How does age affect SLA?
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)

Lenneberg’s original formulation (1967)

Evidence:
–
–
–
Recovery from brain damage (Lenneberg, 1967)
Feral children (e.g., Genie - Curtiss, 1977)
Late FLA in deaf signers (Mayberry, 1993)
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, 449-472.
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.