We have so far looked at learners themselves and considered a number of different issues in age and acquisition. Now we turn to some issues that center on the subject matter itself: language. What are some of the linguistic considerations in age-related questions about SLA? 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. A good deal of this research will be treated in Chapters 8 through 10, but here we will look briefly at some specific issues that arise in examining the child's acquisition of a second language.
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 separate-ness of contexts for use of the languages. Moreover, "bilinguals are not two monolinguals in the same head" (Cook 1995:58). 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 (see Reynolds 1991; Schinke-Llano 1989) shows 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.
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 and 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.
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 (see Chapter 8).
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.
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 claimed 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: 161), 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.
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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; C1-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, I call attention the balanced perspective recently offered by Thomas Scovel (1999:1). "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.
Having examined the comparison of first and second language acquisition across a number of domains of human behavior, we turn in this final section to a brief consideration of the eight issues in first language acquisition that were presented in Chapter 2. In most cases the implications of these issues are already clear, from the comments in the previous chapter, from the reader's logical thinking, or from comments in this chapter. Therefore what follows is a way of highlighting the implications of the issues for second language learning.
Competence and Performance
It is as difficult to "get at" linguistic competence in a second language as it is in a first. For children, judgments of grammaticality may elicit a second language "pop-go-weasel" effect. You can be a little more direct in inferring competence in adults; adults can make choices between two alternative forms, and sometimes they manifest an awareness of grammaticality in a second language. But you must remember that adults are not in general able to verbalize "rules" and paradigms consciously even in their native language. Furthermore, in judging utterances in the modern language classroom and responses on various tests, teachers need to be cautiously attentive to the discrepancy between performance on a given day or in a given context and competence in a second language in general. Remember that one isolated sample of second language speech may on the surface appear to be rather malformed until you consider that sample in comparison with the everyday mistakes and errors of native speakers.
Comprehension and Production
Whether or not comprehension is derived from a separate level of competence, there is a universal distinction between comprehension and production. Learning a second language usually means learning to speak it and to comprehend it! When we say "Do you speak English?" or "Parlez-vous francais?" we usually mean "and do you understand it too?" Learning involves both modes (unless you are interested only in, say, learning to read in the second language). So teaching involves attending to both comprehension and production and the full consideration of the gaps and differences between the two. Adult second language learners will, like children, often hear a distinction but not be able to produce it. The inability to produce an item, therefore, should not be taken to mean that the learner cannot comprehend the item.
Nature or Nurture?
What happens after puberty to the magic "little black box" called LAD? Does the adult suffer from linguistic "hardening of the arteries"? Does LAD "grow up" somehow? Does lateralization signal the death of LAD? We do not have complete answers to these questions, but there have been some hints in the discussion of physical, cognitive, and affective factors. What we do know is that adults and children alike appear to have the capacity to acquire a second language at any age. The only trick that nature might play on adults is to virtually rule out the acquisition of authentic accent. As you have seen above, this still leaves a wide swath of language properties that may actually be more efficiently acquired in an adult. If an adult does not acquire a second language successfully, it is probably because of intervening cognitive or affective variables and not the absence of innate capacities. Defining those intervening variables appears to be more relevant than probing the properties of innateness.
Universals
In recent years Universal Grammar has come to the attention of a growing number of researchers. The conclusions from this research are mixed (Van Buren 1996). Research on child SLA suggests that children's developing second language grammars are indeed constrained by UG (Lakshmanan 1995). But it is not immediately clear whether this knowledge is available directly from a truly universal "source," or through the mediation of the first language. Yet even in the first language, UG seems to predict certain syntactic domains but not others. This has led some to conclude that second language learners have only "partial access" to UG (O'Grady 1996).But Bley-Vroman (1988) went a step further in claiming a "no access" position for adults learning a second language: adults acquire second language systems without any reference to UG.
Others disagree strongly with the partial- and no-access claim. Cook (1993: 244) provocatively asks, "Why should second language users be treated as failed monolinguals? ... A proper account of second language learning would treat multi-competence on its own terms, not in LI related terms." In other words, why look to monolingualism as a standard by which UG or any other means of inquiry should be modeled? If UG models do not fit second language learning processes, then it may be "the description of UG that is at fault, and not the L2 learner" (Cook 1993:245).Where does this leave us? Perhaps in a position of keeping an open mind as teachers and an inquisitive spirit as researchers.
Systematicity and Variability
It is clear that second language acquisition, both child and adult, is characterized by both systematicity and variability. Second language linguistic development appears in many instances to mirror the first language acquisition process: learners induce rules, generalize across a category, overgeneralize, and proceed in stages of development (more on this in Chapter 9). The variability of second language data poses thorny problems that have been addressed by people like Tarone (1988), Ellis (1987, 1989), and Preston (1996). The variability of second language acquisition is exacerbated by a host of cognitive, affective, cultural, and contextual variables that are sometimes not applicable to a first language learning situation.
Language and Thought
Another intricately complex issue in both first and second language acquisition is the precise relationship between language and thought. We can see that language helps to shape thinking and that thinking helps to shape language. What happens to this interdependence when a second language is acquired? Does the bilingual person's memory consist of one storage system (compound bilingualism) or two (coordinate bilingualism)? The second language learner is clearly presented with a tremendous task in sorting out new meanings from old, distinguishing thoughts and concepts in one language that are similar but not quite parallel to the second language, perhaps really acquiring a whole new system of conceptualization. The second language teacher needs to be acutely aware of cultural thought patterns that may be as interfering as the linguistic patterns themselves.
Imitation
While children are good deep-structure imitators (centering on meaning, not surface features), adults can fare much better in imitating surface structure (by rote mechanisms) if they are explicitly directed to do so. Sometimes their ability to center on surface distinctions is a distracting factor; at other times it is helpful. Adults learning a second language might do well to attend consciously to truth value and to be less aware of surface structure as they communicate. The implication is that meaningful contexts for language learning are necessary; second language learners ought not to become too preoccupied with form lest they lose sight of the function and purpose of language.
Practice
Too many language classes are filled with rote practice that centers on surface forms. Most cognitive psychologists agree that the frequency of stimuli and the number of times spent practicing a form are not highly important in learning an item. What is important is meaningfulness. Contextualized, appropriate, meaningful communication in the second language seems to be the best possible practice the second language learner could engage in.
Input
In the case of classroom second language learning, parental input is replaced by teacher input. Teachers might do well to be as deliberate, but meaningful, in their communications with students as the parent is to the child since input is as important to the second language learner as it is to the first language learner. And that input should foster meaningful communicative use of the language in appropriate contexts.