Age in Learning and Teaching

Grammar
ROBERT M. DEKEYSER

­Framing the Issue

Anecdotal experience tells us that children are “better at language learning” than
adults, but exactly how and why they are different from adults in this respect has
proved harder to pin down than one may expect. Roughly speaking, children learn-
ing a second language under the age of 6 are almost certain to end up like native
speakers in all domains of language, while those who learn that same language
after age 12 are likely to have non-native features, and those who learn it after age
16 are almost certain not to be able to pass for native speakers (e.g., Abrahamsson
& Hyltenstam, 2009). Averaged over many individuals, one typically sees, again
roughly between the ages of 6 and 16, a gradual decline of ultimate attainment (the
furthest a learner ever gets in the language, after many years of daily use) as a func-
tion of age of onset (the age at which acquisition of the language started). The latter
is sometimes also called age of arrival, because for many people, children as well as
adults, their first significant exposure to a new language is when they arrive as
immigrants in a new country.
The reasons for this phenomenon of decline with age have been hotly debated.
Some researchers argue that it is not due to age itself, but to amount of experience
with the first language or to social and educational variables that tend to correlate
strongly with age, such as amount of education in the second language. Many, how-
ever, adhere to a maturational interpretation, that is, that language learning becomes
harder as the learner matures (ages), regardless of the social context. This interpreta-
tion has been known in the literature as the critical period hypothesis since Lenneberg
(1967) introduced this essentially biological concept into the field of linguistics.
While a large amount of research on age effects in the learning of second language
grammar and pronunciation has accumulated in the last few decades, very little of
it has directly addressed the role of age in classroom language learning (as opposed
to learning by immigrants). This relative scarcity of research directly relevant to
teaching, combined with misunderstandings about the nature and cause(s) of the
age effects observed in immigrants, has led to premature recommendations for

The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching. Edited by John I. Liontas.

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0106
2 Age in Learning and Teaching Grammar

second language teaching. The next section explains why the age effects seen in
immigrants do not simply imply that second language learning should start earlier.
The last section discusses practical implications for second language teaching.

­Making the Case

Even though Lenneberg has been quoted again and again in the literature on age
effects, a crucial aspect of what he understood by “critical period” is almost always
ignored. He stated that “automatic acquisition from mere exposure to a given lan-
guage seems to disappear after this age, and foreign languages have to be taught
and learned through a conscious and labored effort” (1967, p. 176). What Lenneberg
is arguing, then, is that what declines with age is not simply the capacity to learn (a
large part of) a language, but the capacity to acquire it implicitly, the way young
children do in their native or second language. The child knows how to conjugate
verbs before knowing there are verbs, let alone that they are conjugated. The adult
often knows a lot about verbs and their conjugation, but still stumbles in using
them, making mistakes or taking too long to produce the correct form. In more
contemporary terminology, children have a large amount of implicit knowledge of
a language (knowledge they are not consciously aware of) before they acquire a
very modest amount of explicit knowledge about it, while adults often have a large
amount of explicit knowledge before they develop any knowledge that can be used
with the same speed, accuracy, and spontaneity with which children use their
implicit knowledge. The main distinction between children and adults, then, is not
about how much and certainly not about how quickly they learn, but about how.
There is evidence both from research with immigrants (e.g., DeKeyser, 2000;
DeKeyser, Alfi-Shabtay, & Ravid, 2010; Granena & Long, 2013; Verhagen, Leseman,
& Messer, 2015) and from research with classroom learners (e.g., Harley & Hart,
1997, 2002; French & O’Brien, 2008; Service, Yli-Kaitala, Maury, & Kim, 2014) that
adolescents and adults draw more on language-analytic aptitude (aptitude for
explicit learning) and working memory, while children draw more on phonologi-
cal short-term memory and aptitude for implicit learning. This shows that the
learning processes are qualitatively different, not just leading to quantitatively dif-
ferent ultimate attainment. If the critical period hypothesis applies only to implicit
learning processes, and if empirical research indeed shows that children rely more
on implicit processes (and of course the younger they are the more that is the case),
then children are at an advantage only in a context where implicit learning pro-
cesses can be fully functional. Such processes, when it comes to learning a lan-
guage, are strongly dependent on large amounts of input. This, of course, is an
insurmountable problem in most forms of early foreign language teaching: with
only a few hours of teaching per week (even assuming all classroom interaction is
in the L2 and that the teacher provides native-like input), the amount of exposure
to the language is by no means comparable to the input an immigrant child receives
(and the amount of output for an individual child, of course, is almost negligible).
Moreover, even when there is much more input, and it is provided by native
 Age in Learning and Teaching Grammar 3

speakers, as is typically the case in Canadian-style true immersion programs, the

salience of grammatical morphemes in the input is so low (Collins, Trofimovich,
White, Cardoso, & Horst, 2009) and the incentive to produce native-like output is
so small that after many years of immersion education the learners, while fluent,
may appear far from native (Swain, 1985). Classroom teaching to young children,
then, in particular in contexts where L2 classes are limited to a few hours a week,
presents a painful paradox: the implicit learning they are good at cannot take place
in such a context, and the explicit learning that is supported by the context cannot
take place in young children. Not much research has systematically compared the
efficiency of traditional spoon-fed instruction focused on forms depending on the
age of the learning, controlling for methodology and hours of instruction, but the
research that has done so (see esp. García Mayo & García Lecumberri, 2003; Muñoz,
2006; Myles & Mitchell, 2012) has demonstrated the opposite of what one would
expect by naively applying the critical period research to the classroom: the evi-
dence on this in fact shows that the older the learners, the more they benefit from
form-focused instruction with limited input. After many years that positive cor-
relation between starting age and proficiency may disappear, but to date there is
no evidence of a negative correlation between starting age and ultimate attain-
ment, not even when the outcome measures are of a more “implicit” nature, and
not even when early starting age is confounded with more hours of instruction
(Muñoz, 2014a).

