The Age Factor in Second Language Acquisition

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 1,3, University of Cologne (Englisch), course: Problems in Second Language Acquisition, language: English, abstract: This term paper will focus on the discussion of the putative maturational constraints for second language acquisition. The age factor is an aspect of first and second language acquisition research which has engendered very much controversy. In the discussion about age-related effects on language acquisition, one can find disagreements as to both the facts and to their possible explanations. The different points of view range from the notion that young learners are in all aspects of language learning more efficient and achieve better results, to the contrary position that older learners are the better learners.

In this paper, four of the positions concerning the age factor, which have been listed by Singleton, will be presented because they provide a good overview of the different views on this topic and the respective evidence belonging to them. Many of the differences in the results of various studies are due to the differences in how the results are elicited. The experimental design plays an important role for the outcomes.