CLL Session 8:

Age effects in SLA

LAEL, Lancaster University

Florencia Franceschina

1. Some observable facts

A.

Older is better in the short term

B.

Younger is better in the long term

C.

Even very extensive exposure does not

guarantee native-like attainment

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)

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

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

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)

Long exposure does not

guarantee success
Example:
Coppieters (1987)
21 L2 French nearnatives
LoR in France: 5.5-37 years
task: intuitions about grammar
none of them was within the NS range

Other differences between adult

and child SLA
Younger and older learners make different types of
mistakes in certain areas
Example: Lasagaster and Doiz (2003)
written production, L2 English
11/15/17 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

2. Accounts of age effects

Critical period
vs.
General age factors

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)

Exercise:
Who are these people? Which one is the odd
one out? Why?
Victor

of Aveyron
Kaspar Hauser
Kamala and Amala
Ivan Mishukov

General age factors

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

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.

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, 449472.
Snow, C. E. and M. Hoefnagel-Hoehle. 1978: The critical period for language acquisition: evidence from second language
learning. Child Development 49, 1114-1128.

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.