Name: Dang Phuong Mai

Class: English 2 k18 – Post Graduate Department

Literature Review
Problems of Age in Second Language Acquisition

For many years, language has been studied from different viewpoints of

researchers and scientists. Language is an essential tool for each individual to

communicate with others, to convey information, to comprehend the social-historical

experience, or to plan his own activities. The process of acquiring a language involves in

the capability by which learners know to perceive, produce and use words to understand

and communicate. Nowadays, it is nearly indispensable to know a new language. The

learners who have a good knowledge of English, French, and Chinese often have a

greater opportunity to get a job and to broaden their understanding of the world.

Although it is not easy to acquire so many languages, the effort of learners is not

redundant. To learn a language well, learners must have several qualities in which the

most important things are patience, carefulness and high motivation. Acquiring a second

language seems to be a long journey with a lot of struggles that are easy to make students

discouraged. In other words, second language acquisition is also affected by a variety of

factors that derive from learners themselves or the environment around them. One of the

most popular struggles to second language learners is age which is considered to impact

on learners’ proficiency level. Thus how to acquire the language and what should be done

to achieve the best results are popular questions that learners often raise to

methodologists and psychologists.

 In this review, a basic understanding of second language acquisition is introduced

initially and the effect of age factor on second language acquisition is analyzed and

discussed as well.

I. Overview of Second Language Acquisition

1.1. Basic understanding of second language acquisition

1.1.1. Definition of language acquisition

As mentioned, language acquisition has been a major issue of research in

linguistics for several decades. To researchers, there have been still arguments in the

understanding of “acquisition” because each of them studies this term in different way.

Krashen (1981) showed a distinction between “acquisition” and “learning” although he

agreed that they are all the actions to “get” a language. According to him, acquisition and

learning are considered to be two independent systems of second language acquisition –

“the acquired system” and “the learned system”. Acquisition refers to the subconscious

process of studying the language while learners are generally not consciously aware of

grammatical rules of the language. It requires meaningful interaction in the target

language - natural communication - in which speakers are concentrated, not in the form

of their utterances, but in the communicative act (p.1). Therefore, error correction and

explicit teaching of rules are not approved in language acquisition. On the other hand,

error correction is maintained together with the presentation of explicit rules in language

learning which refers to the conscious process of studying the language. In other words,

learning a language means “knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to

talk about them” (p.10). Krashen supposed that “the acquired system” or acquisition is

more effective than “the learned system” or learning.