Preview of Ch.8: Affect

Summary
This chapter introduces affective factors that cause individual differences in L2 learning. Nowadays it is viewed that affect and cognition are intertwined, and it is difficult to determine some individual differences come from only one of those two.Throughout the chapter, the question we need to keep in mind is “Where do individual differences in L2 learning exist?” Total of eight affect is concerned with findings and suggestions from research.

• Personality: Stable traits in a person with reference to the cognitive processing of emotion or personal inclination through social experience. Recently, “openness to experience“ has received researchers’attention as an advantageous personality asset.
• Extraversion/Introversion: These traits may show some differences in language learning such as communication fluency for extroverts and accuracy for introverts. But the traits do not determine L2 acquisition. Rather, they affect learners’ behaviors and goals, which in turn have an impact of L2 achievement.
• Foreign language anxiety: High-levels of anxiety hold back learner’s processing and achievement in language learning. Studies indicate that self-perception, self-concept , perfectionist attitudes and high-expectation are strongly related to anxiety. At the same time, some degree of tension affect positively on language learning, which is called “facilitating anxiety”.
• Willingness to communicate (WTC): It’s the self-reported intention to initiate communication when free to do so. Anxiety (more in the SL context) and self-perceived competence (more in the FL context) affect communicative confidence in the L2, which, in turn, affects WTC in the L2. Likewise, the frequency and quality of past L2 contact have an impact on L2 attitudes, which, in turn, affects WTC in the L2. WTC can change over time and across contexts.
• Field dependence and independence: These characters are bipolar dimensions with preferred ways of processing information, Recently, new constructs has been addressed,” field independence and field sensitivity” claiming that successful language learners can integrate information both in and out of the context and therefore are expected to get a high score on both sides.
• Learning style: Studies on learning styles are inconclusive. However, the most recently developed “the synopsis-ectasis dimension” creates research interest, focusing on the degree of conscious control of learning desired or needed.
• Learning strategies: strategies are conscious mental and behavioral procedures that serve people to reach a goal in their language learning. There are no clear lines between cognitive and affective strategies. Language strategies can differ across contexts. “Self-regulation theory” (Dörnyei, 2005) attracts attention as a principled way of theorizing strategic behaviors.
• Self-regulation theory: The theory claims that people are able to self-regulate their behaviors with creative and conscious efforts. Not only actions and thoughts but also feelings can be self-regulated. The strength of this theory is that it can be investigated with not only self-report questionnaires but also multiple methods.

My personal interest : WTC
Although WTC is just a self-reported intention and not supported by actual observation of communication behavior, it has been posited as a predictor of frequency of communication in L2. If communication is a goal in language learning, I think it is interesting to investigate WTC on the grounds that WTC is not a fixed tendency and leaves a room for a change for the better. In the FL context where perceived competence and attitudes towards the target language (TL) seem to have a strong impact on WTC, raising self-perceived competence and providing a pleasurable TL experience for students would be the best shot to boost their actual use of the TL in the long run. I believe that these two attempts are something teachers can carry out in their classroom by using various teaching materials, tasks, and approaches. Of course, none of affective variables alone can guarantee successful language learning, but I hope WTC is one of the factors that teachers can still activate in their students.

Preview of Ch. 6: Foreign Language Aptitude (Merica)

Activating background knowledge:
Before reading this chapter, take a moment to consider some of these questions. You might want to jot down some ideas and/or discuss some of these briefly with a partner.

1. What does it mean when people say that someone has a gift or a knack for learning languages?

2.a. Think about your own experience learning a language. Do you think that you have an aptitude for language learning?
b. Why or why not?
c. Can you think of specific examples from your L1 and/or L2?

3.a. Have you observed others who you think have an aptitude for language learning? Try to think of somebody you know (this could be a family member, a friend, a fellow student in a class you have attended or a student who you have taught). What qualities do they exhibit?

d. How is learning a language in a classroom different from learning outside of a classroom?

e. What role do you think memory plays in language learning?

A few points that I found interesting from chapter 6:

- Intuitively, it seems that aptitude accounts for more significant differences in implicit learning situations than in explicit learning in the classroom. However, empirical evidence on this matter remains inconclusive.

- According to Ross et al. (2002) and DeKeyser (2000), aptitude plays a more significant role for late learners because they usually learn the L2 in a formal classroom setting and have limited exposure to natural L2 input (Ortega, forthcoming Ch. 6, p. 13).

