Language learning and age
By Mahsa mohammadi kia, Iran,M A degree in linguistic
Introduction:
There are many views about the relationships between language learning and abilities and inabilities of language learners of different ages. Do children necessarily learn quicker than adults?
The “critical period” hypothesis that was put forward in the 1960’s, was based on then- current theories of brain development, and argued that the brain lost “cerebral plasticity” after puberty, making second language acquisition more difficult as an adult than as a child.(Lenneberg, 1967)
On the other hand, studies on aging have demonstrated that learning ability does not decline with age. If older people remain healthy, their intellectual abilities and skills do not decline.(Ostwald and William, 1981)
Adults learn differently from children, but not age-related differences in learning ability have demonstrated for adults of different ages.
Oyama(1976) believes that the most significant reason why children are assumed to be more proficient at language learning is because they are more proficient at mimicking native pronunciation.
This article relies on how age can affect language learning and how brain function in this area.
Critical period
Lenneberge (1967) proposed that speech and language were an outgrowth of particular biological characteristics of humans, which arose independently of the child’s life experiences. Specifically, he proposed that there is a sensitive period for language development that terminated with the onset of puberty. His reasoning was based on studies of second-language (L2) learning, aphasia recovery, and poor speech and language growth in children with mental retardation demonstrating a termination in language-learning processes after the onset of puberty. This maturational process was controlled by fundamental, chronological-age-dependent. Experience-independent, biological growth processes. The timing of the opening and closing of the sensitive period for speech and language was not influence by the speech-language exposure provided to the learner.
Lenneberge(1967), based on studies in the field of neurophysiology, as applied to the brain, argues that the acquisition of language is an innate process determined by biological factors which limit the critical period for acquisition of a language from roughly two years of age to puberty. Lenneberg believes that after lateralization (a process by which the two sides of the brain develop specialized functions), the brain loses plasticity. He claims that lateralization of the language function is normally completed at puberty, making post-adolescent language acquisition difficult.
Against this view, Lamendella(1977) argues that Lenneberg’s conclusion regarding the critical period is overstated and goes on to introduce the term “sensitive period” to emphasize that language acquisition might be more efficient during early childhood but is not impossible at later ages.
Penfield and Roberts (1959), for example, argued that the optimum period for language acquisition falls within the first ten years of life, when the brain retains its plasticity. Initially, this period is equated with the period taken for lateralization of the language function to the left side of the brain to be completed. Work on children and adult who had experienced brain injuries or operations indicated that damage to the left hemisphere caused few speech disorders and was rapidly repaired in the case of children but not adults.
Adults and children
Studies on aging have demonstrated that learning ability does not decline with age. If older people remain healthy, their intellectual abilities and skills do not decline (Ostwald and Williams, 1981).
Adults learn differently from children, but no age related differences in learning ability have been demonstrated for adults of different ages.
More recent researches in neurology have demonstrated that, while language learning is different in childhood and adulthood because of developmental differences in the brain, “in important respects adults have superior language learning capabilities”. (Walsh and Diller, 1978) the advantage for adults is that the neural cells responsible for higher-order linguistic processes such as understanding semantic relations and grammatical sensitivity develop with age. Especially in the areas of vocabulary and language structure, adults are actually better language learners than children. Older learners have more highly developed cognitive systems, are able to make higher order associations and generalizations and can integrate new language input with their already substantial learning experience. They also rely on long-term memory rather than the short-term memory function used by children and younger learners for rote learning.
In the areas of vocabulary and language structure, adults are actually better language learners than children, because they are able to integrate their new language input withy their already substantial learning experience (Walsh and Diller, 1981). They cause memory tricks such as devices to sustain newly gained information. Not even achievements in pronunciation are limited to those who learned their second language at young ages.
Although children may have an advantage in achieving native-like fluency in the long run, adults actually learn languages more quickly than children in early stages (Krashen, Long and Scarcella, 1979). These studies indicate that attaining a working ability to communicate in a new language may actually be easier and more rapid for the adult than for he child.
Brain and language learning
It has long been known that different regions of the brain have specialized functions. That is, particulars areas of the brain were designed for processing certain kinds of information from birth.
Recent finding indicate that the specialized functions of specific regions of the brain are not fixed at birth but are shaped by experience and learning. To use a computer analogy, we now think that the young brain is like a computer with incredibly sophisticated hardwiring, but no software. The software of the brain, like the software of desktop of computers, harness the exceptional processing capacity of the brain in the service of specialized functions, like vision, smell, and language. All individuals have to acquire or develop their own software in order to harness the processing power of the brain with which they are born.
To understanding that the brain has areas of specialization has brought with it the tendency to teach in ways that reflect these specialized functions. For example, research concerning the specialized functions of the left and right hemisphere has led to left and right hemisphere teaching. Recent research suggests that such an approach does not reflect how the brain learns, nor how it functions once learning has occurred.
To the contrary, “in most higher vertebrates (humans), brain systems interact together as a whole brain with the external world” (Elman et al, 1997,p340). Learning by the brain is about making connections within the brain and the outside world.
