How does age affect SLA?

1. Some observable facts

A. Older is better in the short term

B. Younger is better in the long term

C. Even very extensive exposure does not guarantee native-like attainment

Older is better

Older learners have been observed to have an advantage in terms of rate of acquisition in the initial stages of SLA, both

– In naturalistic settings(e.g., Snow and Hoefnagel-Hoehle, 1978)

– In instructed settings(e.g., six studies in Garcia-Mayo and Garcia-Lecumberri, 2003)

Snow and Hoefnagel-Hoehle (1978)

L1 English / L2 DutchImmersionTasks: Pronunciation, auditory discrimination,

morphology, sentence repetition, sentence translation, sentence judgement, story comprehension, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test

Findings: After 3 months’ residence: adults and adolescents

outperformed children on tests After 10 months’ residence: the children caught up

Garcia-Lecumberri and Gallardo (2003)

L1 Spanish/Basque / L2 English

Instructional setting

Start age: 4, 8, 11

Mean time-span of exposure: 6 years for all

Tasks: vowel/consonant discrimination, spoken production (measures of intelligibility, degree of foreign accent, overall performance)

Most results indicate an advantage for the late starters

Younger is better

Immigrant studies have shown that there is a negative correlation between age of arrival (AoA) and level of L2 attainment

Examples:- Oyama (1976, 1978)- Patkowski (1980)- Johnson and Newport (1989)- Hyltenstam (1992)

Long exposure does not guarantee success

Example:

Coppieters (1987) 21 L2 French nearnatives LoR in France: 5.5-37 years task: intuitions about grammar none of them was within the NS range

Other differences between adult and child SLA

Younger and older learners make different types of mistakes in certain areas

Example: Lasagaster and Doiz (2003)

written production, L2 English11/15/17 year-olds - younger learners make more spelling mistakes- younger learners resort to codeswitching more often- older learners make more tense mistakes, but they use more complex language than the younger ones

2. Accounts of age effects

Critical period

vs.

General age factors

Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)

Lenneberg’s original formulation (1967)

Evidence: – Recovery from brain damage (Lenneberg, 1967)– Feral children (e.g., Genie - Curtiss, 1977)– Late FLA in deaf signers (Mayberry, 1993)

General age factors

Example:

Bialystok (1997), Bialystok and Hakuta (1994)argue against a cut-off point, and for a continuous decline of language learning abilities

References

Bialystok, E. 1997: The structure of age: in search of barriers to SLA. Second Language Research 13, 2: 116-137.

Bialystok, E. and K. Hakuta. 1994: In other words: the science and psychology of second language acquisition. New York: Basic Books.

Coppieters, R. 1987: Competence differences between native and near-native speakers. Language 63, 544-573.

Curtiss, S. 1977: Genie: a psycholinguistic study of a modern-day "wild child". New York: Academic Press.

Garcia Lecumberri, M. L. and F. Gallardo. 2003: English FL sounds in school learners of different ages, in M. D. P. Garcia Mayo and M. L. Garcia Lecumberri, eds. Age and the acquisition of English as a foreign language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pp. 115-135.

Garcia Mayo, M. D. P. and M. L. Garcia Lecumberri. (eds.) 2003: Age and the acquisition of English as a foreign language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Hyltenstam, K. 1992: Non-native features of near-native speakers. On the ultimate attainment of childhood L2 learners, in R. J. Harris, ed. Cognitive processing in bilinguals. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Pp. 351-368.

Johnson, J. and E. Newport. 1989: Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology 21, 60-99.

References

Lasagabaster, D. and A. Doiz. 2003: Maturational constraints on foreign language written production, in M. D. P. Garcia Mayo and M. L. Garcia Lecumberri, eds. Age and the acquisition of English as a foreign language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pp. 136-160.

Lenneberg, E. H. 1967: Biological foundations of language. New York: John Wiley.

Mayberry, R. I. 1993: First language acquisition after childhood differs from second language acquisition: the case of ASL. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 36, 1258-1270.

Oyama, S. 1976: A sensitive period for the acquisition of a non-native phonological system. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 5, 3: 261-283.

Oyama, S. 1978: The sensitive period and comprehension of speech. Working Papers on Bilingualism 16, 1-17.

Patkowski, M. 1980: The sensitive period for the acquisition of syntax in a second language. Language Learning 30, 449-472.

Snow, C. E. and M. Hoefnagel-Hoehle. 1978: The critical period for language acquisition: evidence from second language learning. Child Development 49, 1114-1128.

Reading

Singleton, D. 1995: Introduction: a critical look at the Critical Period Hypothesis in SLA research. In D. Singleton and Z. Lengyel (eds.): The age factor in second language acquisition. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pp. 1-29.