EFFECTS OF PERSONALITY AND AGE ON SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
There are two aspects which make a
difference in the language learning process and determine why those
characteristics have such effects. They are effects of personality and effects
of age. This research has important implications for pedagogy.
A.
Effects
of Personality
The term
”personality” is generally understood even though it is not defined to
scientific satisfaction. When we ask questions such as: Is X an introvert or
extrovert? impulsive or reflective?, charming or dull? etc. We believe that the
answers reveal something about an individual’s personality. The personality has
relation to language learning. Personality covers self confidence, capacity to
empathize, and the degree of logically or tendency to analyze.
1.
Self-Confidence
Nearly all the available literature suggests that
self-confidence is very much related to second language development. Two
measures of self-confidence are anxiety level and extroversion. Nearly all the
studies conducted to determine the personality characteristics associated with
successful L2 learning. Researchers have concluded that lower anxiety level and
a tendency to be out going were connected with successful L2 acquisition..
The studies do not show precisely how self-confidence
and language learning relate, but they do demonstrate the existence of the
relationship. Self-confidence people are
less hampered by the conscious operation of the monitor because they are not so
worried about how they appear.
2.
Empathy
Webster’s defines empathy as the “capacity for
participation in other’s feeling or ideas.” Learning a language requires
careful listening to others and caring more about communicating ideas than
about avoiding speak errors. Researchers might find that studies using
communication tasks as indicators of L2 success would yield a more systematic
and positive relationship between
characteristics such as empathy and L2 acquisition.
3.
Analytical
Tendencies
According to the literature in experimental psychology,
“field independent” persons are able to perceive individual items that may
relatively difficult to distinguish from their visual background, while the
“field dependent“ person perceives all parts of the organized field as a total
experience (Naiman et al., 1978). More analytical, field independent
characteristics appear to be related to the acquisition of metalinguistic
skills through conscious learning, while the field dependent person seems to be
more apt to acquire communication skills through subconscious learning. H.D.
Brown (1977) has also suggested that field independence may be related to
conscious learning, while dependence may be related to subconscious
acquisition.
4.
Personality
and Monitor Use
Monitoring is
used depends primarily on personality characteristics, especially
self-confidence and self-consciousness. Researchers have identified three types
of monitor users: over-users, under-users and optimal users. Over-users rely a
great deal on their consciously acquired rule knowledge when they speak, and
they tend to place correctness ahead of communication. Selective monitoring can
increase accuracy without significantly interfering with communication. Optimal
monitor users have generally acquired a substantial amount of the L2
subconsciously. Under-users are typically not embarrassed at their own errors.
B.
Effects
of Age
The belief that
children are better at language acquisition than adults is supported by both
scientific and anecdotal evidence. Children acquiring second language in
natural environments are more likely to sound like native speakers than adults
are. Adults may appear to make greater progress initially, but children nearly
always surpass them.
The available
research comparing aspects of L2 performance in children and adults is basically
of two types; (1) that which compares those who arrive before and after
puberty, and (2) that which compares the rate at which aspects of language are
acquired by younger and older L2 learners.
1. Proficiency
and Age of Arrival
Most of the studies comparing attained L2 proficiency
and age of arrival in the host country have focused on pronunciation.
1.1 Pronunciation
Almost everyone learns the sound patterns of a language
perfectly as a child, and almost no one can learn the sound patterns of a
language perfectly as an adult (Scovel, 1969). Oyama (1976) studied a group of
Italian-born male immigrants who had lived in the United States from five to
eighteen years and who had learned English as a second language. In general,
they were well educated. Oyama found a high degree of consistency among her
judges (obtaining reliability coefficients of .80 for the story and .87 for the
paragraph). The results for the paragraph are given in Table 4-1.
Table 4-1 mean Accent Scores on Paragraph
Reading as a Function of Immigrant’s Age of Arrival and Number of Years in the
United States
Number of Years in the United States
|
Age of Arrival
|
||
6 – 10
|
11 – 15
|
16 – 20
|
|
12 – 18
|
1.27
|
2.27
|
3.72
|
5 – 11
|
1.37
|
2.58
|
3.50
|
As the table indicates that the subjects’ age of arrival
had the most effect on the degree of accent. Youngest arrivals had the least
accent, but the amount of time the subjects spent in the United States did not
influence the accent. The results for the story-telling task were quite
similar.
Seliger, Krashen, and Ladefoged (1975) agreed with
Oyama’s concerning. There is relationship of age of arrival and pronunciation
proficiency. Subjects were asked whether they felt that most ordinary, native
target-language-speaker could tell that they were not native speakers of those
language. The results, which clearly agree with Oyama’s, are given in Table
4-2.
Table 4-2. Number of immigrants to the
United States and Israel Reporting Degree of Foreign Accent by Age of Arrival.