- At the bottom of page 15, Dr. Ortega mentions how some students benefit from recasts more than others. “Noticing the gap” refers to the learner comparing what they said with what they heard from the interlocuter. Reading this made me think of the Spanish 102 class that I am currently taking. I enjoy observing how the teacher skillfully helps raise students' awareness and leads them to correct themselves in verbal utterances. She uses a variety of helpful techniques such as repeating what the student said with rising intonation and sometimes writing something on the board to help the student see their mistake. I find this highly beneficial for the student involved as well as those listening.

- In the middle of page 16, after motivational and affective forces are mentioned in bold, Dr. Ortega adds that those with high motivation may benefit more from recasts by viewing every L2 encounter as an opportunity to learn. I agree with that conclusion.

- Section 6.12 offers evidence that matching teaching styles to students learning style preference yields more successful learning in the classroom. Think about your own learning experience. Can you think of a situation in which the teaching style matched (or did not match) your learning style? How did this affect your success in that class?

The following website provides more detailed information including additional sample questions and answers as well as frequently asked questions:
http://www.2lti.com/htm/Test_mlat.htm

A final note: I’m quite curious to learn how my L2 aptitude measures on this aptitude test. I wonder if others in our department or university have recently taken it. I would like to find out if we can take this on campus.

P.S. The fancy editing options do not appear on this old computer, so I apologize that I cannot enrich the text with bold and colorful additions now.

Pre-Reading: Chapter 7 Motivation

Chapter 7 discusses about the motivation as the influence on foreign language learning. The author defines motivation as “the desire to initiate L2 learning and the effort employed to sustain it” (p.1).

Key Words
There are many different types of motivation mentioned in the chapter.

• Integrativeness—“a genuine interest in learning the second language in order to come closer to the other language community” (p .2 cited from Gardner, 2001, p. 5)
• Orientations—“reasons for learning the L2” (p. 3)
• Attitudes—“both towards the L2 community and its speakers and towards teachers and curriculum in the instructional setting” (p.3)

In the mid 1990s, the new way of looking at the motivation occurred by focusing on quality rather than quantity on motivation.

• Intrinsically motivated—motivation that is self-initiated by choice and for their own sake (e.g. hobby—I want to learn English because I want to listen to American songs.)
• Extrinsically motivated—not chosen or caused by individuals (e.g. exam, rewards, punishment—I want to learn English because I want to pass a university entrance exam.)
• Introjected regulation—pressure developed by feelings of guilt or shame (e.g. I would feel ashamed if I couldn’t speak English.)
• Identified regulation—similar to the intrinsic motivation, individuals accept the external values and adopt to their own sake (e.g. I want to be like a person who can speak more than one language.)
• Amotivation—Individuals suffer from this because they do not see the exact reasons why they are studying the language in compulsory language courses (e.g. I don’t know why I am studying English because I live in Japan.)

There are some newer perspectives to look at the motivation.

• Dynamic
  o Time—motivation changes over time
  o Context—group dynamics
  o Behavior—language choice and intended learning effort

Reflections
There are numbers of empirical studies mentioned in this chapter in order to support the concept of motivation. I especially found interest in the section 7.5: motivation from a distance, which discusses about the motivation of the learners in the FL setting. It makes sense that because of its fewer contacts with L2 speakers in FL settings, learners in FL settings may have less integrativeness, but instrumental type of orientation (e.g. good grades) and class room attitudes (e.g. to the teacher, materials) may strongly influence their learning especially at the beginning level. That means the instruction style of the classroom teacher could easily change the learners’ motivation toward learning the target language.

It reminds me the time when I started to take English at my junior high school. When we started to take English, everyone loved to study English because a) it was the easiest class “at the beginning” since we were learning the basic, b) nearly most of my classmates got good grades on exam because of its easiness, and c) English teachers were promoting the importance of learning English in order to succeed in our academic life and professional career in the future (English as an international language). However, as we took tests and tests over times, sentence structures got complicated and many classmates started to receive unsatisfactory grades. As a result, there were two-way directions in my class: highly motivated learners and less motivated learners. Furthermore, many of my classmates suffered from amotivation because they didn’t see any reasons to study English at all.

In FL settings, learners can easily lose their interest. Teachers who teach Japanese at the adult school once mentioned to me that it is hard to keep students because they easily stop coming to the class if they lost their interest in learning Japanese. I wonder what kinds of motivation will work well in FL settings and how we (as teachers) can promote the motivation in order to keep our learners stay in interest to learn the target language.

