SLARG Meeting, 15 May 2003

Costas Gabrielatos

Summary of
1. The article: Marinova-Todd, S.F., Marshall, D.B. and Snow, C.E. 2000: Three Misconceptions About age
and L2 Learning. TESOL Quarterly 34, 1: 9-34.
2. The response: Hyltenstam, K. and N. Abrahamsson 2001: Age and L2 learning: the hazards of matching
practical 'implications' with theoretical 'facts'. TESOL Quarterly 35, 1: 151-170.
3. The counter-response: Marinova-Todd, S.F., Marshall, D.B. and Snow, C.E. 2001: Missing the point: a
response to Hyltenstam and Abrahamsson. TESOL Quarterly 35, 1: 171-176.

Parameters believed to affect SLA

1. Onset of SLA 4. Language environment 6. Cognitive abilities

2. Time of exposure to L2 (L1/L2 ratio) 7. Learning strategies
3. Richness of exposure 5. Type of exposure / learning 8. Motivation
context 9. Expectations

Critical Period Hypothesis

The article
• There is no consensus re. the existence of a critical period (CP) in SLA.
• Research has been biased in favour of the CPH.

The response
• The existence of CP is an open question, but there is more substantial support for than against its existence.
• The research they cite is not clearly relevant (i.e. it doesn’t test the CPH), nor are the results clear-cut or
conclusive.

Problem 1: Misinterpretation

The article
• High ultimate attainment does not necessarily mean that learning is fast or easy. Adults are faster and more
efficient language learners than children, in the initial stages.
• Effects of age (i.e. onset of learning) are not the same across the board. They may be structure-specific.

The response
• Research seems to indicate that adult learners are better at learning some language features.
• The learning efficiency of adults in learning those features may have to do with their “more sophisticated
pattern recognition skills and their ability to transfer these patterns from one language to another, and not
the result of their greater learning abilities” (: 155)1
• Some tasks are more difficult for children.
• Some children may not have developed test-taking skills.
• AO is the only factor that can account for the variation of outcomes between younger and older learners.
• Current CP claims do not include higher speed of acquisition for young learners.

The counter-response

1
Isn’t pattern recognition a component of learning abilities?
 2

• Speed of acquisition is still used to determine teaching/educational decisions.

Problem 2: Misattribution

The article
• Brain activation patterns (as identified by MRI) when using L1 and L2 are not reliable indicators of low
proficiency, or predictors of the level of ultimate attainment. Different patterns may indicate that adults and
children attend to different aspects of language in different ways.
• There may be an optimal localisation of language processing in the brain, but the adult subjects in the studies
were poorly selected. That is, high proficiency children may have been compared to low proficiency adults.
The differences in the localisation of brain activity may have to do with the differences between the language
processing of high- and low-proficiency subjects.

The response
• Differences in localisation may be related to SLA outcomes - research is still in the initial stages. “To
discard all individual research results and observations in the field until one knows exactly how the different
neural subsystems contribute to language learning would be unwise” (: 160)2.
• The authors are not consistent in their stance towards proficiency and localisation (: 160)

The counter-response
• Research in this area hasn’t convincingly related localisation and language proficiency.
• They didn’t discard the field of brain-imaging studies; they only advised caution when interpreting results.

Problem 3: Misemphasis

The article
• Studies have given much more attention to unsuccessful, rather than successful, adult L2 learners.
• The evaluation of adult learners’ pronunciation has been problematic. The evaluation norms were neither
well defined nor consistent. The evaluators’ judgement may well have been influenced by preconceptions re.
children and adult L2 learners. Reading aloud tasks favour children over adults. Imitation tasks don’t take
into account the possible decline of auditory capabilities with age.
• The role of the linguistic environment, the language of interaction, cognitive ability and motivation have not
been taken into account (at least not consistently).

The response
• It is true that there have been studies that under-represent adults who have attained native-like proficiency,
but recent SLA research has shifted the focus on such adults .
• Studies on adults with native-like proficiency indicate that adults can achieve near-native proficiency in a
number of aspects, or native-like proficiency in some areas, but there has been no report of adults who
demonstrate native-like proficiency “in all relevant aspects of the L2” (: 158)3
• UA is uniform in young learners, but varies “enormously” in adults.
• If a CP exists, then issues of social context, motivation, aptitude and instruction become more important.

The counter-response
• The variation in the performance of adults as opposed to the lesser variation in the performance of children
indicates that a CP does not exist - if it did both groups should show similar degrees of variation.
• Attainment of native-like proficiency by adults is more relevant to the CPH than adults’ average
performance in tests - it shows that factors other than biological ones are (also?) involved. (: 174)
• The majority of native speakers, if subjected to detailed linguistic tests, would show a near-native profile.

2
It would be equally unwise to accept them.
3
What are these “relevant aspects”?
 3

• The focus of SLA should shift from the examinations of groups to the examination of successful adult
language learners.

Practical implications

The article
• Decisions on when to start learning an L2 should not be made solely on the assumption ‘the younger the
better’.
• Foreign language instruction in elementary schools may not be the most productive allocation of learning
time.
• A language course for children should plan to “cover only half as much material in a year as the middle
school course” (: 28)4
• Teachers of children should be native or have native-like command.

The response
• It is not wise to draw practical implications from an unresolved theoretical debate or theoretical research.
• The issue of CP doesn’t have “immediate and specific implications for teaching practice” (: 154), because
the CPH does not address the question of learning rate and it concerns itself with the ability to attain
native-like proficiency from mere exposure to the language.
• Still, they largely agree with the proposal, not because they agree that a CP does not exist, but because the
proposals “follow from applied empirical research that directly addresses the practical issue of when to
introduce a new language in the school curriculum” (: 153).
• “We simply do not believe that the attainment of nativelike proficiency is a relevant goal for second/foreign
language teaching” (: 164).

The counter-response
• They reject the distinction between theoretical and applied research.
• Arguments for/against the existence of a CP do influence the language teaching policies and practices in a
number of countries.

Reservations and questions

• The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) concerns naturalistic, not instructed, language learning. In the
research reported in the three articles, have all subjects learnt the L2 through mere exposure (i.e. how valid
are the results of these studies)? How valid or helpful is it to derive implications for instructed SLA from the
results of studies on the CPH?

• The notion of “ultimate attainment” is biased, as ‘ultimate’ implies that language development ceases after a
certain age. In other words, using the term presupposes that we accept that the critical period exists.

• Research on the CP has focused on, and conclusions have been drawn from, the success in learning/using
specific aspects of language, particularly morphology, syntax and pronunciation, rather than the overall
effectiveness of language use in context.

• Research reports talk about ‘children’ and ‘adults’ without making it clear if they refer to the onset age
(OA), that is the age when the subjects started learning the L2 (within or after the CP) or to the actual age of
subjects during the tests.

4
If this recommendation is taken on board, it will result in shifting the low expectations from adults to children.