AGE

AGE – the period of time someone has been alive or something has
existed.

What is AGE as a Causative Variable in Second Language

Acquisition?
It has been popularly assumed that age itself is a predictor of second
language proficiency, that younger acquirers are better at second
language acquisition than older acquirers.

Age (or age-related factors) - a major variable in the acquisition of a

second language for school. In the early stages of acquisition, older
students are faster and more efficient than younger students.

Stephen D. Krashen, Michael A. Long and Robin C. Scarcella (1979)

reviewed the available empirical research on the effect of age and second
language acquisition and concluded that all published studies were
consistent with these three generalizations:

1. Adults proceed through the early stages of second language

development faster than children do (where time and exposure are held
constant).

2. Older children acquire faster than younger children, time and exposure
held constant.

3. Acquirers who begin natural exposure to second languages during

childhood generally achieve higher second language proficiency than
those beginning as adults.

It is not simply the case that "younger is better": children are superior to
adults only in the long run. The explanations for these observed differences
that seem most plausible to me involve input and the level or strength of
the affective filter.
Scarcella and Higa (forthcoming) – they found that younger acquirers
actually received "simpler" input in a block building task --- a result that
confirms observations made by Wagner-Gough and Hatch (1975), and that
seems to predict greater speed for younger, and not older acquirers.

Age (or age-related factors) - a major variable in the acquisition of a

second language for school. In the early stages of acquisition, older
students are faster and more efficient than younger students.

Older students have the advantage of cognitive development in their

first language to assist them with acquiring school skills in the second
language. This early advantage diminishes after the first year for adults, but
remains for older children and adolescents for continuing development of
their second language skills.

Older acquirers (adolescents) were better able to regulate both the

quantity and quality of their input.

Adolescent’s past puberty are likely to retain an accent in the second

language. Otherwise, they are capable of developing complete second
language proficiency.

When schooled only in the second language, students in the 8-12 age
range on arrival may be the most advantaged acquirers of school skills in
the second language, since they have some first language skills to transfer
and they still have time to make up the years of academic instruction lost
while acquiring basic second language skills and beginning to acquire
school skills in the second language.

Adolescents have less time to make up lost years of academic instruction

easily.

It is important to note that the effect of age diminishes over time as the
acquirer becomes more proficient in the second language. Differences
are generally found through the first five years after arrival.
It takes language minority students in any type of program a minimum of
four years to reach native speakers' level of school language proficiency
and may take as many as eight or more years, depending on age on
arrival and type of school program, as well as sociocultural factors and
the individual characteristics of each second language acquirer.

Stephen Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition

What is monitor in second language acquisition?

Monitor
- in second language acquisition, it is the availability of the conscious
grammar, allows adults to produce formally acceptable utterances using
first language rules repaired by the Monitor.

Monitor use is only possible after the acquirer has undergone formal
operations, a stage in cognitive development that generally occurs at about
puberty (Inhelder and Piaget, 1958).

It helps the acquirer to talk early, to participate in conversations, and

thereby obtain input, at least some of which will be comprehensible.

What is Monitor Hypothesis?

Monitor Hypothesis
- states that the learner is consciously learning the grammar rules and
functions of a language rather than its meaning. This theory focuses
more on the correctness of the language.
- It explains the relationship between acquisition and learning and
defines the influence of the latter on the former. The monitoring
function is the practical result of the learned grammar.

According to Krashen, the acquisition system is the utterance initiator,

while the learning system performs the role of the 'monitor' or the 'editor'.
The 'monitor' acts in a planning, editing and correcting function when three
specific conditions are met:
 The second language learner has sufficient time at their disposal.
 They focus on form or think about correctness.
 They know the rule.

Both explanations for the older acquirers' rate superiority reduce to the
greater ability of the adult and older child to obtain comprehensibly input.
Thus, comprehensible input again is hypothesized to be the causative
variable, and not age per se (by itself).

The child's superiority in ultimate attainment has been hypothesized to

be due to the strengthening of the affective filter at about puberty, an
event that may also be related to formal operations (Krashen, 1981).

What is the affective filter?

The “affective filter” is a theoretical construct in second language

acquisition that attempts to explain the emotional variables associated
with the success or failure of acquiring a second language. It is an
invisible psychological filter that can either facilitate or hinder language
production in a second language.

This hypothesis has several advantages.

First, it claims that child-adult differences in attainment are not due to any
change in the "language acquisition device" (LAD) but are due to the
filter, a factor that is, in a sense, external to the LAD.

Second, it is consistent with the claim that adults are still "acquirers", that
they retain the natural language acquisition capacity children have. It also
allows for the possibility that some adults can achieve extremely high
levels of competence in a second language and may even be taken for
native; it predicts that such "Good Language Learners" will be, above all,
good acquirers, with the ability to obtain a great deal of comprehensible
input with a low affective filter. In many cases, the filter prevents the adult
only from going the last few inches