Relation between age and second language acquisition

daisy_liu · Post by **daisy_liu** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 5:55 am

Many people hold the view that when learning second language, the younger one does better than the elder one, and child does better than adult. What's your opinion about it?

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 8:58 am

What's yours?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 11:43 am

It depends on what one means by 'does better'. Do children close multi-million dollar Cocoa Pops deals, or do they just eat the darn things? One can become fluent in a language but still say little of consequence. But to answer your question, yes, it does seem that children can become bilingual or multilingual easier than adults (but don't tell that to all your adult students who think that an hour or two a week with a flimsy textbook is going to catapult them into the UN or something).

Macavity · Post by **Macavity** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 3:31 pm

I don't agree that age is a very big factor when learning a second language. Yes, children appear to pick the language up in what seems a natural process which would seem to require little or no effort on their part (although I personally doubt that this is really the case) whilst adults need to overcome many apparent hurdles to achieve any degree of success. However, adults certainly are able to focus their learning in a way that no child is able to and in so doing are able to accelerate the overall process.

Very sketchy I know but my view is that children are all to often thrown up as a sort of test group to prove this point, or to discredit that point in adult second language learning when there seems to me to be too much disparity between the two groups to justify this practice. In short, I really think it is a pointless exercise comparing children and adults in terms of second language learning.

ouyang · Post by **ouyang** » Sat Nov 08, 2008 6:07 pm

There was an interesting study that came out several years ago about 2nd language learning physically changing the brains of younger students to a greater extent than older students. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/do ... 382266.htm

That said, I think Macavity makes some good points. I would add that language learning is directly related to identity and determining personal experience. Adults who see a 2nd language as an opportunity to achieve social goals can learn much more rapidly than children who are not going to form any important relationships based on their 2nd language.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Sun Nov 09, 2008 8:59 pm

The trouble is that it would be nearly impossible to construct a study that could take all the other variables apart from age into account, so I doubt a definitive answer will be forthcoming any time soon.

matbury · Post by **matbury** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 11:33 am

In my experience, young learners tend to have better memories, especially for pronunciation and idiomatic expressions, while adults tend to be better at organising and analysing new language. On the whole, I'd agree that young learners seem to learn faster and don't forget that they'll be adults one day!

Personally, I think the teachers' abilities and resources make a bigger difference.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 11:52 pm

It's bad enough to imagine that since you think you are a "good" teacher (with shiny resources) that your students are going to be much better than those in other classes. That is quite false, it is the students' own attitudes that really count. But dragging such views into a discussion about whether children learn better than adults!!

As far as I recall, some research shows that older teenagers respond the best to EFL lessons. Kids can only shine if they learn through heavy usage and long natural playtime etc rather than simply through lessons.

matbury · Post by **matbury** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 1:34 am

Hi woodcutter,

As a senior teacher and a DoS, I've done a fair amount of observations in my time with adult and young learner classes and I've seen some gifted and not so gifted teachers.

I think it comes down to interpersonal skills more than anything. In my opinion, a gifted teacher can get his or her students to listen actively and really take in what he or she is saying.

For example, I remember one guy I worked with in Italy who had a class of 10 - 11 year olds 'under a spell' doing the most amazing doctor - patient role-play. He really inspired the kids to listen and learn.

At the other end of the scale, I've observed a couple of teachers who seemed oblivious to their students and just went through the motions of a 'well planned lesson'. The students were uninterested because the teachers weren't interested in them and most of the time the teachers weren't listening to the students and vice versa.

This is just from my own experience and my own interpretation of what I saw and heard. I'd be interested to hear other people's observations and opinions on this.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 2:28 am

Once seeing one teacher put one group of kids "under a spell" on one occasion does not constitute great evidence. Anyway, my point is not really that you seem to overestimate the influence of particular teachers. They do make a difference, no doubt. My point is that you take it to the extreme of bringing that into a discussion about whether kids are better than adults, when of course the point in such a discussion is that many people think that kids have some kind of natural god-given sponge powers, and yet you want to reduce it all to teacher skills.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 7:25 pm

Hey, Daisy. Have you read the thread you started? Any comments?