Age Effects in a Study Abroad Context: Children and Adults Studying Abroad and at Home

This study examines the effects of learning context and age on second language development by comparing the language gains, measured in terms of oral and written fluency, lexical and syntactic complexity, and accuracy, experienced by four groups of learners of English: children in a study abroad set...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language learning 2013-03, Vol.63 (1), p.63-90
Main Authors: LLANES, Angels, MUNOZ, Carmen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults. Performance, acquisition
Age
age of L2 learning
age-related differences
Child language. Acquisition and development
English as a second language
Interactive learning
L2 acquisition
learning context
Linguistics
oral skills
Production and comprehension processes
Psycholinguistics
Psychology of language
Second language learning
study abroad
written skills
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Summary:This study examines the effects of learning context and age on second language development by comparing the language gains, measured in terms of oral and written fluency, lexical and syntactic complexity, and accuracy, experienced by four groups of learners of English: children in a study abroad setting, children in their at‐home school, adults in a study abroad setting, and adults in their at‐home university. Results show that the study abroad context was superior to the at‐home context, and more advantageous for children than for adults in comparative gains, although adults outscored children in absolute gains. The interaction between learning context and age suggests that studying abroad was particularly beneficial for children, who also had more opportunities for oral language practice.
ISSN:0023-8333
1467-9922
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00731.x