Children vs adults in
second-language
acquisition
A Common Belief
Children are better than adults when
attempting to learn a second language.
is that true?
Factor Involved in SLA
1. Psychological
▪ Intellectual processing
✓Determination of grammatical structures and rules
✓Memory
✓Motor skills
2. Social
▪ Type of situation
▪ Settings and interactions
▪ Natural and classroom situation
Psychological Factors:
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSING
Two ways to learn the structures and rules of a
second language:
1. Someone can explain them to you (explication)
2. You can figure it out for yourself (induction).
Explication
▪ The process whereby the rules and structures of
a second language are explained to the learner in
his or her native language.
▪ Explaining is rarely done by parents or others
when children acquire an L1, yet children by the
age of 4 or 5 understand and speak most of their
L1.
Induction
▪ Learning rules by self-discovery.
▪ Can be analyzed by a child who is exposed to
second-language speech and remembers what he
or she has heard.
▪ e.g: John danced then John sang
John danced then he sang
MEMORY
• Memory is important for child to accumulate the vast
amount of speech and relevant situational data
which serve as the basis for analizing structure and
formulating rules, this processes constitute
induction.
• Negative sentences are not likely to have been
experienced by the child at one time.
• The kind of simple memorization is called ‘rote’
memorization.
• When 50 years, brain capacity reduce until 20 %. 75
years, 40%.
• How adult deal with the weakening rote memory :
develop strategies, practice and exposure.
MOTOR SKILLS
• Language motor skills → Pronunciation
• Affected by lips, mouth, jaws (muscles).
• Motor skill of speech pronunciation is best
develop on younger age.
Social Factors
Objects
The Natural
Situations
Situation
Social Events
Situation
Adjustment
The Classroom
Situation
Skill
THE NATURAL SITUATION
• A Natural Situation is on where the second-
language is experienced in a situation that is
similar to that in which the native language is
learned.
• Concerning in interactions with the neighbour.
Distinguishing Children and Adults in
Learning Second-Language
Children Adults
1. Example: Going abroad with parents 1. Example: Requirements in job
and live there. vacancy.
2. Children will be often readily accepted 2. For adults, social interaction mainly
by other children. Since for children, occurs through the medium of
language is not essential to social language.
interaction (speak occasionally).
3. Children can melt with others, even if 3. Foreign adults often tend to stick
with different mother tongue speakers together in a new environment.
in a new environment.
Solution: In large cities, they provide radio, television, newspapers in the foreign
language (to reduce second-language exposure for adults)
THE CLASSROOM SITUATION
Planned Planned by
situation the teacher
Teacher is the
one who plans
and control all
the activities
Students Students
acquire the follow the
planned- direction
language planned
• Comparing to the natural situation, classroom
situation stands for:
– Social adjustment to group processes
– The need to attend class in order to learn
– The need for long periods of concentration
– Having to do home study
Children are rated “low” in adjustment and skills in
the classroom situation.
The opposite is the case for adults who rate “low”
in the natural situation but “high” in the
classroom situation.
Who is better?
• The situation must be considered separately in
relation to the psychology factors that affect
learning language.
• With this approach, we can reach the
conclusion to comparing the achievement of
children and adults in second language
learning.
The Natural Situation
• Children will do better in this situation.
• The social activities of children expose them
to massive amounts of good nature language.
• The children have an advantage to learn
grammar faster than adults because of faster
memory.
• Children possess the flexibility in motor skills
which adults don’t have, it helps the children
in acquiring pronunciation.
The Classroom Situation
• Adults will do better than young children in this
situation.
• Not only are they better in explicative processing
but, simply put, they know how to be students.
• The best age to learn a second language in a
classroom situation is probably that age where
the individual retains much of the memory and
motor skills I of the very young, but where the
individual has begun to reason and understand
like an adult.
Critical Age
• Different from acquiring a first language, there is
not a critical age for learning grammatical
language (syntax). But, it still takes time to
learning them.
e.g.
1. Complicated syntax such as occurs in Russian
and Finnish can be learned by normal adult
Chinese.
2. English grammar also can be learned by
Indonesian adult.
Syntax vs Pronunciation
• According to Thomas Scovel, adults may have
mastered the grammatical and communicative
complexities of another language, but they
still speak with an accent. (examples on p.216)
Issue
• There is an absolute critical age in
pronunciation for most people, but not for all.
• The writer believes that there are persons
whose pronunciation can pass as native
speakers in a second language, a language
which they have learned as adults.
thank you ☺