I personally think that the group dynamics can be great motivation for the FL setting. If teachers could establish positive relationship among learners, learners enjoy coming to class and can learn from each other. It reminds me about Near Peer Role Models discussed in Murphey (1998). Near Peer Role Models (NPRMs) are peers who are close to the learners’ social, professional, and/or age level and whom the learners may respect and admire. Students can look up to and model NPRM’s positive behaviors. While we may be hard to create integrativeness toward native speakers/cultures of the target language, we may be easy to establish the positive attitudes toward peers who are learning the same target language and learners can model their behaviors.

Look forward to discussing the topic in class!!

Preview of Chapter 3 with discussion questions: Crosslinguistic influences

As Samantha said, I developed some discussion questions which are believed to help you to think more deeply on some issues in this chapter. The questions are seemingly general and are relatively affected by my own curiosity, so your understanding and cooperation would be necessary to make the discussion to be viable if you would like to use those questions. Also, your own questions or ideas regarding the same issues or any other issues would be so welcomed.

This chapter introduces us to the term transfer or crosslinguistic influence, replacing the older term interference, which implies that crosslinguistic influence is two-dimensional: both positive and negative. A number of empirical studies have reported that this influence happens due to similarities or differences in the features of two languages, such as grammar structure or their social aspects (e.g., attitudes about accepting the boundary of politeness). The important thing to note further is that the interlingual identifications of two languages is affected not only by the characteristics of specific language phenomenon and universal language development, it is also due to the learner's conscious or subconscious judgment on the distance of L1 and L2. In addition, the identifications are affected by the learner's proficiency level.

The manifestation of interlingual identifications can be largely perceived through learners’ production, which might drive researchers to pay attention to the many aspects of learners’ language, further to learners’ performance analysis or error analysis. Selinker (1972) coined the term interlanguage for learners’ developing L2 knowledge. He also introduced fossilization to describe the fact that some features of a learner’s language might not change. This may be true, for example, for learners who are only exposed to positive evidences with absence of negative evidences showing inadequacy of their performance.

(a) We may discuss more profoundly in class on systematic, universal features of interlanguage (including factors on shaping interlanguage patterns) in terms of syntax, vocabulary, pragmatics, and so on. For example, frequency and the presence of cognates (words that look similar and have the same meaning in two languages) might influence development of vocabulary acquisition. (b) What kinds of approaches have been used to extract some features of interlanguage to date may be treated in class as well. Recently, corpus studies have drawn the attention of researchers in SLA. What others? (c) Pedagogically, you may think of the ways of efficiently handling the phenomena of interlanguage and fossilization in class. (d) The chapter later deals with the direction of crosslinguistic influence (the recent attention to bidirectional transfer). It would be more interesting to discuss this issue with more empirical studies.

Preview of Chapter 3: Crosslinguistic influences

Jung Min and I are doing the preview of this chapter. I will begin by giving you a summary of the chapter, after which Jung Min will post the discussion questions.

Definition
Crosslinguistic influence is also known as "transfer", and has displaced the older term "interference", to preempt the unwanted implication that L1 knowledge hinders L2 development.

Overview
In the '50s and '60s, the hypothesis was that differences between L1 and L2 resulted in the learner experiencing difficulties in her L2 (among specific learner groups with the same L1). Contrastive Analysis sought to compare similarities and differences between L1 and L2 pairs.

In the '60s and '70s, SLA researchers (turning to analyses of actual learner language using the new methodology of Error Analysis and Performance Analysis) found out that externally catalogued L1-L2 differences could determine neither the linguistic knowledge nor the linguistic behavior of L2 learners.

Early SLA researchers concluded that not only differences, but even more often, misleading similarities between L1 and L2 cause the so-called learning difficulties. German researcher Henning Wode (1976) called this principle the Crucial Similarity Measure. Roger Anderson (1983) in the US added the principle of Transfer to Somewhere, suggesting that both L1 and L2 must have some feature that invites the (mis)perception of a similarity.

The findings in the '70s and '80s led to the understanding that learners' psychological perceptions of L1 and L2 similarities and/or differences are really the forces the shape crosslinguistic influence, rather than external language comparisons. The judgement can be (but not necessarily) made as a conscious, strategic choice, such as when there is a gap in L2 knowledge, and the best available solution is to rely on L1 knowledge.

