Age as an individual
Difference in SLA
= Muhammad Sajid Us Salam
= MPhil Linguistics
= The Islamia University Bahawalpur,
= Cupidlucid@gmail.comIndividual differences
>This area studies the ways in which
individual people differ in their
behavior.
>Each person has an individual profile
of characteristics, abilities and
challenges that result from learning
and development.AGE
idely Held Lay Belief
Younger L2 learner generally does
better than older learners.
Critical Period Hypothesis
There is a fixed span of years during which
language learning can take place naturally
and effortlessly, and after which it is not
possible to be completely successful.+ Optimum period for language
acquisition falls within the first ten
years of life, when the brain
retains its plasticity.+ Difficulty of comparing the results of studiesLongitudinal Cross Sectional || Experimental
| Groups of tearners | Groups of learners Investigates the
—— 1 Effects of attempts
ty i - to teach learners
Same 2. ay * varying in age
Startin: Different | | Individuals | Number 7
Tine Starting Began of specific features of
times B Years an L2.
Snow,
Hoefnagel, || Burstall NX Zo Neufeld (1978)
Hohle (1975) Oyama (1976)
(1978)!The studies have also varied in how
they have measured learning.
"The result obtained by these studies fails to agree.
{=e
|
The age issue remains an important one
|
| | |The case for an early start
language education is strengthened.
Language teachers will need to identify different
approaches and techniques to suit the two
kinds to learners.In order to untangle the research results, it is
helpful to consider a number of separate but
related questions.1. The effects of age on rate
of second language learning.Adults \ || Children Adults
Children BEST
GOOD BEST Gop.
Adolescents Adolescents
BETTER BETTERThe effect of age on the
acquisition of native speaker
proficiency.
Effect of age on_ the achievement of native
speaker level of proficiency is controversial
point.
.Comparisons have been made with the critical
period hypothesis.——Ttsue OOOO
of native speaker level of
proficiency
* Study1-Neufeld (1978)
This study is often cited by the people who want to refute the
critical period hypothesis.
= 20 adult native English speakers were given 18 hours intensive
instruction in the pronunciation of Chinese and Japanese.
= To test the native ness of their pronunciation, learners were
given ‘an imitation test and their utterances were judged on a
ve point scale from unmistakably native to heavily accented)
by the native speakers of the two languages.
= 9 subjects were rated as native for Japanese and 8 were judged
native for Chinese.
= Asa result this theory suggested that under right conditions,
adults can achieve native ability in pronunciation( the most
difficult area for the adults)Criticism on Neufeld’s study
= Neufeld’s studies are strongly criticized by the supporters of the
critical period hypothesis.
= Long(1990) argued that his studies are doubtful because
= A-His subjects were all elite.
"= B-The imitation test produced a rehearsed data, not a natural
one.
= C-The instruction given to the raters predisposed them to think
that some of the subjects were native speakers.
= Result of the study was however not refuted by this very critic
that it is possible for adults to achieve native speakers level of
proficiency in an L2.Sudy2-Copieters( 1987)
i ers-of French and
20 native speakers were judged on
grammaticality judgment test.
Result of the research was that it was not
possible to distinguish b/w the two groups
by the mistakes they made. (lexis,
grammatical construction) And 6 subjects
had no traces of foreign accent.
Despite the native like performance their
grammatical competence was different.ep citicsm on Copieter’studies
= Coppieters did not include a group of
learners who had started to learn L2
French as children thus we can not be
sure that the results he obtained reflect
age as opposed to some other factor.4 Study-3 Birdsong(1992)
= Birdsong administered a_grammaticality judgment
test. to 20 English speaking learners of L2 French.
= This study was actually motivated by Long’s(1990)
challenge to investigate whether the very best learners
actually have the native like competence.
Contrary to Coppieters Birdsong found no differences
in the judgment of native and non native speakers.
= Birdsong could not find any difference in the think
aloud data.
= This study suggested that some of the learners who.
start learning L2 after puberty period achieve a level
of competence indistinguishable from that of native
speakers.| Study-4 Thompson(1991)
= Thompson study was to investigate the claim
of critical period hypothesis that whether
learners who start learning L2 as young
children and enjoy favorable learning
conditions succeed in reaching native level of
proficiency.
= He studied foreign accents in Russian
immigrants in the USA.
= He came to know that learners arriving before
they were ten years old, had more English
like accent than others.= Two subjects who came to USA at an
age of 4 were rated as having a slight
accent. Thompson called it a problem of
critical period hypothesis. It is called
interlingual identification.
= L1 maintenance and learners wish not
to sound like native can be the two
factors of it.4 Study-5 Scovel(1981)
= A way to assess native level of proficiency in
an L2 learner is to see whether they are able
to recognize spoken or written accents like
native speakers.
= Scovel asked four groups of subjects to rate
speech samples and written pieces.
= He found that very advanced learners lack
some of the linguistic abilities of the native
speakers.To sum up about the experimental studies
done that have investigated the effects of age
on native speakers level of proficiency we can
say that these studies have produced mixed
results.
Birdsong’s designed study would suggest that
some learners achieve native speaker's level
of grammatical knowledge.
Thompson study show that starting early is
no guaranty that native speaker abilities will
be achieved even in most favorable
situations.The Effects of Age on Learner's
Second Language Achievement
= The majority of L2 learner fail to
reach native speaker level of ability.
= Do the learners who begin learning
as children reach higher levels of L2
ability than those who starts as
adolescents/adults?
= Different studies on foreign language
acquisition in the primary school vs
secondary school on the levels ofResearches on Second
Language Achievement.
