Age and Second Language Acquisition - Term Paper Example

 Age and Second Language Acquisition Abstract English is an international language widely used in most of the countries irrespective of the cultural, social, political or religious differences. Globalization has increased the scope of an international language and in the current global business scenario, learning of English is essential for the non native speakers of English. Second language learning is encouraged in many countries especially in non-native English speaking countries, in order to improve communication skills and to exploit the global employment potentials. It is difficult for the adults to learn second language or English as easily as the children because of their physiological differences with children. Children have the ability to grasp new things quickly compared to the adults because of their thirst for knowing unknowing things. On the other hand adults who have had wide experiences from their life might be in a saturated stage which prevents them from exhibiting more interests in the learning process especially the language learning. So, the early learning of the second language or English is better than learning it in a later period. This paper briefly analyses the advantages of learning second language or English at an early stage compared to later stages. Introduction The need for a common international language with the expansion of a global communication network has made English, the language of choice” (TESOL& Dang, 2005, p.9). English is widely accepted as the global language for communication because of its wide popularity in different parts of the world. It is not possible for a person to learn a second language as easy as his first language. A person from his childhood onwards interacts with the first language which helps him in having sound proficiency in the first language. On the other hand, second language learning occurs in some specific classrooms and the second language learner gets limited opportunities to learn the second language. English language has a unique identity compared to other languages because of its international acceptance. Learning English as a second language is not an easy task. Complex vocabularies, grammar usage, compositions of the sentences and the accent, all are important for the proper learning of English. All these difficulties will result in improper usage of English language by the non native English speakers. Second language learning mostly start at adulthood since the requirement of second language will come only at a later stage of a person’s life, may be for his business, academic or professional purposes. On the other hand in countries like India, even from the lower primary classes onwards, a student need to study two languages compulsory; native language and English. On the other hand in countries like China, such compulsory second language learning is not necessary. The difference in English language proficiency is evident when a native English speaker speaks with an Indian and a Chinese. The Chinese may face severe difficulties in communicating with a native English speaker whereas an Indian might find less difficulty in communicating with the native English speakers. We should remember that most of the outsourcing jobs from America like English speaking countries are done by the Indians because of their improved proficiency in English compared to other nonnative English speaking countries. More specifically saying learning of the second language should start as early as possible in order to acquire proper knowledge and proficiency in that language. Second language learning The role of the age factor and the existence of a critical period (CP) is a key research area in second language acquisition (SLA). Biologically determined critical period plays a pivotal role not just in linguistic theory, but in cognitive science as a whole (Nikolov and Djigunovic, 2006, p.234). Learning is a complex process which require the combined effort of so many parameters like the intelligence of the learner, attitude of the learner, quality of curriculum and the teacher, nature of the environment in which the learning take place etc. Age of the learner also can play a pivotal role in the process of learning. It is foolishness to think that both a child and an adult may have equal capacity to learn even under the same circumstances. There is a critical period (which is determined by the biological factors), beyond which the learning process or the ability will slow down. “At the level of neural representation of L2, performance differences may result from differences in maturation of neuronal systems. It is based on the idea that there is an age-related decrease in plasticity for language learning” (Wattendorf & Festman, 2008, p.5) Our brain controls all the learning activities. The neurons responsible for brain activities functions differently at different ages or in other words, brain activities will decrease as the age increases as far as learning is concerned. The complex learning tasks which are easy for a child might not be the same for an adult or elderly people because of the difference in brain activities. Early (high-proficient) bilinguals may select and use a more available and “automatic” L2; in late bilinguals, processing in L2 may use a less efficient representation and therefore needs greater effort or requires compensatory strategies. (Wattendorf & Festman, 2008, p.8) It is by now a well-established finding that for most people (practically all right-handers and most left-handers), the two sides of the cortex perform different functions. As Table 1 indicates, the left hemisphere is responsible for most linguistic performance in