Rate of progress – the advantage for older beginners

This section explores studies indicating that older learners have an initial advantage over their younger counterparts in terms of rate of progress. The aim is to tease out what this research reveals about how children learn FLs. The review includes studies which explored:

 The benefits of early start (Burstall, Jamieson, Cohen, Hargreaves, 1974; Muňoz, 2006; Vilke & Vrhovac, 1995)

 Learning the form of a language (Dimroth, 2008; Garcia-Mayo & Garcia- Lecumberri, 2003)

 The relationships between L1 and FLL (Knell, Haiyan, Miao, Yanping, Siegel, Lin & Wei , 2007; Mihaljević-Djigunović, 2010; Wilden & Porch, 2014)

The benefits of starting FL instruction early were investigated in England with children who started learning French at the age of 8 and 11 (Burstall et al., 1974). The measurements of the learners’ language proficiency were conducted at the ages of 13 and 16. The results of the first measurement indicated that learners who started earlier outperformed the other group in listening and speaking. At the time of the second measurement, only listening skills were demonstrably higher in the younger beginners. It was concluded that older beginners’ rate of progress was faster and hence an earlier start of instruction did not result in higher proficiency at 16; hence there was no argument for funding early language learning provision in schools. However, there was little account in the study of other contextual factors that might have affected the results. Most significantly, the quality of teaching at the primary school and the continuity from primary to secondary school were not evaluated. Moreover, the measurements focused on language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) but did not provide insight into other areas such as pronunciation or accent.

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A more recent study that explored a similar issue was the Barcelona Age Factor Project (BAF) reported by Muñoz (2006). It was a large scale, longitudinal study that included about 2000 learners of English. A number of measures including speaking, listening, reading and writing were deployed after 200, 400 and 700 hours of FL input. The results were compared for participants who started learning English at the ages of 8 and 11. The findings evidenced that, initially, the older learners outperformed their younger counterparts on all measures. This was attributed to their cognitive development and schooling, especially the development of morphosyntactic ability which was detected at around the age of 12. Based on observations that the younger learners gradually caught up with their older counterparts in tests that measured implicit learning, Muňoz (ibid.) noted that children who started learning English at the age of 8 ‘seem to favour and be favoured by implicit learning’ (p. 32) but this type of learning may take longer. The quality of teaching was not evaluated in the BAF project, so it is not possible to establish if younger children were offered opportunities for implicit learning. Hence, the possibility remains that factors other than age impacted on the rates of progression.

Other studies have investigated how children learn the form of language in childhood. For example, Garcia-Mayo and Garcia-Lecumberri (2003) focused on Spanish-Basque L1 speakers learning English as the third language (L3). The investigation centred on gauging whether the age of starting instruction impacted on the learners’ judgements about grammar. The study concluded that participants who started learning English at the age of 11-12 achieved significantly higher scores than those who began at the age of 8-9. The same was reported after the younger group received an additional 198 hours of teaching. The weaker performance of the younger group could indicate that younger children are more focused on meaning rather than form. This may be explained by the findings of the BAF project (Muñoz, 2006), which indicates that children learn languages implicitly and, hence, may not be explicitly aware of form and as such are likely to underperform on grammaticality judgement tests.

Another study investigating how children learn language form compared the acquisition of negation and finiteness in L2 German by two untutored children (aged 8 and 14) with one another and with an adult (Dimroth, 2008). Dimroth concluded that the younger child differed from the adolescent, who was similar to the adult, in that the 8 year old acquired the target structures faster than the 14 year old, in a different order and seemed to do so without analysis. Although this study was not conducted in a school setting, it offered a

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useful insight as it explored the implicit acquisition of linguistic form, which was shown to be beneficial for young learners (Muñoz, 2006). Dimroth’s (ibid.) results suggest that language form can be learnt implicitly. However, presumably this requires a significant amount of exposure to FL.

The next study investigated the relationship between the age of beginning instruction in a FL and achievement. It analysed the listening and reading skills of over 6500 children in Germany (Wilden & Porsch, 2014). Two measurements were conducted. In 2010, children aged 9/10 who had started receiving FL instruction at the age of 8 were assessed; in 2012, 9/10 year olds who had started instruction at the age of 6.5 were assessed. The results suggested that the development of reading skills in L1 was an important factor in successful FLL. This finding corroborates with the results of the study reported above (Muñoz, 2006) which suggest that schooling (including L1) may have an impact on FLL.

The relationship between L1 and FLL has been explored by other researchers. For example, Mihaljević Djigunović (2010) compared the achievements of learners aged 14 who had begun receiving FL instruction at different ages. She reported interconnections between their development in L1 and FL reading, writing and listening skills. The results indicate that the strongest relationship was found between the reading skills in L1 and FL. Another interesting insight into the relationship between L1 and FLL was found in a study by Knell et al. (2007) who compared achievement in a number of tests measuring vocabulary and phoneme recognition as well as the letter knowledge of children in immersion and non-immersion programmes in China. The 183 participants were 6-9 years old. Knell et al. (ibid.) reported that the phonological awareness and letter recognition in pinyin (a phonetic system of transcribing Mandarin into Latin alphabet) could facilitate the learning of L1 (Chinese) and FL (English). These studies indicate that the development of literacy that occurred as the children matured and were educated could facilitate FLL, suggesting that one of the strongest related factors is reading. Hence, skills and knowledge of L1, especially reading, may impact on a faster rate of progress in FL in older children. This suggests that contextual factors, such as the age of beginning schooling, may be important for successful FLL in childhood and should be considered in assessment.

As indicated by the research reviewed so far, adolescents initially learn language faster than younger children. This advantage could be explained in terms of the development

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of cognitive abilities (see also Section 2.2.1.3) alongside L1 literacy skills. Their younger counterparts were shown to benefit from implicit learning. Hence, it seems useful to consider whether assessment practices appropriate for younger children should focus on measuring implicit learning and formulaic language, shifting towards a greater emphasis on analysed language as learners become more mature. This seems to have implications for whether feedback on performance should be implicit or explicit and it raises the question of whether learners should be required to notice if there is a mismatch between their own performance and what is considered correct in developing a FL. These issues are further discussed in Section 2.2.1.3.1.