Beyond Age Effects in Instructional L2 Learning : : Revisiting the Age Factor / / Simone E. Pfenninger, David Singleton.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter MultiLingual Matters Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Pfenninger, Simone E.,; Singleton, David,
• Place / Publishing House: Bristol ;, Blue Ridge Summit : : Multilingual Matters, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Second Language Acquisition
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

This book constitutes a holistic study of how and why late starters surpass early starters in comparable instructional settings. Combining advanced quantitative methods with individual-level qualitative data, it examines the role of age of onset in the context of the Swiss multilingual educational system and focuses on performance at the beginning and end of secondary school, thereby offering a long-term view of the teenage experience of foreign language learning. The study scrutinised factors that seem to prevent young starters from profiting from their extended learning period and investigated the mechanisms that enable late beginners to catch up with early beginners relatively quickly. Taking account of contextual factors, individual socio-affective factors and instructional factors within a single longitudinal study, the book makes a convincing case that age of onset is not only of minimal relevance for many aspects of instructed language acquisition, but that in this context, for a number of reasons, a later onset can be beneficial.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- 1. Mapping the Terrain -- 2. The Current Empirical Study -- 3. Age and (Statistical) Analysis -- 4. Age and Rate of Acquisition -- 5. Age and Affect -- 6. Age and Crosslinguistic Influence -- 7.Age and the Impact of Differential Input -- 8. Educational Implications -- 9. Conclusion and Future Perspectives -- Appendices -- References -- Index