the assumption that learning age will have the same effect on students of a foreign language, when they are exposed to only one speaker of that language (the teacher, who is not usually a native speaker) in only one setting (the classroom) and only during very limited amounts of time. The neglect of environmental factors characteristic of nature-oriented perspectives has, no doubt, contributed to the playing down of differences between natural and formal language learning settings.

      For those of us interested in second language acquisition in the classroom, such an inferential leap is a matter of concern, particularly when it exerts an influence on language-in-education planning policies. From this concern sprang the motivation to embark on a nine-year research project focused on the process of acquisition of a foreign language by learners with different starting ages. The necessary conditions for the research appeared naturally when a change in the school curriculum brought forward the introduction of foreign language instruction, and the old and the new curricula in fact coexisted over a number of years. These circumstances provided the impetus for the BAF (Barcelona Age Factor) Project, which has been the framework for multiple research directions on the various ways in which age affects the process and the product of second language learning in a school setting. Like other age-oriented studies, the BAF Project has examined the effects of the initial age of learning but, in contrast with the majority of studies, this project has also analysed the effects of age across the spectrum of the learning process. Because of its focus on the process of foreign language learning during a limited length of time, the BAF Project has been more concerned with the rate of learning than with ultimate attainment. Equally, due to its formal learning setting, the project has focused on the optimal levels that are realistically attainable through school education, rather than on unattainable native-likeness.

      The chapters in this volume present selected results from the BAF Project. A number of them examine the evidence drawn from formal language learning, in areas such as pronunciation or morphology, for confirmation of previous age-related findings in naturalistic language acquisition. Others explore aspects that have seldom been studied in relation to age differences, such as oral fluency, vocabulary, interactional skills or learning strategies. All of them have the twofold aim of contributing to the study of age-related effects in language learning, while at the same time contributing, empirically and sometimes also methodologically, to the study of a particular area of second language acquisition. Further distinguishing characteristics of these studies are their concern with research of low-proficiency learners in a foreign language setting and the learners’ bilingual condition, which makes the findings relevant for the emerging area of third language acquisition.

      In Chapter 1, The Effects of Age on Foreign Language Learning: The BAF Project, Carmen Muñoz presents the project: its setting, research design and the materials used to elicit the samples of learner language and the learners’ responses that are anaysed in the following chapters. The chapter then provides an overview of the results, which includes a comparison of the performance on a series of tests of two groups of subjects who were followed longitudinally, as well as a general comparison of all of the groups with a different initial age of learning. The discussion of the findings challenges the inferential leap mentioned above arguing that age intervenes in the process of second language learning in school settings in ways that differ from those observed in natural settings, in terms of both rate and of long-term attainment.

      In the next chapter, The Development of English (FL) Perception and Production Skills: Starting Age and Exposure Effects, Natalia Fullana analyses the influence of age of onset of foreign language learning and exposure on the acquisition of a foreign language phonology and argues that these factors are not conclusive determinants for perceiving and producing English sounds in a native-like manner in a formal language learning context. Late starting age tends to result in a somewhat better perception of English segments in the short and mid terms, but not in the long term, and the differences in production are never significant. The author suggests that the lack of any definite effects of starting age and exposure may be due to the limitations in quantity and quality of the input delivered in this type of formal language learning setting.

      In Chapter 3, Age Effects on Oral Fluency Development, Joan Carles Mora investigates age effects on the oral fluency of two groups of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners matched with respect to amount of second language exposure but differing in onset age of learning. The picture-elicited narratives produced by the two learner groups were analysed and evaluated according to a number of well-established quantitative oral fluency measures. In relation to these, the paper suggests that in the analysis of highly dysfluent non-native speech, speech rate may be a more reliable oral fluency measure than pause frequency. The results of the comparison of the two learner groups reveal that late starters outperform early starters on most of the oral fluency measures used and support the view that an early start does not necessarily imply an advantage in the acquisition of a second language in the formal learning context.

