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Children vs. Adults in Second Language Learning

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51 views6 pages

Children vs. Adults in Second Language Learning

Uploaded by

q.ne1997
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Children vs.

Adults in Second-Language Learning


Steinberg, An Introduction to Psycholinguistics (Chapter 6)

Q. “Children are better than adults in second language learning”.


How far do you agree with this statement? Justify your answer.

There is a controversy about who is the better learner in learning a second


language, children or adults. Some people say that children are the better
learners and other people believe that adults are the better learners.
Children are perceived to be better than adults in second language
learning. This is a common belief. But the question is what factors prove
adults or children as the better learners.

According to Danny Steinberg (2006, p.123), there are two groups of


factors affecting second-language learning. There are Psychological and
Social factors. Psychological factors are divided into three: these
are intellectual processing, memory, and motor skills. Social factors are
divided into two: these are the natural situation and the classroom
situation.

(I) Psychological factors affecting second-language learning

1. Intellectual processing
2. Memory
3. Motor skills

1. Intellectual processing
Intellectual processing refers to the ways we use to learn the grammatical
structures and rules (Steinberg, 2006, p.125); someone can explain them
to you or you can figure them out for yourself. The first way
is explication and the second is induction.

Explication is the process whereby the structures and rules of a second


language are explained to the learners. We usually find it in the teaching
and learning process at schools. The teacher explains to the students the
structures and the rules of grammar. However, explication is not done by
caretakers when children are acquiring their first language.

On the other hand, induction refers to the process whereby the structures
and the rules of a second language are learnt through exposure self-
discovery. The learners find out the general structures of the target
language by themselves through interaction. Explication may be a faster
means of learning than induction, since induction requires that a learner
be repeatedly exposed to words, phrase and sentences along with relevant
situations that give some indications as to their meaning (Steinberg, 2006,
p.125).

Based on Table 6.1 (Steinberg, 2006, p.128), children are high


in induction and low in explication abilities, but adults are high in
both explication and induction. Children are good in acquiring second
language when they get a great exposure to it. It is difficult for us to
explain such a rule as Subject + Predicate + Object to a child. Children
need as many examples as possible for their interaction because they have
a great ability in imitating. Adult students have maturity and an
understanding of priorities that many younger students do not. According
to Knowles (1976), ‘a prime characteristic of adultness is the need and
capacity to be self-directing’, in other words, adults will, to some extent,
‘direct’ their own learning agendas (Andre Sutton, 2001, p.386). This is
perhaps the reason why adults are better in explication. They know how
to behave for learning a language in a classroom or when they are taught
by other people who have mastered the language.

2. Memory

Watch these two videos:

http://hechingered.org/content/rote-memorization-overrated-or-underrated_3351/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-UbSnjvUGA

Memory is essential and crucial to learning. Learning a language requires


a good memory. We use it in acquiring vocabulary, learning grammar,
etc. If we do not have a good memory it is difficult for us to learn
language, even our first language. There is no induction without memory.

The kind of simple memorization where words, phrases and sentences are
remembered just as they are, is called ‘rote’ memorization (Steinberg,
2006, p.125). It involves the memorization of the alphabet, numbers,
multiplication tables, etc. through repetition and imitation. Items are
‘stored’ as they are without analysis or processing. The rote memory
ability of very young children seems to be excellent in that they easily
absorb a phenomenal amount of data, with some decline around 8 years
of age and with more decline around 12 years of age. By the age of 50,
there appears to be a decrease of about 20 per cent in the number of brain
cells in the cortex; by 75 years of age that loss will have reached
approximately 40 per cent (Steinberg, 2006, p.126). It is a normal loss in
all humans. To compensate this kind of decreasing of memory in adult
age, adults usually develop some strategies in learning and seek for more
practice and exposure.

3. Motor skills

Motor skills involve the use of the articulators of speech (tongue, lips,
vocal cords, etc.) for the production of the sounds of a second language
(Steinberg, 2006, p.127). Based on research, somewhere around the age
of 10 and 12 years the ability to acquire new motor skills begins to
decline. Evidence shows that particular motor skills of speech
pronunciation are best developed at a younger age, where the muscles are
more flexible.

Younger children in immigrant families are found to acquire perfect or


near-perfect accents, while their older siblings or parents generally do
not, even when these older people have mastered other aspects of the
language such as its syntax and vocabulary (Steinberg, 2006, p.128). This
proves that children have a better ability in motor skills than adults.

(II) Social Factors Affecting Second-Language Learning


Social factors are divided into two parts. The first is the
natural situation and the second is the classroom situation.

1. The natural situation:

This situation is similar to that in which the first language is acquired.


Language is learned in situations related to everyday life. The typical
case: a young child living in another country and learning the language
through interaction with other children. Adults, on the other hand, have a
limited opportunity to experience appropriate second-language data. For
them social interaction mainly occurs through the medium of language.
The older the person is, the greater the role that language plays in social
interaction. With age, language is more essential for social interaction.
Adults have a problem with the natural situation. Language is
experienced in conjunction with the objects, situations and events of
everyday life; it is not taught in a classroom (Steinberg, 2006, p.131).
Socially, adults have a difficulty in interaction with other adults.
Steinberg (2006) argues:

“…social interaction mainly occurs through the medium of language.


Few native-speaker adults are willing to devote time to interacting with
someone who does not speak the language…In contrast, the young child
is often readily accepted by other children, and even adults…Adults
rarely find themselves in similar situations…Without such acceptance,
second-language learning in a natural situation can hardly begin” (p.
131).

This fact shows that younger children will do better in the natural
situation. It needs more effort for adults to deal with this kind of situation.

2. The Classroom Situation:


It involves the situation of the school classroom. It is a planned,
artificially constructed situation where the teacher is the planner.
Language itself is the prime aspect of life around which everything
revolves; the teacher is the prime source of the new language. The
classroom is isolated from other social life. Learning languages takes
place as part of a group and not as an individual. Other characteristics of
the classroom situation include social adjustment as learners must follow
classroom rules and directions. Older children and adults will do better in
a classroom situation.

From the factors above, we can see that children are better than adults in
acquiring second language. Children are low in explication but have high
ability in induction. Regarding memory, children have a great ability in
memorizing. It is expected that children can learn faster than adults
because of a better memory. Although adults may devise memory
strategies and seek out more practice; this places an additional burden on
them, one that the child does not have (Steinberg, 2006, p.132). The
environment of the natural situation also gives adults some additional
burden because they have to adjust their behavior in order that the other
adults (may be a native speaker) accept them (considering that children
have already had social acceptance because children use language not
essential to social interaction (Steinberg, 2006, p.132). Concerning motor
skills, children are generally better than adults at acquiring native-
speaker pronunciation in a second language.

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