Key Concepts
Universal sequences of language development: L2 learners, regardless of L1 background, go through predictable paths in their acquisition of certain L2 phenomena, especially in:

• morphology, particularly grammatical markers like -ing, -s, -ed
• morpho-semantics, such as the encoding of verb tense
• word order, for example, in questions and with negation
• other syntactic phenomena, such as relative clauses

Interlanguage: the language system each learner constructs at any given point in development and which reflects an interim competence that contains L1 and L2 elements, and beyond.

Interlanguages are said to be systematic, natural languages in their own right. Note however that while L1 transfer cannot radically alter the route of L2 acquisition, it can impact the rate of learners' progress along their natural developmental paths. This was first proposed by Zobl (1982).

For example, for L2 English learners whose native languages do not contain articles, there is a big initial disadvantage in the rate of acquisition.

Markedness: closed set of possibilities within a linguistic system, where the given possibilities rank from simplest and most frequent among languages of the world (unmarked) to the most complex and rarest (marked). This is an important source of universal influence, and the existence of each marked member presupposes the existence of the less marked members, but not the other way around.

Markedness Differential hypothesis: the general implication for L2 development is that marked froms tend to be more difficult to learn and therefore cause more interlanguage solutions, and that a form that is more marked in the L1 is less likely to be transferred than a form that is less marked.

Transferability (psychotypology): the claim that L1 transfer is partly a function of learners' conscious or subconscious intuitions about how transferable certain phenomena are. Kellerman (1985) noted that transferability interacts with L2 proficiency to shape what may or may not be transferred, regardless of apparent L1-L2 similarities or differences.

Avoidance (errors of omission): where negative L1 transfer does not lead to noticeable errors of commision or ungrammaticalities in L2. In such cases, because learners take fewer risks in the L2, avoidance may also delay their L2 development of the area being avoided.

Underuse and Overuse: there tends to be an underuse of certain L2 forms because the same forms are not present in the L1 (i.e., they are more marked in L1); conversely, there is usually an overuse when the forms are more marked in the L2. While knowledge of the L1 can often have a positive impact on the rate of L2 learning, especially if they are typologically and genetically close (such as sister languages German and English), it is interesting to note that it is possible for one L1 group to learn faster than another through overuse in a particular L2 form.

Information structure: a subtle L1 transfer comparing topic-prominent and subject-prominent languages. Carroll et al. (2000) argue that information structure in the L1 continues to exert an important if subtle influence on the L2 even at very advances stges of proficiency.

For example, English and Romance languages prefer existential constructions (where new referents are introduced), while German favors locational constructions.

Pragmatic competence - crosslinguistic influences go well beyond form-form or form-function correspondences to extend to and include all layers of language at the levels of form, meaning, and function, as well as pragmatic competence.

Latest Developments
There is growing evidence that suggests that knowledge of two (or more) languages can accelerate the learning of an additional one, especially if L1 and L2 are typologically related to L3, because there are more relevant cognates and similarities in forms and meanings.

Also, better vocabulary learning strategies would have been developed by the time L3 is being learned.

Of note is that all previously learned languages (and not just L1) can influence additional learning, usually because they are typologically closer to L3, or that the learner is more proficient in that language, or that it is the last one learnt immediately prior to the learning of L3 (especially if it was also learnt as a foreign language). L1 does not hold a privileged status in the acquisition of additional languages, except in the area of semantic transfer.

However, as the learner gains proficiency in L3, the presence of or the functional roles played by each language in L3 production gradually recede.

Next, Jung Min will post some questions to help you think more about this chapter. In particular, she will refer to interlingual identifications, which is found in section 3.2 on page 2 of the chapter.

Happy holidays, and don't sweat over this! ;-)

Summary and reflection of week 2 (by Merica)

Tuesday, August 28

* Foreword: Sorry it's perhaps a bit longer than expected, but I didn't want to leave anything out. Also sorry I didn't post earlier but my laptop is in the shop.

Reminder: We should post a photo of ourself on the blog site if we haven’t done so yet. It helps everybody match names and faces.

Instructions for group discussion: Students were provided with three different questions to discuss (each on different colored papers). The questions were from comments on the blog. Each group discussed the question on their sheet. Later, we formed new groups, with one student from each original group. In our new groups, we shared the main points from our first group discussion.

Personal note: I really liked the group dynamics and the discussion topics in this activity. I might borrow this idea sometime...

Comments from the blue group (from Megumi’s comment to Anne’s chapter 2 preview):
- If there is no guarantee that early start works, the philosophy of teaching should be to have fun to increase students motivation.

- Outside of school, some parents start even at a young age sending students to cram schools to prepare them for tests.