      In Chapter 4, Age and Vocabulary Acquisition in EFL, Immaculada Miralpeix uses data from a variety of tasks to analyse vocabulary development in two groups of learners, one that started foreign language learning at 8 and the other that started at 11, when both learner groups had received 726 hours of instruction in English. The chapter provides findings in the area of lexical acquisition, which has not attracted much attention in age-related studies, and explores new ways to analyse lexical data from low-level students (e.g. the D measure). The results generally show differences in free and controlled productive vocabulary in favour of the late starting pupils. Other significant findings are of a methodological kind, including task effects and the relative advantages of different lexical measures in the study of second language lexical acquisition.

      Chapter 5, Accuracy Orders, Rate of Learning and Age in Morphological Acquisition by Carmen Muñoz, analyses the use of a set of English morphological functors by children and adult learners of different proficiency levels. The study provides evidence against the existence of a qualitative difference in the way different-aged students progress in learning to use these forms accurately. It also reveals a superior rate of learning in older than in younger learners, particularly in the initial stages of language acquisition. The role of proficiency level and learning setting are discussed in relation to the comparison of the accuracy orders observed in this study with the average order of those functors shown by previous studies.

      In her contribution, Rate and Route of Acquisition in EFL Narrative Development at Different Ages, Esther Álvarez focuses on the narratives produced by children, adolescents and adults with the aim of outlining the order in which learners of different ages proceed in the use of a variety of linguistic elements in discourse. The author identifies nine developmental stages, in which the morphosyntactic and discourse components interact. A comparison of the learner groups in terms of their assignment to those stages reveals a rate advantage for older learners, which begins to fade when age differences diminish and with longer exposure to the target language.

      Chapter 7, Age and IL Development in Writing, by María Rosa Torras, Teresa Navés, María Luz Celaya and Carmen Pérez-Vidal, considers the issue of the development of EFL written competence as an effect of the interaction between age and instructional time: that is, whether and how the number of hours of instruction affects both the rate of acquisition and the pattern of development at different ages. Results show that an early start at 8 years of age does not involve higher levels of attainment at 16, after 726 hours of instruction. The authors suggest that the amount of exposure to the target language after the age of 12 may be crucial in explaining the results obtained. The analysis of the profiles of development of both groups indicates that neither the domains analysed nor the variables included in them develop in tandem and that their rate of development seems to be affected by age.

      The following three chapters deal with age-related differences that may impinge on the process of learning a foreign language. In Chapter 8, Age, Proficiency Level and Interactional Skills: Evidence from Breakdowns in Production, Gisela Grañena focuses on learners’ appeals for assistance during the completion of a picture-elicited narrative task. The aim of the study is threefold: to explore how learners of different ages and proficiency levels demonstrate a gap in their interlanguage when faced with a production breakdown during task-based interaction; to examine the type of input provided by the learners’ interlocutor; and finally to investigate the occurrence of uptake as an indication of potential acquisition. Results suggest that older and more proficient learners elicit help in a more explicit manner and that the degree of explicitness of the learners’ signal has an effect on their interlocutor’s response. Age may also be an explaining factor of differences in the level of uptake among the more proficient learners.

      In Chapter 9, Reported Strategy Use and Age, Elsa Tragant and Mia Victori examine the use of language learning strategies by different groups of learners on the basis of their answers to a series of questions in a written questionnaire. The authors find significant variation in learners’ use of strategies within and across three different data collection times. The study also follows a group of learners over an extended period of time and finds that learners tend to undergo developmental changes in strategy use as they increase in age, regardless of their level of proficiency or learning stage, although the changes are not always systematic. It is also suggested by the findings that students’ reported use of strategies varies depending on the skill under investigation, which may indicate that their domains of perceived strategic knowledge may not develop homogeneously for all skills.

