LING212 SLA How does age affect SLA

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LING212- SLAHow does age affect SLA?

• Florencia Franceschina

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1. Some observable facts

• Older is better in the short term
• Younger is better in the long term
• Even very extensive exposure does not guarantee
  native-like attainment

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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)

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Snow and Hoefnagel-Hoehle (1978)

• L1 English / L2 Dutch
• Immersion
• Tasks 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

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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

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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)

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Long exposure does not guarantee success

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

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Other differences between adult and child SLA

• Younger and older learners make different
  types of mistakes in certain areasExample
  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

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2. Accounts of age effects

• Critical period
• vs.
• General age factors

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Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)

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

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General age factors

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

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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.

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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.

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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.