Chapter 3

Age & Acquisition

DR. HAYA ALDAWSARI

 Introduction

o Do childhood and adulthood, and differences between

them, hold some keys to second language acquisition
(SLA) models and theories?
o The first step in investigating age and acquisition might be
to dispel some myths about the relationship between first
and second language acquisition.
o Stern (1970) summarized some common arguments that
had been raised to recommend a second language teaching
method on the basis of first language acquisition:
 Dispelling Myths
In language teaching, we must practice and practice, again and again. Just
watch a small child learning his mother tongue. He repeats things over and over
again. During the language learning stage, he practices all the time. This is what
we must also do when we learn a foreign language.
Language learning is mainly a matter of imitation. You must be a mimic. Just
like a small child. He imitates everything.
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First, we practice the separate sounds, then words, then sentences. That is the
natural order and is therefore right for learning a foreign language.
Watch a small child's speech development. First he listens, then he speaks,
Understanding always precedes speaking. Therefore, this must be the right
order of presenting the skills in a foreign language.
A small child listens and speaks and no one would dream of making him read
or write. Reading and writing are advanced stages of language development.
The natural order for first and second language learning is listening, speaking,
reading, writing.
 Dispelling Myths

6. You did not have to translate when you were small. If you
were able to learn your own language without translation,
you should be able to learn a foreign language in the same
way.
7. A small child simply uses language. He does not learn
formal grammar. You don't tell him about verbs and nouns.
Yet he learns the language perfectly. It is equally
unnecessary to use grammatical conceptualization in
teaching a foreign language.
 Dispelling Myths

o There are flaws in each of the seven statements. Sometimes the

flaw is in the assumption behind the statement about first language
learning; sometimes it is in the analogy or implication that is drawn;
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sometimes it is in both. The flaws represent some of the
misunderstandings that need to be demythologized for the second
language teacher.
o second language researchers and foreign language teachers began
to recognize the mistakes in drawing direct global analogies
between first and second language acquisition.
o Research addressed the inconsistencies of such analogies, but at
the same time recognized the legitimate similarities that, if viewed
 cautiously, allowed one to draw some constructive conclusions
Types of Comparison And Contrast between L1 & L2 Acquisition

First and second language acquisition in children (C1-C2), holding age constant. (one
is manipulating the language variable.) However, it is important to remember that a 2-
year-old and an 11-year-old exhibit vast cognitive, affective, and physical differences.
Second language acquisition in children and adults (C2-A2), holding second language
constant. (one is manipulating the differences between children and adults.) Such
comparisons are the most fruitful in yielding analogies for adult second language
classroom instruction and will be the central focus in this chapter.
First language acquisition in children and second language acquisition in adults (C1-
A2) (manipulates both variables.) Many of the traditional comparisons were of this type;
however, such comparisons must be made only with extreme caution because of the
enormous cognitive, affective, and physical differences between children and adults.
The comparisons of all the three types must be treated with caution when varying ages
of children are being considered. Much of the focus of the rest of this chapter will be on
C2-A2 and CI-C2 comparisons.

C = Child A = Adult
1 = First Language 2 = Second Language
 The Critical Period Hypothesis
o Most discussions about age and acquisition center on the question of whether
there is a critical period for language acquisition.
o The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) claims that there is a biological timetable, a
biologically determined period of life when language can be acquired more easily
and beyond which time language is increasingly difficult to acquire.
o Initially the notion of a critical period was connected only to first language
acquisition.
o In recent years, however, many studies have appeared on the possible
application of the CPH to second language contexts.
o The "classic" argument is that a critical point for second language acquisition
occurs around puberty, beyond which people seem to be relatively incapable of
acquiring a second language.
o Such an assumption must be viewed in the light of what it means to be
"successful" in learning a second language, and particularly the role of accent as
a component of success.
o To examine these issues, we will first look at neurological and phonological
considerations, then examine cognitive, affective, and linguistic considerations.
 Neurobiological Considerations
o The study of the function of the brain in the process of acquisition.