      Finally in Chapter 10, Language Learning Motivation and Age, Elsa Tragant reports on a study of the levels and types of motivation expressed by different-aged learners in their answers to a series of questions included in the students’ written questionnaire. Motivation seems to be stronger among older students than among younger students, which may be due, according to the author, to the greater awareness of the role of English worldwide at more advanced ages. The finding that having students start learning English earlier does not significantly alter the level of motivation in students makes the author hypothesise that more drastic changes may be needed in the educational system to raise motivational levels. The types of orientations identified in the study vary with learners’ age: older students mention extrinsic types of orientation while students in primary school make more references to attitudes towards the learning situation, which may also explain the lower levels of motivation these students show.

      The book is addressed to professionals and graduate students interested in the field of second language acquisition. It will also be of interest to language teachers, language planners and all of those aiming to improve the learning of foreign languages. The book will, hopefully, show them that introducing a foreign language earlier in the school does not automatically result in general higher levels of proficiency and that the conditions of the learning environment cannot be ignored.

      Chapter 1

      The Effects of Age on Foreign Language Learning: The BAF Project

      CARMEN MUÑOZ

      The idea that there is a critical age for language learning that finishes before puberty was popularised by the Canadian brain surgeons W. Penfield and L. Roberts in their book Speech and Brain Mechanisms (1959). Penfield enthusiastically defended an early start for second language learning, basing his ideas on his studies on brain damage and his experience with his own children. According to Penfield, the time to begin schooling in second languages was between the ages of 4 and 10. Theoretical support came soon from E. Lenneberg who, in his Biological Foundations of Language (1967), noted that the rapid growth of nerve connections, which ceases at puberty, coincides with the child’s acquisition of language. Lenneberg supported his neurological account of the Critical Period Hypothesis (henceforth CPH) with evidence from aphasic patients, who showed a more rapid recovery if the damage had taken place before puberty, and with feral children, children who had suffered social isolation and had not learnt language before puberty. Their inability to learn language after that time, Lenneberg argued, constituted evidence that language acquisition was impossible after the critical period.

      However, the extant evidence of language learning by feral children is so scarce that it cannot be used to provide strong support for either this or opposing views. The case of Genie, a girl who had lived in social isolation until the age of 13;7, proved that language acquisition was not impossible after puberty, though it seemed to be incomplete (see Curtiss, 1977). Linguistic evidence from the Genie case is still in need of clarification (Jones, 1995), and the regression she suffered after several traumatic events underlines the fact that the social and psychological circumstances of feral children cannot constitute valid evidence for a firm conclusion regarding the critical period for language acquisition. Likewise, the pathological kind of evidence provided by aphasic patients needs to be treated with caution. More relevant evidence has recently come from the field of the acquisition of sign language, which suggests that morphology and syntax may be affected by late acquisition in the case of deaf persons who are not exposed to their first language (sign language) until later childhood or adulthood (Newport, 1990).

      From a theoretical point of view, the idea of a critical period sprang from an innatist conception of language, which the prevalence of Chomsky’s proposals in the field of linguistics in the second half of the 20th century strongly reinforced. A biologically determined period for language acquisition fitted perfectly well in a theory that concedes a crucial role to biology in human linguistic competence. Recently, however, the field of child language acquisition seems to be drifting away from formal linguistics proposals, disappointed by their failure to explain how human children become skilled users of a natural language. Tomasello (2003) argues that one of the reasons for this failure lies in the continuity hypothesis, which attempts to explain children’s language in terms of the structures and rules used to account for adult language. The best known theoretical alternatives to generative grammar at the moment, the connectionist accounts (e.g. Elman, 2001) and the construction-based (usage-based) accounts (see Tomasello, 2003), are both data based. In the latter perspective, one of the reasons underlying children’s observed advantage in second language acquisition may be the fact that they are more flexible learners than adults in skilled activities.

      The CPH and Second Language Acquisition

      The study of second language acquisition originated from the field of first language acquisition, and has since been fed by hypotheses and theories first developed in the parent field. Among these, the hypothesis of the existence of a critical period for (first and second) language acquisition soon motivated a wealth of empirical studies in the 1970s. The work of that decade was summarised in the following three generalisations:

      (1)  Adults proceed through early stages of syntactic and morphological development faster than children (where time and exposure are held constant).