­Pedagogical Implications

The main practical implication for L2 instruction, then, is very clear: what is needed
to improve L2 learning is not simply starting earlier with traditional instruction
focused on forms. Instead, what matters more is that instruction be adapted to age.
If it can be provided early, it should ensure the activities, input, and atmosphere to
maximize implicit learning; if it can be provided only once the learner is an adoles-
cent or adult, the efficiency of instruction can be improved by judicious use of
grammar explanation and systematic communicative practice adapted to the apti-
tudes and interests of the learners; these aptitudes and interests, of course, don’t
change overnight at a certain age, but evolve gradually in the same timeframe as
the decline in implicit learning capacities takes place.
With children even more than with learners in general, good quantity and qual-
ity of input is what determines the outcomes (Muñoz, 2014a). Unfortunately, in
many countries, while native speakers are often hired to teach college-age learn-
ers, foreign languages in primary school are mostly taught by non-native speak-
ers with limited proficiency (and often with a strong accent). This constitutes
another painful paradox: children for whom the determining factors are quantity
and quality of input often get little of either, while older learners who are more
able to benefit from explanation and reflection are sometimes taught by native
speakers who do not have the training or the linguistic background to provide
such explicit instruction.
4 Age in Learning and Teaching Grammar

Still, even non-native speakers can do many things to maximize the linguistic
benefits of second language instruction for young children by taking the impor-
tance of quality and quantity of input seriously. They can provide occasional
contacts with native speakers, and they can make use of audiovisual materials
produced by native speakers, including Internet sources. Above all, while they
may not be able to do much about their accents, they can do much to improve
implicit learning of vocabulary and grammar in the youngest learners by adapting
to linguistic, cognitive, and social characteristics of these children: providing sup-
port in both comprehension and production by letting them engage in tasks with
a physical component and in familiar contexts, even with a considerable amount
of repetition to encourage fluent use of collocations and formulaic utterances
(Gatbonton & Segalowitz, 1988); providing intrinsic motivation through playful
activities; and providing large amounts of exposure through listening activities
(Muñoz, 2007), drills, and chants (Cameron, 2001).
Older children are increasingly aware of the limits of classroom language learn-
ing (Muñoz, 2014b) and may benefit from cloze activities to increase metalinguistic
awareness (Cameron, 2001); pre-adolescents may benefit from a dictogloss (an
activity consistent of listening and note-taking followed by learners’ joint recon-
struction of the text; see Kowal & Swain, 1994). A teacher who is sensitive to the
learners’ stage of development will see the patterns that reoccur in popular activi-
ties and make use of them to make learners notice patterns.
Ultimately, of course, the ideal way to teach a second language to young chil-
dren is complete immersion or two-way bilingual education. The latter even has
an advantage that immersion teachers cannot provide: native input from and
opportunities for negotiated interaction with peers. As adolescents are strongly
peer-oriented, such interaction becomes even more important for them. Meanwhile,
however, all teachers can capitalize on young children’s capacities for perceptive
receptiveness and implicit learning by providing clear, repeated, contextualized
input. Likewise, they can take advantage of adolescents’ increasing capacity for
explicit learning and increasing interest in peer interaction by providing ample
opportunities for noticing form, both by pointing out patterns using a minimum of
metalanguage, and by encouraging negotiated interaction with peers on topics of
their choosing. The use of real-world tasks is strongly recommended for all learn-
ers; for children this will mean school-related tasks and for adolescents and adults
tasks related to leisure-time activities, travel, or professional interaction (Van den
Branden, 2006).
In all cases, the key to successful second language learning in school is age-
appropriate input, interaction, and focus on form, not simply starting early. As
many countries are drastically lowering the starting age for second language
learning, and not always with concomitant changes in curriculum design and
teacher training, nothing could be more important for instructional policy and
teaching practice.

SEE ALSO: Bilingual and Multilingual Immigrant Youth and Language Learning
and Use; Comprehensible Input Comprehensible Output; Consciousness-Raising
 Age in Learning and Teaching Grammar 5

Tasks; Diverse Age Levels; Explicit Versus Implicit Grammar Instruction; Explicit
Versus Implicit Grammar Knowledge; Form-Focused Instruction; Immersion;
Interaction and Learning Grammar; Young Learners

References

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Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching languages to young learners. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
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DeKeyser, R. M. (2000). The robustness of critical period effects in second language
acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22(4), 499–533.
DeKeyser, R. M., Alfi-Shabtay, I., & Ravid, D. (2010). Cross-linguistic evidence for the nature
of age effects in second language acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31(3), 413–38.
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6 Age in Learning and Teaching Grammar

Service, E., Yli-Kaitala, H., Maury, S., & Kim, J.-Y. (2014). Adults’ and 8-year olds’ learning
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Suggested Readings

DeKeyser, R. M. (2012). Age effects in second language learning. In S. Gass & A. Mackey
(Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 442–60). London, England: Routledge.
Philp, J., Oliver, R., & Mackey, A. (Eds.). (2008). Second language acquisition and the younger
learner. Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins.