The Optimal Age to Learn a Foreign Language

A longitudinal study of Chinese children and adolescents learning English in the United States

“…Most earlier long-term attainment studies focused primarily on a limited set of variables such as arrival age and length of residence as possible predictors of L2 proficiency (e.g., Asher & Garcia, 1969;Johnson, 1992;Johnson & Newport, 1989;Oyama, 1976Oyama, , 1978Patkowski, 1982). Inspired by long-existing theories of environmental, social, and attitudinal influences on L2 acquisition (e.g., Gardner & Lambert, 1959;Lambert, 1967), researchers recently have examined and identified more predictors of long-term L2 attainment (Birdsong & Applied Molis, 2001;Flege, Yeni-Komshian, & Liu, 1999;.…”

“…These studies examine immigrants' L2 (English) attainment after they have lived in the United States for a given number of years (Asher & Garcia, 1969;Johnson & Newport, 1989;Oyama, 1976Oyama, , 1978Patkowski, 1982). A persistent finding is that age of arrival in the United States is the most robust predictor of long-term L2 attainment, regardless of immigrant group or linguistic attributes measured.…”

Age and second language acquisition

“…Investigations of naturalistic L2 acquisition yield a converse pattern. Subjects with several years naturalistic experience of their L2 whose exposure to the L2 began in early childhood are found, on the whole, to outperform those whose L2 experience began in later years (see, e.g., Asher & García, 1969;Oyama, 1976Oyama, , 1978Patkowski, 1980); whereas studies of subjects with more limited naturalistic exposure to the L2 show older beginners outperforming younger ones (see, e.g., Ervin-Tripp, 1974), their advantage diminishing only after about a year (Snow & Hoefnagel-Höhle, 1978). Krashen, Long, and Scarcella s (1979) review interprets the evidence as follows: while older beginners generally outperform their juniors initially at least in morphology and syntax in terms of overall long-term outcomes, broadly speaking, t he ea rlier exposu re to the L2 begins, the better.…”

The Mutual Intelligibility of L2 Speech

“…learning among those who acquire their L2 after childhood~Asher & Garcia, 1969;Flege, Munro, & Mackay, 1995;Major, 2001;Scovel, 1988!+ Although accented speech is a salient indicator of a nonnative linguistic background, the impact of an accent on communication is complex+ In some instances, speech marked by nonnative segmentals and prosody appears to be understood by native listeners just as well as native-produced speech from a familiar dialect~Munro & Derwing, 1999!+ However, an accent can sometimes have adverse consequences for the L2 speaker~Flege, 1988b!+ First, listeners might experience difficulty in understanding speech that differs from the patterns of oral production to which they are accustomed+ Thus, accentedness sometimes leads to a loss of intelligibility+ Second, interlocutors might respond negatively to accented speech because of impatience, inexperience with L2 speakers, or prejudice~Derwing, Rossiter, & Munro, 2002;Dávila, Bohara, & Saenz, 1993;Kalin & Rayko, 1978;Lippi-Green, 1997;Munro, 2003;Raisler, 1976;Rubin, 1992!+ In the study reported here, we focus primarily on the first concern-the intelligibility of L2 speech-rather than on issues of bias against accents or L2 speakers+ Derwing and Munro~1997! and Munro and Derwing~1995, 1999 have emphasized that L2 speech must be considered in terms of a variety of different dimensions+ They defined intelligibility as the extent to which a speaker's utterance is actually understood and emphasized the importance of distinguishing this notion from comprehensibility, which refers to the listener's estimation of difficulty in understanding an utterance, and from accentedness, the degree to which the pronunciation of an utterance sounds different from an expected production pattern+ Although comprehensibility and accentedness are related to intelligibility, they are partially independent dimensions of L2 speech+ An utterance that is rated by a listener as "heavily accented," for instance, might still be understood perfectly by the same listener+ Furthermore, two utterances that are fully intelligible might entail perceptibly distinct degrees of processing difficulty, such that they are rated differently for comprehensibility+ A number of studies have explored comprehensibility and accentedness through listener judgments on equal-interval rating scales+ Usually, listeners evaluate how difficult an utterance is to understand or how strongly accented it is+ Such tasks tend to yield reliable results~Brennan & Brennan, 1981;Burda, Scherz, Hageman, & Edwards, 2003;Derwing & Munro, 1997;Thompson, 1991!, and the assumption that accentedness can be partitioned into equal intervals e+g+, on a 9-point scale!…”