Age in Learning and Teaching Grammar

Abstract

Anecdotal experience tells us that children are " better at language learning " than adults, but exactly how and why they are different from adults in this respect has proved harder to pin down than one may expect. Roughly speaking, children learn-ing a second language under the age of 6 are almost certain to end up like native speakers in all domains of language, while those who learn that same language after age 12 are likely to have non-native features, and those who learn it after age 16 are almost certain not to be able to pass for native speakers (e.g., Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam, 2009). Averaged over many individuals, one typically sees, again roughly between the ages of 6 and 16, a gradual decline of ultimate attainment (the furthest a learner ever gets in the language, after many years of daily use) as a func-tion of age of onset (the age at which acquisition of the language started). The latter is sometimes also called age of arrival, because for many people, children as well as adults, their first significant exposure to a new language is when they arrive as immigrants in a new country. The reasons for this phenomenon of decline with age have been hotly debated. Some researchers argue that it is not due to age itself, but to amount of experience with the first language or to social and educational variables that tend to correlate strongly with age, such as amount of education in the second language. Many, how-ever, adhere to a maturational interpretation, that is, that language learning becomes harder as the learner matures (ages), regardless of the social context. This interpreta-tion has been known in the literature as the critical period hypothesis since Lenneberg (1967) introduced this essentially biological concept into the field of linguistics. While a large amount of research on age effects in the learning of second language grammar and pronunciation has accumulated in the last few decades, very little of it has directly addressed the role of age in classroom language learning (as opposed to learning by immigrants). This relative scarcity of research directly relevant to teaching, combined with misunderstandings about the nature and cause(s) of the age effects observed in immigrants, has led to premature recommendations for Age in Learning and Teaching Grammar 2 second language teaching. The next section explains why the age effects seen in immigrants do not simply imply that second language learning should start earlier. The last section discusses practical implications for second language teaching.