Linguistic consideration

A growing number of research studies are now available to shed some light on the linguistic processes of second language learning and how those processes differ between children and adults.

Bilingualism

It is clear that children learning two languages simultaneously acquire them by the use of similar strategies. They are, in essence, learning two first lan­guages, and the key to success is in distinguishing separate contexts for the two languages. People who learn a second language in such separate con­texts can often be described as coordinate bilinguals;they have two meaning systems, as opposed to compound bilinguals who have one meaning system from which both languages operate. Children generally do not have problems with "mixing up languages" regardless of the separateness of contexts for use of the languages. Moreover, "bilinguals are not two monolinguals in the same head" (Cook 1995). Most bilinguals, however, engage in code-switching (the act of inserting words, phrases, or even longer stretches of one language into the other), especially when commu­nicating with another bilingual.

In some cases the acquisition of both languages in bilingual children is slightly slower than the normal schedule for first language acquisition. However, a respectable stockpile of research hows a considerable cognitive benefit of early childhood bilingualism, supporting Lambert's (1972) contention that bilingual chil­dren are more facile at concept formation and have a greater mental flexi­bility.

Interference Between First and Second Languages

A good deal of the research on nonsimultaneous second language acquisi­tion, in both children and adults, has focused on the interfering effects of the first and second languages. For the most part, research confirms that the linguistic and cognitive processes of second language learning in young children are in general similar to first language processes. Ravem (1968), Natalicio (1971), Dulay and Burt (1974a), Ervin-Tripp (1974), Milon (1974), and Hansen-Bede (1975), among others, concluded that sim­ilar strategies and linguistic features are present in both first and second language learning in children. Dulay and Burt (1974a) found, for example, that 86 percent of more than 500 errors made by Spanish-speaking chil­dren learning English reflected normal developmental characteristics— that is, expected intralingual strategies, not interference errors from the first language. Hansen-Bede (1975) examined such linguistic structures as possession, gender, word order, verb forms, questions, and negation in an English-speaking three-year-old child who learned Urdu upon moving to Pakistan. In spite of some marked linguistic contrasts between English and Urdu, the child's acquisition did not appear to show first language interfer­ence and, except for negation, showed similar strategies and rules for both the first and the second language.

Interference in Adults

Adult second language linguistic processes are more vulnerable to the effect of the first language on the second, especially the farther apart the two events are. Whether adults learn a foreign language in a classroom or out in the "arena," they approach the second language—either focally or peripherally—systematically, and they attempt to formulate linguistic rules on the basis of whatever linguistic information is available to them: infor­mation from the native language, the second language, teachers, classmates, and peers. The nature and sequencing of these systems has been the sub­ject of a good deal of second language research in the last half of the twen­tieth century. What we have learned above all else from this research is that the saliency of interference from the first language does not imply that interference is the most relevant or most crucial factor in adult second lan­guage acquisition. Adults learning a second language manifest some of the same types of errors found in children learning their first language

Adults, more cognitively secure, appear to operate from the solid foundation of the first language and thus manifest more interference. But it was pointed out earlier that adults, too, manifest errors not unlike some of the errors children make, the result of creative perception of the second language and an attempt to discover its rules apart from the rules of the first language. The first language, however, may be more readily used to bridge gaps that the adult learner cannot fill by generalization within the second language. In this case we do well to remember that the first lan­guage can be a facilitating factor, and not just an interfering factor.

Order of Acquisition

One of the first steps toward demonstrating the importance of factors other than first language interference was taken in a series of research studies by Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt (1972, 1974a, 1974b, 1976). They even went so far at one point as to claim that "transfer of LI syntactic pat­terns rarely occurs" in child second language acquisition (1976: 72). They laimed that children learning a second language use a creative con­struction process, just as they do in their first language. This conclusion was supported by some massive research data collected on the acquisition order of eleven English morphemes in children learning English as a second language. Dulay and Burt found a common order of acquisition among children of several native language backgrounds, an order very sim­ilar to that found by Roger Brown (1973) using the same morphemes but for children acquiring English as their first language.

There were logical and methodological arguments about the validity of morpheme-order findings. Rosansky (1976) argued that the statistical procedures used were suspect, and others (Larsen-Freeman 1976; Roger Andersen 1978) noted that eleven English morphemes constitute only a minute portion of English syntax, and therefore lack generalizability. More recently, Zobl and Liceras (1994), in a "search for a unified theoretical account for the LI and L2 morpheme orders," reexamined the morpheme-order studies and concluded the generalizability of morpheme acquisition order.

We have touched on several significant perspectives on questions about age and acquisition. In all this, it is important to maintain the dis­tinction among the three types (C1-C2; C2-A2; Cl -A2) of age and language comparisons mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. By considering three logically possible comparisons, unnecessary loopholes in reasoning should be minimized. While some answers to our questions are less than conclusive, in many cases research has been historically revealing. By oper­ating on our collective understanding of the effects of age on acquisition, one can construct one's own personal integrated understanding of that relationship, and how that relationship might hold fruitful implications for second language teaching.

Above all else, We call attention the balanced perspective recently offered by Thomas Scovel (1999). "The younger, the better" is a myth that has been fueled by media hype and, sometimes, "junk science." We are led to believe that children are better at learning foreign languages without fully considering all the evidence and without looking at all aspects of acquisition. On at least several planes—literacy, vocabulary, pragmatics, schematic knowledge, and even syntax—adults have been shown to be superior learners (Scovel 1999). Perpetuating a younger-the-better myth in arguments about bilingual education and other forms of early language, intervention does a disservice to our children and to our educational enter­prise. We have seen in this chapter that there certainly appear to be some potential advantages to an early age for SLA, but there is absolutely no evidence that an adult cannot overcome all of those disadvantages save one, accent, and the latter is hardly the quintessential criterion for effective interpersonal communication.