Hemispheric Lateralization
o There is evidence in neurological research that as the human brain
matures, certain functions are assigned, or "lateralized," to the left
hemisphere of the brain, and certain other functions to the right
hemisphere.
o Intellectual, logical, and analytic functions appear to be largely
located in the left hemisphere, while the right hemisphere controls
functions related to emotional and social needs.
 Hemispheric Lateralization

o Language functions appear to be controlled mainly in the left

hemisphere although there is a good deal of conflicting
evidence.
o Patients who have had hemispherectomies have been capable of
comprehending and producing an amazing amount of language.
o A stroke or accident victim, who suffers a lesion in the left
hemisphere, will manifest some language impairment, which is
less often the case with right hemisphere lesions.
 When Does Lateralization Take Place, and
Does It Affect Language Acquisition?

o Lateralization is a slow process that begins around the age of 2

and is completed around puberty. During this time the child is
presumably neurologically assigning functions little by little to
one side of the brain or the other; included in these functions,
of course, is language.
o Adams (1997) did a study of a boy who at 8 years of age had no
speech, underwent a left hemispherectomy, and then at the age
of 9 suddenly began to speak.
 Hemispheric Lateralization
o Scovel (1969) proposed a relationship between lateralization and
L2 acquisition:
o The plasticity of the brain prior to puberty enables children to
acquire not only their first language but also a second language.
o Therefore, lateralization makes it difficult for people to be able
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ever again to easily acquire a fluent control of a second
language, or at least to acquire it with authentic or nativelike
pronunciation. This suggests that there is a critical period not
only for L1 acquisition but also for L2 acquisition.
o Lenneberg (1967) → lateralization is completed around puberty.
o Krashen (1973) → lateralization is completed around age 5.
 Biological Timetables
o One of arguments for an accent-related critical period came from
Scovel (1988) . He cited evidence for a sociobiological critical period
in mammals and birds.
o Lower-order processes such as pronunciation are dependent on
early maturing and less adaptive microneural circuits, which makes
foreign accents difficult to overcome after childhood.
o Higher-order language functions, such as semantic relations, are
more dependent on late maturing neural circuits which may explain
why college students can learn many times the amount of grammar
and vocabulary the elementary school students can learn in a given
period of time.
 Right-Hemispheric Participation
The role of the right hemisphere in L2 acquisition

o In L2 learning, there is significant right hemisphere

participation and "this participation is particularly active
during the early stages of learning the second language."
But this "participation" to some extent consists of the
strategies used for acquisition (such as guessing meaning).
o Adult learners, might benefit from more encouragement of
right-brain activity in the classroom context to enhance
implementing different strategies for language learning.
 Anthropological Evidence

o Some adults have been known to acquire an authentic accent in a

second language after the age of puberty, but such individuals are few
and far between.
o Hill (1970) argues that adults in the normal course of their lives
acquire L2s perfectly.
o Flege (1987) and Morris and Gerstman (1986) cited the following
factors as crucial:
o motivation, affective variables, social factors, and the quality of input
 The significance of Accent

o Foreign accent is important in arguments about age and acquisition.

o Hundred muscles (throat, larynx, mouth, lips, tongue, and others) are used
in the articulation of human speech. A tremendous degree of muscular
control is required to achieve the fluency of a native speaker of a language.
o Research on the acquisition of authentic control of the phonology of a
foreign language supports the notion of a critical period.
o Most of the evidence indicates that persons beyond the age of puberty do
not acquire what has come to be called authentic (native-speaker)
pronunciation of the second language.
o Possible causes of such an age-based factor have already been
discussed: neuromuscular plasticity, cerebral development,
 sociobiological programs, and the environment of socio-cultural
Accent: Exceptions to the Rule

o True, there are special people who possess somewhere within

their competence the ability to override neurobiological critical
period effects and to achieve a virtually perfect nativelike
pronunciation of a foreign language. But, in terms of statistical
probability, it is clear that the chances of any one individual
commencing a second language after puberty and achieving a
scientifically verifiable authentic native accent are very small.
 Does mastery of language mean ACCENT only?

o Pronunciation of a language is not by any means the sole

criterion for acquisition.
o Some people have less than perfect pronunciation but excellent
and fluent control of L2; control that can even exceed that of
many native speakers.
➢The acquisition of the communicative and functional purposes of
language is far more important than a perfect native accent.
 Cognitive Considerations
o Human cognition develops rapidly throughout the first 16 years of life and
less rapidly thereafter.
o Jean Piaget outlined the course of intellectual development in a child
through various stages:
o Sensorimotor stage (birth to two)
o Preoperational stage (ages two to seven)
o Operational stage (ages seven to sixteen)
➢Concrete operational stage (ages seven to eleven)
➢Formal operational stage (ages eleven to sixteen)
o A critical stage for a consideration of the effects of age on second
language acquisition appears to occur, in Piaget’s outline at puberty
(age11 in his model).
 Cognitive Considerations
o At eleven, a person becomes capable of abstraction, of formal thinking, which
transcends concrete experience and direct perception.
o According to this model, one can expect that adults could profit from certain
grammatical explanations and deductive thinking.
o But children do learn a SL well without this benefit. How? Young children are
generally not “aware” that they are learning, while adults are too consciously
aware of it. Does this make learning a SL difficult?
o There was evidence of successful adult SL learners. So, if mature cognition is
a liability to successful SL acquisition, clearly some intervening variables
allow some persons to be very successful SL learners after puberty.
o There are many areas to consider when studying the cognitive differences
between child and adult language acquisition. One is lateralization
hypothesis, another is the Piagetian notion of equilibration, the other is the
distinction that Ausebel made between rote and meaningful learning.
Cognitive Considerations: The Lateralization Hypothesis