- Masaki: In Japan, many elementary school teachers don’t feel comfortable teaching English, so some junior high teachers sometimes come in to elementary schools to do the English lessons. In junior high, the English teachers are already doing test preparation, so these teachers’ philosophy of teaching doesn’t match the needs of the elementary school students.

- Ky: There should be a clear distinction between ESL and EFL. He thinks it’s very difficult to teach EFL intensively in his country (Vietnam) at that age. But with ESL, students can have access to much more exposure to English through people and media. Earlier may be better if the environment supports it.

Comments shared in the class discussion:
- Ben shared about some of his experiences teaching ESL students in the US. He said he had two Russian brothers, one was 9 and the other was 5. The older brother had problems with grammar and pronunciation, but the younger one sounded like a native speaker and didn’t have grammatical problems. Pronunciation is one of the easiest aspects of L2 learning to notice.

- Lourdes: Reading chapter 2 points out overwhelming tendencies about L2 learning being easier before a certain age, but there are some exceptions in both extremes, i.e. there are cases of some children who arrive early and have an accent, and there are some people like Julie who can pass as a native speaker.
- The critical period explanation is a biological one.

- Jongmin mentioned tongue surgery in Korea (She added that it is rare. Hmm. Curious.) Nevertheless, Lourdes pointed out that even if that does help in pronunciation, perception, vocabulary, and syntax are totally different aspects.

- Ben mentioned that the case study of Julie learning Arabic is oft sited. Lourdes added that there are also other cases of extremely successful learners in Arabic, German, French, and English.

- Lourdes mentioned that when David Birdsong said 5-25 percent of language learners are “amazingly successful late language learners,” perhaps that is an exaggeration.

- 1.5 generation: Oftentimes they are great with peers chatting, but not competent in English when it comes to academic content (Note: This happens with “native speakers” in their L1, too.

- In favor of bilingual education: If students get support in their L1, they do better in both languages. Myth that Ss pulled into English only will help them.

- Yellow group: What other consideration should be taken into account to decide whether earlier is better?

- Ben: Most EFL contexts don’t spend enough time to make a difference and it takes a lot of money, so is it worth the money? There should be more hours and do it effectively or cut it out altogether.

- Jongmin: Oftentimes the English teaching focuses on grammar.

- Lourdes: If they start teaching students when they're young, it’s important for the it to be age appropriate, with pictures, hands on activities, fun, appropriate vocabulary and methodology.

- Jongmin: Children are shy and will try to talk. On the other hand, adults are more afraid of making mistakes.

- Early learning: Shay thinks parents should support the kids learning English, e.g. reading English to their kids.

- Lourdes: Is “bad pronunciation” contagious?

- Another issue is maybe at home they need support for the L1 language and culture.

- When parents try to be teachers to their kids there are sometimes problems. (e.g. sometimes kids resent it).

Thursday, August 30

- Announcement: On the Thursday when Dr. Ortega is away at a conference (Sept. 13), we’ll go into the computer lab. Ky, Nick, and Ben can assist other students who need technological help in posting their profiles and/or pictures. We will also have a synchronous chat in which we will discuss some questions which Lourdes’ provides.

- A couple of interesting points about age and L2 learning:
- accent likely after age 4-5
- subtle grammar differences if learn English as late as 15 years old

- Forecasting L2 attainment: I liked the analogy she made to weather forecasting, i.e. we can say what is probable, but we don’t know for certain because there are exceptions. In other words, starting late doesn’t necessarily preclude success and vice versa.

- When is puberty? A point that I found interesting was the variable of puberty. Lourdes pointed out that many researchers refer to the differences when learning an L2 prior to or after the onset of puberty. However, puberty occurs at different times for different individuals. Therefore, this introduces some error. Would it be better if researchers included a question about when the participants experienced puberty?

- The monolingual bias: In the case of the phenomenal language learner Julie, the British woman who attained possibly a native level of proficiency in Arabic whilst living in Cairo, Egypt with her husband, we don’t know whether Julie had studied another language prior to learning Arabic. From what Lourdes said, I don’t think that the research report actually states this specifically, but there seems to be a monolingual bias, i.e. we assume that she was a monolingual person with English as her L1. Although, as an educated woman from the U.K., she probably had some prior language learning experience, e.g. at least some French in school.