      (2)  Older children acquire faster than younger children (again, in early stages of syntactic and morphological development where time and exposure are held constant).

      (3)  Acquirers who begin natural exposure to second language during childhood generally achieve higher second language proficiency than those beginning as adults. (Krashen et al., 1979/1982, reprint: 161)

      These generalisations led Krashen et al. (1979) to make a very important distinction between ultimate attainment and rate. Older learners have a superior learning rate, particularly in the first stages of the acquisition of morphosyntactic aspects, while younger learners are slower at first, but eventually show a higher level of ultimate attainment. The latter was held to constitute evidence for the existence of a critical period, beyond which second language acquisition cannot reach native-like levels of proficiency.

      Since then, a large number of studies have compared native-likeness among younger and older starters. The most robust evidence for the existence of maturational constraints in second language acquisition seemed to be provided by the study by Johnson and Newport (1989) of Korean and Chinese learners of English using grammaticality judgement tests (Long, 1990). Many other studies have also focused on the acquisition of second language (L2) morphosyntax (e.g. Coppieters, 1987; DeKeyser, 2000; Johnson &s Newport, 1991; Patkowski, 1980; Schachter, 1996).

      However, agreement is far from complete. Johnson and Newport’s findings have been questioned on both methodological and empirical grounds (but see a recent confirmatory study in DeKeyser, 2000). Methodological criticisms can be found in Bialystok (1997), and Bialystok and Hakuta (1999). Replications of Johnson and Newport’s (1989) seminal study have cast some doubt on the neurobiologically-based explanation of the younger learners’ advantage. For example, replications have found evidence of native language effects (Birdsong & Molis, 2001; van Wuijtswinkel, 1994, cited in Kellerman, 1995) and of post-maturational age-related effects (Birdsong & Molis, 2001), which are held to constitute grounds for refutation of the CPH (Pulvermüller & Schumann, 1994).

      Other studies have also found evidence of native-likeness among post-puberty starters, which appears to disprove the CPH in relation to L2 acquisition. Examples are, in the area of Universal Grammar principles, the work by Birdsong (1992; Birdsong & Molis, 2001), and White and Genesee (1996); in the areas of perceptual abilities, production skills and underlying linguistic competence, the report by Ioup et al. (1994); and in the area of pronunciation, Bongaerts et al. (1997), and Bongaerts (1999), among others.

      On the other hand, evidence has accumulated that an early start does not always guarantee native-like achievement (see Harley & Wang, 1997). Hyltenstam and Abrahamsson (2000, 2003) claim that native-like proficiency in a second language is unattainable even for very early starters due to the strong influence that maturation has on second language outcomes. Further, these authors maintain that previous research has failed to find non-native features because they may be imperceptible except in detailed and systematic linguistic analyses, that is, the sort of analyses that should be undertaken with apparently exceptional late learners.

      In sum, although an early starters’ long-term advantage (for ultimate attainment) is recognised, the CPH itself does not seem to have unanimous support at present (see Birdsong (1999) for a review of the two positions). On the other hand, late starters’ short-term advantage for learning rate was firmly established by Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle’s findings (1978). These researchers conducted a large study in a natural setting involving close to 100 subjects, English learners of Dutch in The Netherlands, ranging in age from 3 years to adult. Subjects were tested three times (some four) for a period of approximately one year: 6 weeks, 4–5 months, and 9–10 months after the first exposure to Dutch. Results from the first testing time showed that the teenagers did better than the two younger groups, suggesting an older learners’ superior rate of learning. However, they also did better than the adult group in most measures, probably due, in the authors’ view, to motivational and environmental factors. With longer residence in The Netherlands, the teenagers’ advantage over the younger groups diminished, and by the third time the scores of the 6–7-year-old learners were approaching those of the 12–15-year-old learners. The older learners were observed to be especially good at syntactic and morphological rule acquisition, and also at metalinguistic ability and vocabulary. The authors noted that the non-conversational nature of the tasks used was clearly cognitively demanding and context-reduced, which may have favoured the older learners (1978: 1123). Differences were smaller and less persistent in listening comprehension and storytelling, and the older subjects were only better at pronunciation in the first test session. Interestingly, a 12–15-year-old native Dutch-speaking group did better on the morphology- and vocabulary-related tasks than a 6–7-year-old native-speaking group, supporting the interpretation that older L2 learners have a maturational advantage over younger L2 learners in academic tasks of this kind, in accordance with their superior cognitive development.