Until recently, the idea that the neural basis for learning resided in connections between neurons remained speculation. Now, there is direct evidence that when learning occurs, neuro-chemical communication between neurons is facilitated, and less input is required to activate established connections over time. New evidence also indicates that learning creates connections between not only adjacent neurons but also between distant neurons, and that connections are made from simple circuits to complex ones and from complex circuits to simple ones.
In early stages of learning, neural circuits are activated piecemeal, incompletely, and weakly. It is like getting a glimpse of a partially exposed and very blurry photo. With more experience, practice, and exposure, the picture becomes clearer and more detailed. As exposure is repeated, less input is needed to activate the entire network. With time, activation and recognition are relatively automatic, and the learner can direct her attention to other part of the task. This also explains why learning takes time. Time is needed to establish new neural networks and connections between networks. This suggests that the neural mechanism for learning is essentially the same as the products of learning.
Learning is a process that establishes new connections among networks and the new skills or knowledge that are learned, are neural circuits and networks.
The effect of age on learners’ achievement
Many studies have investigated the effect of age on the students’ attainment.
For example, Burstall (1975) reports on a pilot scheme in England and Wales. She compared two groups of students with 5 years of instruction. One group had begun learning French at the age of 8, while the other begun at the beginning of secondary school (11 years). She found that the older learners were consistently superior. When both groups were compared at the age of 16, the secondary school starters outperformed the primary school starters on tests of speaking, reading, and writing and were inferior only on a test of listening. On the other hand, learners who start children achieve a more native-like accent than those who start as adolescents or adults. Oyama (1976) investigated 60 male immigrants who had entered the United States at ages ranging from 6 to 20 years and had been resident there for between 5 and 18 years. She asked 2 adult native speakers to judge the nativeness of the learners’ accents in two 45-second extracts taken from performance on a reading- aloud task and a free-speech task. Oyama reports a very strong effect for age of arrival but almost no effect for “number of years” in the United States. She found that the youngest arrivals performed in the same range as native- speaker controls. Other studies which have investigated the effects f age on pronunciation (for example, Asher and Garcia1969) support the younger-is-better position).
Patkowski’s (1980;1990) study of 67 educated immigrants to the united states found that learners who had entered to the united states before the age of 15 were rated as more syntactically proficient than learners who had entered after 15. Furthermore, there was a marked difference in the distribution of the scores (based on rating speakers’ ratings on a five-point scale) for the two groups. The adult group’s score were evenly distributed withy the majority at midpoints on the rating scale. The child group’s scores clustered at a high end of the rating scale, with 29 out of 33 achieving a rating of 4+ or 5. Patkowski also investigated the effects of number of years spent in the United States, amount of informal exposure to English, amount of informal instruction. Only the any significant effect and even this was negligible in comparison with the age factor.
Conclusion
The research that has addressed the age issue is quite enormous.
Children do not necessarily learn faster than adults and, in fact, adults may learn more efficiently. Furthermore, there is no loss of language ability or language learning ability over time. Age is not detriment to language learning, and by all accounts, learning a second (or third etc) language actually keeps the older language learners mind active people can benefit from learning languages.
On the other hand, there are some differences in learning second language between old people and young ones. For example, only child learners are capable of acquiring a native accent in informal learning contexts.
However, adults have an advantage to learn grammar faster than children they are able to integrate their new language input with their already substantial learning experience. Some teachers, of course, disagree.
Children, adolescents and adults have neurological, cognitive and psychological differences in L2 acquisition. Children are generally observed to be intrinsically better learners, while adolescents have develop cognitive skills and self-discipline which enable them to utilize a greater efficiency in the acquisition of a larger volume of comprehensible input within the same exposure time period, on the other hand, they may be more greatly affected by the other factors in L2 acquisition. The difference in the acquisition process demands different approaches to instructing learners of different age groups.
References:
Asher, J. and R. Garcia.1969,” the optimal age to learn a foreign language” Modern Language Journal
Burstall, C. (1975).”factors affecting foreign language learning: A consideration of some relevant research findings.
Elman, J., Bates, E.A., Johnson, M., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Parisi, D., & Plunkett, K. (1997). Rethinking innateness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Krashen, S,D,M.A, Long, and R.C. Scarcella 1979. “Age rate and Eventual Attainment in Second Language Acquisition.
Lammendella, J (1977).General principles of neurofunctional organization and their manifestation in primary and non-primary language acquisition
Lenneberg, E.H.(1967). The biological foundations of language. New York: wiley
Ostwald,S.K., and H.Y. William, 1981″Optimizing learning in the elderly: A model.”
Oyama, S. 1976. ‘A sensitive period in the acquisition of a non-native phonological system’. Journal
of Psycholinguistic Research 5: 261-85.
Patkowski, M. 1980. ‘The sensitive period for the acquisition of syntax in a second language’. Language Learning 30: 449-72.
Patkowski, M. 1990. ‘Age and accent in a second language: a reply to James Emir Flege’. Applied Linguistics 11: 73-89
Penfield, W and Roberts, L (1959). Speech and Brain Mechanisms. Princeton, Princeton university press.
Walsh, T.M and K.C, Diller, 1978, neurolinguistic foundations to methods of teaching a second language.