adults. Table 1. Functions of the two hemispheres ________________________________________________________ Left hemisphere Right hemisphere ________________________________________________________ Language Spatial relations Time-related functions "Gestalt" perception Part-to-whole judgments "Propositional" thought Music "Appositional" thought ______________________________________________________ Recent studies strongly suggest that the left brain is also involved in certain non- linguistic functions, specifically those related to the perception of time: for example, the left hemisphere is superior to the right in judging temporal order, or deciding which of two stimuli was presented first. The eminent neurosurgeon, Joseph Bogen, in a fascinating series of papers, has speculated that the two sides of the brain utilize two different cognitive modes, one "propositional" (analytic, digital) and one "appositional" (analogic, synthetic). (Krashen, p.70&71) Time concepts also can play a vital role in the language learning. Children and adults may have entirely different time concepts. Elders quiet often take their learning lightly whereas the younger ones take it more seriously. Time bounded learning is a characteristic of younger ones whereas elder ones always postpone their learning activities for the sake of some other things. Thus the importance of time in learning process will vanish as the age of the learner goes on increasing. Young learners are going through a period of social, emotional, and cognitive growth, when they developing literacy (MCKAY, 2005, p.256). These characteristics will help them in their language learning process. They have fewer experiences compared to the adults and hence they will trust and follow whatever the instructions they are getting from the teacher rather than using any shortcuts. On the other hand, adults who have more experiences than the young will try to use some kind of shortcuts in order to acquire knowledge. For example, ‘it is a fact that non-native speakers of English has a tendency to translate or attempt to translate first language words, phrases and organization in to English’ (Connor, 2006, p.3) It is difficult to translate a sentence from another language into English, just by translating each word and phrase and keeping the same structure. The composition of English sentences is very much different from that of other languages. One of the studies conducted on around 2.3 million Chinese and Spanish immigrants has proved that the degree of success in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) steadily declines throughout the life span (Nikolov and Djigunovic, 2006, p.235). On the other hand a widely accepted finding states that children are slower at SLA than adolescents or adults. However, they tend to achieve higher levels of proficiency in the long run (Nikolov and Djigunovic, 2006, p.236). While older beginners generally outperform their juniors initially _ at least in morphology and syntax in terms of overall long-term outcomes, broadly speaking, the earlier exposure to the L2 begins, the better (Singleton, 2001, p78)Children starts slowly compared to adults as far as second language acquisition is concerned. But they will never stop their learning process like the adults. Adults normally stop their learning process after they feel that they have enough knowledge in the second language to communicate effectively. On the other hand children will never stop their learning and they will continue to learn the second language till they grasp a good mastery over second language. In a study of the profiles of 30 post-puberty learners of English from 25 countries and speaking 18 languages and a control group of 30 native speakers with matched academic backgrounds was shown that nonnatives performed on a significantly lower level than the control group of native speakers on measures of pronunciation, vocabulary size, grammatical knowledge, and narrative skills (Nikolov and Djigunovic, 2006, p.237). Native speakers always have the benefit of using their language everywhere they interact; in the classrooms, society or in their homes whereas the nonnative speakers use the second language only when they were forced to do so. In other words, pronunciation, vocabulary size, grammatical knowledge, and narrative skills etc can be improved only by the constant and continuous usages of a language. Native speakers do that whereas the nonnative speakers fail to do that and would acquire less mastery over the above areas compared to the native speakers. Children and adults may have fundamentally different processing mechanisms at their disposal. Thus, some adherents of the Universal Grammar (UG) school of thought (e.g., Bley-Vroman, 1989; Schachter, 1989) claim that post-pubertal L2 language learning has no access to UG principles and parameters (Singleton, 2001, p79) Children always try to use correct grammars in their communication since they afraid of the consequences if errors occur in communication. On the other hand, elders may not give much emphasize to grammatical errors as they are less concerned with such things compared to the children. A further dimension of age-related L2 research in the 1980s and 1990s has been the emergence of findings apparently indicating that, while the putative decline in language-acquiring capacity may reach its culmination in adolescence, it has its onset around age 6 or 7. (Singleton, 2001, p79) the above studies clearly show the problems in learning a second language at a later period. Adolescence is a period in which lot of hormonal developments, cognitive developments, emotional developments started to attain its peak and thereafter such things may start to decline. There is