      The issue of time, and not just the initial moment of learning (age of onset), has proved to be crucial in age-related studies. As seen above, in a naturalistic learning situation with unlimited exposure to the target language, the advantage of older learners begins to disappear after one year (Snow & Hoefnagel-Höhle, 1978). Snow (1983) points out that data for studies in which adults show superior results were collected during the first two years of residence or social immersion. This observation may be extended to younger and older children, since as Slavoff and Johnson’s (1995) study reported, no difference was found between a group of learners who arrived in the United States between the ages of 7–9 and a group whose age at arrival was between 10–12, after only three years of residence. This is why it has been suggested that a minimum of five years of residence (Snow, 1983) and, more recently, ten years (DeKeyser, 2000) may be necessary in CPH studies in order to ensure methodologically that it is ultimate attainment, and not rate, that is being measured.

      Theoretical Explanations of the CPH

      The theoretical explanations of the CPH are many and varied (see Singleton & Ryan, 2004, for a recent complete review), but the most influential proposals have been of two types: neurological and developmental-cognitive. Neurological explanations were popularised by Penfield (Penfield & Roberts, 1959), who appealed to the loss of brain plasticity with maturation, and by Lenneberg (1967), who elaborated a proposal based on the process of lateralisation of language functions in the left hemisphere (see for related proposals Diller, 1981; Molfese, 1977; and Seliger, 1978). Later, the reduction of plasticity in the language areas of the brain more or less until puberty has been seen as an effect of the process of myelination affecting neurons with maturation (Long, 1990; Pulvermüller & Schumann, 1994). More recently, attention has been paid to the spatial representation in the brain of early and late L2 acquisition (Abutalebi et al., 2001; Kim et al., 1997; Perani et al., 1998; Wattendorf et al., 2001). The available evidence now supports a dynamic view in which brain structure and organisation may be as much the consequence as the cause of L2 learning (Abutalebi et al., 2001; Perani & Abutalebi, 2005; Perani et al., 2003; Perani et al., 1998), a view shared by a number of cognitive psychologists (see Bialystok & Hakuta, 1999).

      Maturational explanations have come from theorists working within a nativist framework, in which Lenneberg’s proposals have been fully compatible with Chomsky’s linguistic theories. One of these explanations is the Competition Hypothesis proposed by Felix (1985): although post-pubertal learners still have access to the innate acquisition system, this system competes with the more general problem-solving cognitive system which develops beyond the Piagetian stage of formal operations. In contrast, the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis, proposed by Bley-Vroman (1989), denies adults direct access to Universal Grammar. According to this hypothesis, the inborn mechanism that children have is no longer operative in adulthood and adults must rely on general problem-solving procedures instead. The lack of access to Universal Grammar explains the fact that second language acquisition is not as successful in adults as in children.