= Burstal(1975) Conducted Pilot study.
= Secondary school starters outperformed
than primary school starters.
= Harley(1986) Research on level of
attainment in children in French
Bilingual Program in Canada.
= Focus on the learner’s acquisition of the
French verb system.= Neither group had acquired full control of
the verb system but old students show
greater overall control.
= Results from school based studies is not
supportive of the claim that children's level
of attainment is greater than
adolescents/adults.
= Singleton(1989)Formal learning
environment do not provide learners with
the amount of exposure needed for the
age of advantage of young learner toNaturalistic Learning Situation
= Studies of learner in naturalistic learning
situations provide the most convincing
evidence that younger is better.
= Learners who starts as children achieve
a more native-like accent than who
starts as adolescents/adults.+
= Oyama(1976) Investigates on 60 male
immigrants, entered in United States.
= Oyama results, very strong effect for
‘age of arrival’ but almost no effect for
the ‘number of years’.
= She found that the youngest arrivals
performed at the same range as native
speaker controls.= The effect of age on pronunciation support
the younger-is-better in position.
= Similar results have been obtained for the
acquisition of grammar.
= Patkowski(1980;1990) results, learner who
entered in United States at the age of 15
were syntactically more proficient than who
entered after 15.Marked difference between scores based on 5
point scale.
Singleton(1989)writes;
Concerning the hypothesis that those
who begin learning a second language in
childhood in the long run generally achieve
higher levels of proficiency than those who
begin in later life, one can say that there is
some good supportive evidence and there is
no actual counter evidence.The Effect of Age on the Process
of second Language Acquisition
= There have been few studies of the
effects of age on the process of L2
acquisition.
= The Morpheme Studies: Order of
acquisition of a group of English
morphemes was the same for children
and adults.
(Bailey,Madden,Krashen1974)+. —
= Transitional Structures:
studies which have investigated
the sequence of acquisition in
transitional structures such as negative
and interrogative.
= Cancino et al.(1978) Adults go through
the same stages of acquisition as
children.~~
= Harley’s(1986) investigation of early and late
immersion programmes.
= Unmarked French verb forms more accurately
than the marked forms.
= Riney(1990) collected data from Vietnamese
learners of English. Age has no effect on the
final deletion of consonants, it did have a
marked effect on epenthesis.+ —
= It is premature to conclude that age has
no effect on the process of acquisition.
= The research suggest that the effect
may be a minimal one in case of
grammar, but possibly more significant
in the case of pronunciation.SOME GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.
The research that has addressed the age issue is
quite enormous. Not surprisingly, commentators
have arrived at different conclusions, but despite
this some common ground is emerging.
1. Adult learners have an initial advantage where
rate of learning is concerned, particularly in
grammar. They will eventually be overtaken by
child learners who receive enough exposure to
the L2. This is less likely to happen in
instructional than in naturalistic settings because
the critical amount of exposure is usually not
available in the former.2. Only child learners are capable of acquiring a
native accent in informal learning contexts.
Long (1990a) puts the critical age at 6 years,
” but Scovel argues that there is no evidence
to support this and argues for a pre puberty
start. Singleton (1989) points out those
children will only acquire a native accent if
they receive massive exposure to the L2.
However, some children who receive this
exposure still do not achieve a native like
accent, possibly because they strive to
maintain active use of their L1. Adult learners
may be able to acquire a native accent with
the assistance of instruction, but further
research is needed to substantive this claim.Bos may be more likely to acquire a native
grammatical competence. The critical period
for grammar may be later than for
pronunciation (around 15 years.) Some adult
learners, however, may succeed in acquiring
native level of grammatical accuracy in
speech and writing and even full linguistic
competence,
4. Irrespective of whether native speaker
proficiency is achieved, children are more
likely to reach higher level of attainment in
both pronunciation and grammar than adults. —The process of acquiring and L2
grammar is not substantially affected by
age, but that of acquiring pronunciation
may be.Explaining the role of age in second language acquisitionthe differences between child and adult learners
are to be explained as primarily the result of
environmental factors or of changes in the
mental and neurological mechanisms responsible
for language learning. Muhlhauser (1986),
after an extensive study of the developmental
stages of Pidgin languages and their similarities
to language acquisition, concludes that adults
and children appear to behave very much in the same
manner which indicates that ‘activation of certain
linguistic developments is dependent on the presence
of specific environmental factors, rather than on
different cognitive abilities of children and
adults’ (198& 265—s). Long, on the other hand,
concludes that a neurological explanation is best
__________and proposes the attractive-sounding ==Long's ‘mental muscle model’, therefore may not provide
a satisfactory explanation where L2 phonology is
concerned, but seems to offer a convincing account
of why child and adult learners do not differ in the
process of acquiring an L2 grammar.CONCLUSION
To conclude, it is not yet possible to reach an>
definite decisions on such key issues as whether
adults have continued access to a
language-specific acquisition device such as
Universal Grammar.
One tentative conclusion suggested by the research
is that the acquisition of phonology
(which appears to be particularly sensitive to age)
proceeds somewhat differently from the acquisition
of grammar (which appears much less sensitive).Affective
Motivational
factors.
Cognitive factors
Child learners are more strongly
motivated to communicate with
native speakers and to integrate
culturally. Also child learners are
less conscious and therefore
suffer less from anxiety ab
communicating in an L2.
PXo IV) iem (lan mela ela] |
inductive learning abilities to
learning abilities to learn and L2
a Meal Cele ame alg
language acquisition device.