Age of
Arrival
|
Accent
|
Don’t
Know
|
No Accent
|
9 and under
|
N
|
N
|
N
|
5
|
4
|
47
|
|
2
|
3
|
30
|
|
10 to 15
|
37
|
6
|
27
|
9
|
1
|
20
|
|
16 and over
|
106
|
4
|
7
|
50
|
1
|
5
|
The
third study examining this question was conducted by Asher and Garcia (1969).
They investigated age of arrival in the United States and second language
accent in seventy-one Cuban immigrants, aged nine to seventeen.
Table 4-3
These
three studies concluded that age of arrival is a powerful determinant of
ultimate success in accent acquisition, and all confirm that puberty is an
important turning point with respect to this aspect of language learning.
1.2 Grammar
There is less available on child-adult differences in
the degree of proficiency ultimately attained in grammar. Similar results were
obtained from Oyama’s “anomalous sentences” task, in which subjects were asked
to decide which of two sentences was grammatically acceptable. Patkowki (1980)
found evidence that age of arrival is related to syntactic proficiency.
2. Rate
of Acquisition
The evidence indicates that children are more successful
than adults in learning a second language.
Snow and Hoefnagel-Hohle summarize their results as
follows:
(1) Considerable
improvement occurred in all aspects of knowledge of Dutch for subjects of all
ages.
(2) Older
learners seemed to have an advantage over younger learners in acquiring the
role-governed aspects of a second language morphology and syntax.
(3) There
were no or very small age differences for tests reflecting control of the
phonetic system.
Fathman (1975)
indicated that older children’s faster rate of grammatical learning and there
were some relationship between age and rate of learning.
Ervin-Tripp
(1974) found that for most features of segmental phonology, the children above
seven learned faster than the younger children and the older children were also
better at morphology and syntax. On the other hand, Yamada, Takatsuka, Kotake,
and Kurusu (1980) report that younger children are more successful at
memorizing vocabulary and pronouncing new words in a second language.
It appears that
for syntax and morphology, adults, at least in early stages, proceed faster
than younger children, although older children around ten years of age may be
the fastest of all.
3. Sources
of Age Differences
There are four factors which influence sources of age
differences.
The first is biological factors, revolve around the
question whether the adult brain is
fundamentally different from the child brain. The second is cognitive factors,
the ability to formulate abstract hypotheses. The third is affective factors,
to achieve the affective mental state necessary for acquisition. And the last
is differences in the language environment for children and adults as a source
of difference for L2 acquisition.
3.1 Biological Factors
Lenneberg (1967) hypothesized that the development of
specialization of functions in the left and right sides of the brain begins in
childhood and is completed at puberty.
The left side of the brain is involved in the language
function in adults for the following reasons ( from Krashen, in Wittrock et
al., 1977):
(1) Loss
of speech caused by brain damage occurs far more frequently from leftsided
lesions than from rightsided lesions.
(2) When
the left hemisphere is temporarily anesthetized, loss of speech results; but when
the right hemisphere is anesthetized this generally does not happen.
(3) When
competing simultaneous verbal material is presented to the two ears, the words
or digits presented to the right ear are more often recalled correctly and
subjects can react to them faster than those presented to the left ear.
(4) During
verbal tasks, whether performance is overt or covert, there are signs of
greater electrical activity in the left hemisphere.
Lenneberg (1967)
also presented the hypotheses that the
potential for language function is in both hemisphere in very young children
and increasing age until around puberty. There are some evidences:
(1) Right
hemisphere damage occasionally causes speech deficits in children, while
itrarely in adults.
(2) When
the left hemisphere is removed in adult, total aphasia (loss of language)
results. In children this does not occur.
(3) Children
appear to recover from aphasia resulting from damage to one side of the brain,
after language development has already begun, much better than adults do.
3.2 Cognitive Factors
The adult’s cognitive superiority should make adults
better than children at language acquisition. Genesee (1977) notes that the
adolescent’s more mature cognitive system, with its capacity to abstract,
classify, and generalize, may be better suited for the complex task of second
language learning than the unconscious, automatic kind of learning which is
thought to be characteristics of young children. Taylor (1974) said that
adult’s cognitive maturity should allow them to deal with the abstract nature
of language better than children. Cognitive
differences between children and adults can explain some child-adult
differences.
3.3 Affective Factors
The adult is more self-conscious than the child, is less
able to identify with other groups, and is less able to achieve the open mental
state necessary for language acquisition to take place.
According David Elkind (1970), he proposes that the
onset of formal operations leads to affective differences between children and
adults. The ability to think abstractly leads the adolescent to conceptualize
his own thought to take his mental constructions as objects and reason about
them. In other words, adolescents who have passed through formal operations
gain a greater ability to imagine what other people are thinking about.
3.4 Differences in Language Environment
Child-adult learning differences are due to differences in
the kind of language children and adults hear. Children receive much more
concrete “here-and-now” input, which
facilities language acquisition; in contrast, adults typically are exposed to
conversation about topics whose referents are not obvious from the non linguistic
context. On the other hand, older students may be better at managing
conversations.
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