      DeKeyser’s (2000) interpretation of the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis attempts to explain not just the young learners’ long-term superiority but also older learners’ short-term superiority. According to DeKeyser, ‘somewhere between the ages of 6–7 and 16–17, everybody loses the mental equipment required for the implicit induction of the abstract patterns underlying a human language’ (2000: 518). Hence, it is the younger learners’ use of implicit learning mechanisms that explains their advantage over older learners. This formulation agrees with Lenneberg’s characterisation of the critical period: ‘… the incidence of ‘language-learning-blocks’ rapidly increases after puberty. Also automatic acquisition from mere exposure to a given language seems to disappear after this age, and foreign languages have to be taught and learned through a conscious and labored effort’ (1967: 176, my emphasis). The superiority of implicit mechanisms explains the younger learners’ advantage in a natural setting: children do better in terms of ultimate attainment because many elements of language are hard to learn explicitly, especially for those adults who have limited verbal ability.

      In contrast, older learners learn faster because their capacities for explicit learning let them take short cuts (De Keyser, 2003: 335), an ability that explains their advantage in the initial stages. That is, adult second language acquisition (SLA) is mainly explicit, and adults rely on analytical thinking to acquire their second language. It is important to note that DeKeyser argues in favour of the existence of a critical period for language acquisition, provided that the CPH is understood as applying only to implicit learning of abstract structures.

      Relevance of the CPH for Foreign Language Learning

      With very few exceptions, such as DeKeyser and Larson-Hall (2005), the L2 learning context has not been included as an important factor in the discussion of the CPH, and findings from second language learning in naturalistic contexts have been generalised to foreign language learning in instructed contexts. Therefore, a critical examination of the CPH with the foreign language learning situation in mind may be in order here. Colombo (1982) outlined five aspects in the analysis of a critical period: onset; offset; an intrinsic maturational component; an external component; and a system that is affected. The first two components, determining the relevant age limits, and the last one, determining the aspects of language involved, appear as most relevant for foreign language learning.

      The age limits of a privileged period for learning languages may constitute essential information to take into account when deciding not only when to begin the teaching of a foreign language at school, but also the period in which instruction is to take place, and probably the intensity required at different moments of the process as well. Unfortunately, and surprisingly in view of the widely held idea that the younger the better, the age limits of the critical period are not clear. Lenneberg (1967) suggests that the lower bound of the critical period is situated at age 2 because this is the moment at which the first two-word combinations appear: it is these combinations, according to Lenneberg, that mark the onset of syntax. The higher bound of the critical period for Lenneberg is situated at puberty and caused by hemispheric lateralisation. Seliger (1978), also on the basis of studies showing different types of aphasia in different age groups, argues in favour of different timetables for different language abilities. This is the view held by Long (1990), who suggests different offset points for different language aspects: age 6 for phonology and 17 for morphosyntax. More recent evidence, however, has shown that speech perception abilities develop in the first months of life, and may wane as early as 6–9 months of age or, more specifically, become attuned to the native language (see Doughty, 2003, for a review).

      The most widely held view of the CPH emphasises the need to begin L2 acquisition before the end of the critical period. For example, Long (1990: 252f) in his formulation of the maturational state hypothesis characterises successful learners as ‘… those learning (or at least beginning to learn) an SL during the sensitive period…’ (my emphasis). This raises a very important question for foreign language learning, in which exposure to the target language and possibilities for learning are very limited: what if the process of learning a second language begins during the critical period but learners are still in the initial stages by the time of offset? That is to say, how much of the language is to be learnt before the end of the critical period in order to benefit from the advantage of an early learning onset? Arguably, in a situation of foreign language learning with limited language exposure, the actual period in which second language learning takes place may be more relevant to the learning process than age of onset. A related point is made by Patkowski (2003: 183), who referring to the methodological requirements for studies designed to test the CPH, claims that ‘early’ acquisition should consist of subjects who clearly have had the opportunity not only to begin but also to complete their second language acquisition during childhood. Patkowski goes on to argue that the CPH specifically applies to language acquisition under sustained conditions of naturalistic or informal exposure thereby excluding its generalisation to situations of instructed foreign language learning.

