Age and SLA

Age and SLA

1. Best Age to learn a language

   • Ammar, Lightbrown and Spada
     • Metalinguistic knowledge (whether learned explicitly or implicitly) is typically greater with adolescents than with very young children.
       • A, L and S's article studied 5th and 6th graders
         • Those who showed some signs of metalinguistic knowledge were more successful (and faster) at acquiring L2.
       • Singleton also acknowledged that knowledge of "a" language helps in acquisition
   • Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) Digest
     • Younger learners are more successful in pronunciation than older students; but other aspects of success are not guaranteed
   • Ortega
     • Age may play a role, but it's much more complex than a biological issue; many contextual factors must be accounted for.
       • Singleton would agree.
       • Marinova-Todd would also agree.
     • Studies by Long suggest that adult learners have an advantage for maybe 1-3 years, but young learners will have a greater long term advantage.
       • A study by Muñoz, however, suggests that younger learner never catch up to the advantage of the older starting learners.
   • Conclusion: there is no consensus among researchers. Many, many factors of the learner's context affect the outcome of the success of the acquisition.

2. Primary Issues in age and SLA:

   • Information supporting the claim that younger learners are more successful is anecdotal.
     • Address by a CAL Digest (By Don Snow) paper that gives the 5 myths
     • Marinova-Todd
       • Argues that studies do not support the claims that adults are unsuccessful at SLA
       • Researchers have made 3 mistakes
         • 1. Misinterpretation
           • Speed of young children acquiring L2 quickly is simply anecdotal information
         • 2. Misattribution
           • Neurobiological studies have faulty conclusions because of misattributing (incorrectly connecting) the changes that happen in the brain to language learning.
         • 3. Misemphasis
           • Research has ignored those adult learners who have sucessfully acquired an L2 and focused primarily on the unsuccessful learners
   • Age may very well be related to sucess/rate of SLA; but this CANNOT be confused with biology alone.
     • Marinova-Todd suggests that age related differences are connected to the "situation of learning" (environmental factors) rather than the "capacity" (biological) of learning
     • Singleton also affects are more than age related. A "desire" to learn is another factor.
       • Motivation may help or hinder
         • Motivation may be different at different ages.
     • CAL article suggests more than biological issues: also psychological and social--yes, these might be different at different ages