o The lateralization hypothesis: As the child matures into

adulthood, some claim that, the left hemisphere (which
controls the analytical and intellectual functions) becomes
more dominant than the right hemisphere (which controls the
emotional functions). It is possible that the dominance of the
left hemisphere contributes to a tendency to overanalyze and
to be too intellectually centered on the task of second
language learning.
 Cognitive Considerations: Equilibration
o Equilibration: is defined as "progressive interior organization of
knowledge in a stepwise fashion” and is related to the concept of
equilibrium.
o That is, cognition develops as a process of moving from states of
doubt and uncertainty (disequilibrium) to stages of resolution and
certainty (equilibrium) and then back to further doubt that is, in
time, also resolved. And so the cycle continues. Piaget claimed
that conceptual development is a process of progressively moving
from states of disequilibrium to EQUILIBRIUM and that periods of
disequilibrium mark virtually all cognitive development up through
age 14 or 15 when formal operations finally are firmly organized
and equilibrium is reached.
Cognitive Considerations: Rote & Meaningful Learning
o The final consideration in the cognitive domain is the distinction that
Ausubel made between rote and meaningful learning. Ausubel noted
that people of all ages have little need for rote, mechanistic learning
that is not related to existing knowledge and experience. Rather, most
items are acquired by meaningful learning, by relating new items and
experiences to knowledge that exists in the cognitive framework.
o It is a myth to contend that children are good rote learners, that they
make good use of meaningless repetition and mimicking.
o Hence, the foreign language classroom should not become the place of
excessive rote activity: rote drills, pattern practice without context, rule
recitation, and other activities that are not in the context of meaningful
communication.
 Affective Considerations
The affective domain includes many factors: The affective domain
includes many factors: empathy, self-esteem, inhibition, imitation,
anxiety, attitudes, etc.
A case in point is the role of egocentricity in human development.
Very young children are highly egocentric. In preadolescence
children develop an acute consciousness of themselves as separate
and identifiable entities but ones which need protecting. They
therefore develop inhibitions about this self-identity.
Language ego accounts for the identity a person develops in
reference to the language he or she speaks. For any monolingual
person, the language ego involves the interaction of the native
language and ego development.
Guiora suggested that the language ego may account for the
difficulties that adults have in learning a SL.
 Affective Considerations
o A new language does not pose a threat or inhibition to the ego of a
child. Younger children are less frightened because they are less
aware of language forms, and the possibility of making mistakes in
those forms does not concern them greatly. But mature adults
manifest a number of inhibitions.
o Among other affective factors is ego identification. The role of
attitudes is another important factor. Younger children are more
likely to succeed in learning other languages because they don’t
have negative attitudes toward races or cultures yet.
o Finally, children are under high peer pressure. They want to be like
the rest of the kids. It can lead them to learn the second language.
 Affective Considerations (Summary)
Important variables in considering child-adult comparisons:
A. language ego: The child’s ego is dynamic and growing and
flexible through the age of puberty. Mature adults manifest a
number of inhibitions.
B. Attitudes: Very young children are not developed cognitively
enough to possess attitudes.
C. Peer pressure: Adults tend to tolerate linguistic differences
more than children.
 Linguistic Considerations: Bilingualism
Children learning two languages simultaneously acquire them using
similar strategies.
They are learning two first languages, and the key to success is in
distinguishing separate contexts for the two languages.
People who learn a second language in separate contexts can often be
described as coordinate bilinguals: they have two meaning systems, as
opposed to compound bilinguals who have one meaning system from
which both languages operate.
Children generally do not have problems with "mixing up languages“.
Most bilinguals engage in code-switching (the act of inserting words,
phrases, or even longer stretches of one language into the other),
especially when communicating with another bilingual.
Research shows a considerable cognitive benefit of early childhood
bilingualism, supporting that bilingual children are more facile at concept
formation and have a greater mental flexibility.
 Linguistic Considerations: Interference between L1 & L2
Research on non-simultaneous L2 acquisition, in both children and adults, has
focused on the interfering effects of the first and second languages.
Interference: transfer from the L1 (using sound patterns, grammatical structures from
the mother tongue). For example, at the level of sound, Arabic language does not have
a phonemic distinction between /f/ and /v/, so Arabic speakers may say “ferry” when
they mean “very”.
In children:
The linguistic and cognitive processes of second language learning in young
children are in general similar to first language processes. Similar strategies and
linguistic features are present in both first and second language learning in
children.
In adults:
Adults appear to operate from the solid foundation of the first language and thus
manifest more interference. But adults, too, manifest errors not unlike some of the
errors children make. The first language, however, may be more readily used to
bridge gaps that the adult learner cannot fill by generalization within the SL. In this
case the first language can be a facilitating factor, and not just an interfering factor.
 Linguistic Considerations: Order of Acquisition
o Researchers claimed that transfer of L1 syntactic patterns rarely
occurs in child second language acquisition.
o Children learning a L2 use a creative construction process, just as
they do in their first language.
o This claim was supported by research data collected on the
acquisition order of eleven English morphemes in children learning
English as a second language.
Issues in L1 Acquisition Revisited