common saying that “the things or habits which learned during the childhood period follow a person till his death”. The knowledge and understanding acquired during childhood will be deposited in the deep memories whereas that acquired during a later period will be stored in the volatile memory. The data stored in the volatile memory can be lost any time as volatile memory has less life. It is difficult for the elders to keep on learning and concentrate fully on their learning because of their commitments to so many other things. Children can concentrate heavily on their learning as they may not have many things to worry about during their childhood because of fewer responsibilities associated with them. On the other hand, adults always tied to many things. They have commitments in the family, society and in their workplace. All these things need to be addressed with equal importance in order to lead a successful life and hence learning is a task which they conveniently push back to excel in other areas of their life. Second language learning is a stressful act and the attitude of the person and the society is important in second language acquisition (SLA). Gender and culture can also affect learning of second language. Community attitudes and perceptions toward the second language being learned can also have a strong impact on SLA. If the community has a negative view of the target language and its speakers, SLA is much more difficult. But these parameters will be less significant during childhood compared to adulthood so that children would be less affected by such barriers in their SLA process compared to elders. Arguments favoring elders abilities in SLA So far we have discussed the barriers the elders may have in SLA compared to younger generation. All the discussions above were aimed at promoting the advantage of younger generation over elder in SLA. But there are few studies which yields results opposite to our findings mentioned above. More recent research in neurology has 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". 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. (Age and Language Learning, 2009) The above argument may seem to be justifiable at first glance. But when we considering the overall advantages of learning second language at an early stage compared to later stage we can conclude that early acquisition of second language will help one person more compared to elders even though elders may appear to be in an advantageous position. It is difficult for the late learners to sustain their learning activities because of their other commitments and less brain activities as mentioned at the early stages of this paper. On the other hand early learners can polish their knowledge based on their increasing cognitive systems. In other words, children can start the communication in second language at an early stage itself, since they already have the bases of the second language. But the elders need to acquire the knowledge first to start communication in second language. Conclusions Second language learning is considered as an important thing in the current world since people has realized that their mother tongue have limited capacities in communicating with others outside their native country. It is better to acquire mastery in second language during childhood itself because of the higher abilities of learning a child possess compared to elders. The brain activities will be much higher during childhood compared to adulthood which eases the second language learning process for children. The culture, community gender and attitude of the person towards second language can play an important role in SLA. These parameters are less significant during childhood compared to adulthood. In short, second language learning should be started as early as possible and for that purpose, the curriculums must be revised by implementing compulsory learning of second language from lower primary classes on wards. References 1. Age and Language Learning, (2009), Retrieved on 22 October 2009 from http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/age-and-language-learning.html 2. Connor Ulla M. Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-Cultural Aspects of Second Language Writing, Publisher: Cambridge University Press (January 26, 1996), http://www.amazon.com/Contrastive-Rhetoric-Cross-Cultural-Cambridge-Linguistics/dp/0521441455/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248070792&sr=1-2# 3. Krashen Stephen D, (n.d), Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning, Retrieved on 22 October 2009 from http://www.sdkrashen.com/SL_Acquisition_and_Learning/ 4. MCKAY PENN, (2005), RESEARCH INTO THE ASSESSMENT OF SCHOOL-AGE LANGUAGE LEARNERS Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Cambridge University Press 5. Nikolov Marianne and Djigunovic Jelena Mihaljevic (2006), RECENT RESEARCH ON AGE, SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND EARLY FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (2006) Printed in the USA, Cambridge University Press 6. Singleton David, (2001), AGE AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (2001) Printed in the USA, Cambridge University Press 7. TESOL B.A.,& Dang,Pinky Y. , Highway To E.S.L.: A User-Friendly Guide to Teaching English As A Second Language, Publisher: iUniverse, Inc. (May 18, 2005), http://www.amazon.com/Highway-E-S-L-User-Friendly-Teaching-Language/dp/0595342213/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248070792&sr=1-7# 8. Wattendorf Elise and Festman Julia, (2008), IMAGES OF THE MULTILINGUAL BRAIN: THE EFFECTOF AGE OF SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (2008), Printed in the USA, Cambridge University Press Read More