      The second aspect of Colombo’s analysis of the critical period that appears particularly relevant to foreign language learning is the system that is affected, that is, the aspects of language that are subject to maturational constraints (in a strong maturational position), or by age effects (in a more recent perspective, see Birdsong, 2005). Again, no consensus has been reached to date. Lenneberg (1967) emphasised the effects on morphosyntax and phonology. Scovel (1988) argued that phonology was the only aspect affected by age constraints because of its neuromotor etiology. In contrast, Long (1990) held that all aspects of language are affected including lexis. As will be seen below, some empirical evidence of differential age effects has been found.

      Empirical Evidence from School Settings

      As stated previously, the findings concerning the long-term advantage of younger starters come from studies of naturalistic second language acquisition, that is, contexts of full immersion in the language community. Two other learning settings are examined below: school immersion and foreign language learning.

      Studies conducted in Canada show that in general early immersion students obtain better results than late immersion students, but naturally the amount of exposure is also higher (see, e.g. Swain, 1984). Even so, several researchers have reported findings from comparisons between early immersion and late immersion students, in which no linear relationship has been found between time and proficiency (e.g. Cummins, 1983; Harley, 1986; Swain, 1981). For example, a study contrasting performance in French of early immersion students, who had accumulated over 4000 hours starting at age 5, with late immersion students, who had accumulated 1400 hours of French starting at age 12, found the former group to outperform the latter solely on listening comprehension, while the late immersion group performed better on reading comprehension, and there were no differences between the groups on a cloze test. For the authors, these results suggested the interdependence of academic skills across languages, that is, older learners come to the acquisition task equipped with L1 reading and writing skills, lexical and grammatical knowledge (Lapkin et al., 1980: 124–125). In fact, Cummins (1980, 1981) and Cummins and Swain (1986) have argued that older learners show higher mastery of L2 syntax, morphology and other literacy-related skills such as vocabulary and reading comprehension, due to their greater cognitive maturity (see also Harley, 1986; Snow & Hoefnagel-Höhle, 1978). However, they do not show an advantage in the areas of pronunciation and oral fluency because these appear to be among the least cognitively demanding aspects of both L1 and L2 proficiency. That is, measures of basic interpersonal communicative skills may be less sensitive to individual cognitive differences and to academic development.

      Several Scandinavian studies provide support for Cummins’ proposition that older learners have an advantage on context-reduced, cognitively demanding tasks. For example, Ekstrand (1976) analysed the proficiency in Swedish (L2) of over 2000 learners aged 8–17 years who had been in Sweden for an average of 10.5 months. A positive correlation was found between age and performance on all tasks, except on a test of free oral production in which students described the contents of pictures. On that test, which may be regarded as a relatively context-embedded, natural communicative task, performance showed the strongest relation with length of residence or time, and not with age.

      Similar results were found in a study that compared early immersion, middle immersion and late immersion students with comparable amounts of instructional time (Turnbull et al., 1998). The early immersion students clearly outperformed students from middle and late immersion programmes on speaking ability, but did not do better on a multiple-choice test of listening comprehension or on any measures of French literacy. According to the authors, these findings support the theory that in school settings older learners accomplish some aspects of L2 learning more efficiently, but they make the proviso that older students may have higher aptitude and stronger motivation (i.e. they self-select more than the other groups).

      In contrast to the wealth of research studies on the effects of age on naturalistic second language acquisition, very few studies have investigated these effects in formal learning situations, in which the amount of exposure to the target language is very limited. After short periods of instruction (e.g. 25 minutes (Asher & Price, 1967), 18 weeks (Ekstrand, 1976), 1 year (Grinder et al., 1962)), older children show a faster learning rate, confirming the rate advantage of older children in the initial learning stages in an instructed situation as well.

      After longer periods of time, younger starters do not outperform later starters either. In the EPAL experiment in Sweden (Holmstrand, 1982), with the same total amount of lessons, no differences were found in Grade 6 between a group with initial instruction in English in Grade 1 and a group who

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1
      pFad - Phonifier reborn

      Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

      Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


      Alternative Proxies:

      Alternative Proxy

      pFad Proxy

      pFad v3 Proxy

      pFad v4 Proxy