Children vs. adults in second-language learning

Children vs. adults in second-language learning

1. A common belief

   • Children are better than adults in learning a 2L
     • Young learners pick up another language just by exposure and without teaching
   • Factors involved in 2L acquisition
     • Psychological
       • Intellectual processing
         • Analytical determination of grammatical structures and rules
       • Memory
       • Motor skills
         • Speech articulators
           • Tongue
           • Lips
           • Teeth
           • Vocal chords, etc
     • Social
       • Situations, settings, and interactions that affect the learning of a 2L
         • Natural situation
           • Family
           • Play
           • Workplace
         • Classroom situation
         • Learning place
           • Foreign community
             • EFL
           • Community of the first language
             • ESL

2. Basic psychological factors affecting second-language learning

   • Intellectual processing
     • Explication
       • Rules and structures explained
       • Given in the first language
       • A 2L cannot be learned only through explanation
       • Rarely used with children
     • Induction
       • Learning rules by self-discovery
         • Hear-analyze-discover
       • Figure out how those rules are to be applied in other cases
   • Memory
     • Crucial to learning
     • Retain a connection between words and the experience of
       • Seeing
       • Touching
       • Smelling
     • Accumulate a vas amount of
       • Speech
       • Relevant situational data
     • Episodic memory
       • Situations
         • Who is talking to whom
     • Under 7 years children
       • Ability at rote memorization
   • Motor skills
     • Control of the organs of speech
     • Around the age of 12
       • The ability to acquire new motor skills begins to decline.

3. Other important variables

   • Motivation
     • 1- or 2-year-old children
       • Doesn't need motivation
       • With input will learn automatically
     • 4- or 5-year-old children
       • May need motivation to learn a 2L
   • Attitude
     • Affects
       • Determination
       • Persistence
       • Memory functioning
       • Focus on the TL

4. Social situations affecting second-language learning

   • The natural
     • Similar to learning the 1L
     • Language is experienced
       • Objects
       • Situations
       • Everyday life events
     • Decline with age
   • The classroom
     • Planned situation
       • Social adjustments
       • Long periods of concentration
       • Home study
       • Explicit teaching of grammar
     • Improves with age
       • Adults learn better than children
   • Community context
     • Acces to a natural situation outside the class
     • Supplement their classroom learning

5. Who is better? Children or adults?

   • Children
     • High
       • Natural situation
       • Inductive
       • Memory
       • Motor skills
     • Low
       • Explicative
   • Adults
     • Low
       • Natural situation
       • Motor skills
     • High
       • Induction
         • Is not helpful in syntax
       • Explicative
     • Medium
       • Memory
   • Older children
     • Medium
       • Natural situation
     • Medium/high
       • Memory
       • Motor skills

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