- Is younger better? A comment which Dr. Schmidt mentioned in his Brown Bag on Thursday and Lourdes agreeably reiterated in our class is that the idea of younger is better has been oversold. When a student asked why this is the case, Lourdes explained that it seems intuitive that if you start learning a language younger, that you would acquire greater competence. As we know from research, however, this issue is rather complex and involves many variables. Although Muñoz’s recent research in Cataluña showed that the foreign language learners with a young start did not have an advantage even after several years, Lourdes added that we need more research and that it would be beneficial to do the same study in Japan and Korea.

- A call for research: This reminded me that research from professors and graduates of our program are expected to undertake groundbreaking research in the field of second language studies.

- Long-term language planning: It was also pointed out that long term language planning is essential in order to reap the benefits. For example, young learners might initially gain foreign language skills, but if instruction is not sustained throughout the student’s education, what was learned could gradually evaporate. Providing appropriately challenging material throughout is necessary as well because it would be demotivating if some students had already learned the material covered in class.

- BICS and CALP: BICS = Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills and CALP = Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (Cummins ’79). CALP actually takes about 5-7 years to attain. Such research provides support for the importance of multiple years of academic assistance for English language learners and warns against mainstreaming them too soon.

- Academic English in elementary school: Lourdes mentioned that the fourth grade in U.S. schools suddenly becomes more academically demanding. Consequently, at this time, English language learners’ deficiency in CALP may become more apparent.

- Biased linguistic expectations: Lourdes brought up an interesting point about how there are different expectations for a Japanese person learning English versus a person with English as their L1 learning Japanese. Interesting point. Many people think this way. Why? And is it fair?

* A note about formatting on this site: Don't spend too much time making your text look fancy on Microsoft Word because when you copy and paste it onto the blog site, it did not show what I had underlined and made bold. However, there are useful and easy to use editing options on the window where you edit your posting.

Reading Preview: Chapter 2: Age

READING PREVIEW

CHAPTER 2: AGE

Summary:

L1 and L2 learning outcomes vary greatly in terms of age. One of the major focuses of SLA research has been to gain insight into the relationship between age and L2 acquisition in an effort to answer the question “is there an optimal age to learn a second language?” Empirical studies of the age factor in SLA have yielded a wide range of results, some suggesting that age is a universal, biological factor in L2 acquisition, others concluding that individual and social factors are involved. Further research in this area is necessary because evidence of a connection (or not) between age and L2 acquisition can guide language and educational policies, in particular, bilingual education policies.

Key Concepts:

• The critical period hypothesis suggests that after a certain age, it is impossible to achieve native-like ultimate attainment in the L2. Studies of feral children and deaf individuals who experienced postponed L1 acquisition suggest that a critical or sensitive period indeed exists for L1 acquisition. Likewise, biologically based critical periods are present in other species (eg. kittens, ducks, owls). Acquisition of syntactic and semantic functions of language is fundamentally different; research shows that syntax involves a critical period whereas semantics does not. However, neurocognitive studies of language and the brain are difficult to interpret in terms of a critical period for language learning.
• Research suggests that adolescents and adults acquire an L2 at a faster pace, but that children eventually “catch up” and surpass the older learners. A possible explanation for this could be that learning contexts (naturalistic vs. instructed, foreign language vs. second language) influence the frequency and type of L2 input, in turn affecting universal factors such as age.
• Correlation studies looking at age show that learners who begin acquiring their L2 before puberty are more successful in achieving ultimate attainment. However, exceptionally successful late L2 learners who begin learning their L2 in their 20s or later and indeed achieve a native-like final state in terms of L2 phonology and morphosyntax do exist, and may even be more common than previously thought. This evidence challenges the critical period hypothesis. Other findings reveal that the age factor is not influenced by biology or nature, but rather socio-affective and environmental factors.

Reflecion:

This chapter definitely cleared up some confusion that I had about age and language learning. Until now, I thought that there was a much stronger body of evidence in favor of the critical period hypothesis. I was expecting to read about more clear-cut findings saying that, basically, children acquire language more quickly and with greater ease, therefore, “the earlier, the better.” And now I see that there’s a lot of counter-evidence and many questions that still need answers. More empirical research in this area is necessary.

I found it interesting that in instructed, foreign language contexts late starters (11 years old) actually achieved better learning results than early starters (8 years old). This underscores the importance of context and illustrates that, like many theories and implications coming from SLA, there is no “one size fits all” solution.

I didn’t find any parts of the chapter particularly confusing or difficult to follow, but there are a lot of examples from research studies both for and against a critical period or age factor throughout the reading. I think it would be helpful to start by reading the summary and then go to the beginning of the chapter…hopefully the reading previews will help too!