What are the

implications
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following issues
for SLA?
 Issues in L1 Acquisition Revisited
Competence and Performance:
o It is as difficult to get at linguistic competence in a second language as it
is in a first. Therefore, teachers need to be cautiously attentive to the
discrepancy between performance on a given day or in a given context
and competence in a L2 in general.
Comprehension and Production:
o Learning a second language usually means learning to speak it and to
comprehend it!
o Teaching involves attending to both comprehension and production and
the full consideration of the gaps and differences between the two.
 Issues in L1 Acquisition Revisited
Nature or Nurture?
o Adults and children alike appear to have the capacity to
acquire a L2 at any age. The only trick that nature might
play on adults is to rule out the acquisition of authentic
accent.
o If an adult does not acquire a L2 successfully, it is
probably because of intervening cognitive or affective
variables and not the absence of innate capacities.
 Issues in L1 Acquisition Revisited
Systematicity and Variability:
o SLA, both child and adult, is characterized by both
systematicity and variability.
o Recent research has suggested that even the order of
acquisition may universally follow certain identifiable
determinants.
o The variability of second language acquisition is
impaired by a host of cognitive, affective, cultural, and
contextual variables that are sometimes not applicable to
a first language learning situation.
 Issues in L1 Acquisition Revisited
Language and Thought:
Language helps to shape thinking and vice versa.
Does the bilingual person's memory consist of one storage system
(compound bilingualism) or two (coordinate bilingualism)?
The second language learner is clearly presented with a tremendous task
in sorting out new meanings from old, distinguishing thoughts and
concepts in one language that are similar but not quite parallel to the
second language.
The second language teacher needs to be acutely aware of cultural thought
patterns as well.
Imitation:
Meaningful contexts, rather than surface structure, for language learning are
necessary.
 Issues in L1 Acquisition Revisited
Practice:
Contextualized, appropriate, meaningful communication is the best
possible practice.
Input:
Teachers should be deliberate and meaningful in their
communications with students. That input should foster meaningful
communicative use of the language in appropriate contexts.
Discourse:
Research on the acquisition of discourse is very important.
A study of children's amazing ability in acquiring rules of
conversation and in perceiving intended meaning will help us to find
ways of teaching such capacities to second language learners.
Some "Age-and-Acquisitlon-Inspired Language Teaching
Methods
Two of these methods are described here, as examples of extending an
understanding of children’s L2 acquisition to the adult L2 classroom.
1- Total Physical Response:
The founder of the Total Physical Response (TPR) method, James Asher (1977),
noted that children, in learning their first language, appear to do a lot of listening
before they speak, and that their listening is accompanied by physical
responses (reaching, grabbing, moving, and so forth). He also gave some
attention to right-brain learning. According to Asher, motor activity is a right-
brain function that should precede left-brain language processing. The TPR
classroom, then, was one in which students did a great deal of listening and
acting.
It was especially effective in the beginning levels of language proficiency but
lost its distinctiveness as learners advanced in their competence.
But, today TPR is used more as a type of classroom activity, which is a more
useful way to view it.
 Some "Age-and-Acquisition-Inspired Language
Teaching Methods
The Natural Approach:
One of the hallmarks of Krashen's theories is that adults should acquire a
second language just as children do; they should be given the opportunity to
"pick up" a language, and shouldn't be forced to "study" grammar in the
classroom.
The Natural Approach was aimed at the goal of basic interpersonal
communication skills, that is, everyday language situations—conversations,
shopping, listening to the radio, and the like.
The initial task of the teacher was to provide comprehensible input—spoken
language that is understandable to the learner—or just a little beyond the
learner's level.
Learners did not need to say anything during this "silent period" until they felt
ready to do so.
The most controversial aspects of the Natural Approach were its "silent period"
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