“The Sooner, The Better”: Children vs Adults in Second Language Acquisition

There is a controversy among people about who is the better learner in learning second language, children or adults. Some people say that children are the better learners and the other people say or believe that adults are the better learners. But, the question is what factors prove adults or children as the better learners. There should be evident to prove it.     Before we go further, we have to know the term acquisition and learning, children and adults as well as the term second language and foreign language. This clear understanding of the terms will make our discussion clearer.

Sometimes we ask what is meant by acquisition and what is learning? We usually heard about language acquisition and language learning. The term ‘acquisition’ is used to refer to picking up a second language through exposure, whereas the term ‘learning’ is used to refer to the conscious study of a second language (Rod Ellis, 1985: p6). Sometimes, these two different kinds of terms will make us confused. But, in this paper, the writer does not want to make the writer confused by distinguishing the meaning of those terms. The important thing is the terms of ‘children’ and ‘adults’ as well as ‘second language acquisition’ and ‘foreign language acquisition’. The writer characterizes ‘children’ for those whose age is between 1 up to 12 years old and adults is for those whose age is more than 12 years.

Second language acquisition has broader meaning or scope than ‘foreign language acquisition’. SLA (Second Language Acquisition) is used as a general term that embraces both untutored (or ‘naturalistic’) acquisition and tutored (or ‘classroom’) acquisition (Rod Ellis, 1985: p5). Based on the context, according to Danny Steinberg, 1993, the ESL context provides more language-learning opportunities for the second-language learning through exposure to natural situations outside the classroom, such learners, unsurprisingly, will generally progress more rapidly than learners living in an EFL context. If we hear English as a Foreign Language, we will assume that it is tutored (or ‘classroom’) acquisition.

As we know the controversy and the meaning of some terms related to Second Language Acquisition, there are should be some consideration to decide whether children are the better learner or adults are. We know there are some cases that make us confused because sometimes, both children and adults perform the same ability in Second Language Acquisition. In this paper, the writer wants to give some evidences show that children are better in acquiring second language than adults. We are going to know what are the factors show that children perform better than adults.

According to Danny Steinberg (1993), there are two factors affecting second-language acquisition. There are Psychological and Social factors. Psychological factor is divided into three; there are intellectual processing, memory, and motor skills. Social factor is divided into two; there are the natural situation and the classroom situation.

Intellectual processing is involved in the determination of grammatical structures and rules (Danny, 1993: p203). It is divided into two ways. The first is explication and the second is induction. The terms explication and induction are used to determine what kinds of way that we use to learn grammatical structures and rules. Explication is a kind of way where the structures and rules are explained to the learners. One example, we usually find it in the teaching and learning process in school. The teacher explains about the structures and the rules of English grammar. In the other hand, induction is a kind of way where the structures and the rules are learnt through exposure. The learners find the general structures of the target language by themselves through interaction. In such cases, explication may even be a faster means of learning than induction, since induction requires that a learner be repeatedly exposed to words, phrase and sentences along with relevant situations that give some indications as to their meaning (Danny, 1993: p205). Based on this theory, children are high in induction but adults are high in both explication and induction. Children are good in acquiring second language when they get a great exposure in it. It is difficult for us to explain about Subject + Predicate + Object to a child. Children need as many as possible examples for their interaction because they have a great ability in imitating. Adult students have a maturity and an understanding of priorities that many younger students do not. According to Knowles (1976), ‘a prime characteristic of adultness is the need and capacity to be self-directing’, in other words, adult will, to some extent, ‘direct’ their own learning agendas (Andre Sutton, 2001: p386). May be, it is the reason why adult is also better in explication. They know how to behave for learning language in a classroom or when they are taught by the other people who have mastered the language. But, there are some alternatives that we can use to overcome the problem why children low in explication. We will discuss it later.

Memory is essential and crucial to learning. Learning a language requires a good memory. We use it in getting as many as possible vocabulary, learn grammar, etc. If we do not have a good memory it is difficult for us to learn language although it is our first language. The kind of simple memorization where words, phrases and sentences are remembered just as they are, is called ‘rote’ memorization (Danny, 1993: p207). The rote memory ability of very young children seems to be excellent in that they easily absorb a phenomenal amount of data. Based on the theory, memory is declined in some age. By 50, for example, there appears to be a decrease of about 20 per cent in the number of brain cells in the cortex; by 75 years of age that loss will have reached approximately 40 per cent (Danny, 1993: p207). It is a normal loss in all humans. To compensate this kind of decreasing of memory in adult age, adults usually develop some strategies in learning and seek for more practice and exposure.

Motor skills involve the use of the articulators of speech (tongue, lips, vocal cords, etc.) for the production of the sounds of a second language (Danny, 1993: p203). Based on the research, somewhere around the age of 10 and 12 years the ability to acquire new motor skills begins to decline. Evidence shows that particular motor skill of speech pronunciation is best developed at a youngest age, the example is that younger children in immigrant families are found to acquire perfect or near-perfect accents, while their older siblings or parents generally do not, even when these older people have mastered other aspects of the language such as its syntax and vocabulary (Danny, 1993: p209). We know that children have a strong ability in imitation, they are considered high in induction, and they learn language through a great exposure. They practice to listen and speak a new word or may be utterance that they have heard before. We know that motor skills can only be trained by practice. It is not surprising when children have a better ability in motor skills than adults.

The second factor is Social factor. It is divided into two parts. The first is the natural situation and the second is the classroom situation. Considering the maturity of the learners, adults are considered better than children in the classroom situation. But, considering that children are characterized as those age between 1 up to 12, we can overcome the problem by managing a classroom that supports their psychological development. We can create conducive class for children. We know that nowadays, there are so many techniques in teaching processes that we can use to accommodate a specific situation. In the past, we usually see teaching-learning activity as teacher-centered but nowadays we see teaching-learning activity as students-centered. We only have to encourage students to learn. We can create an interesting teaching-learning activity. On the other hand, adults have a problem with the natural situation. Language is experienced in conjunction with the objects, situations and events of everyday life; it is not taught in a classroom (Danny, 1993: p210). Socially, adults have a difficulty in interaction with others adult. Danny, 1993 said in his book:

“…social interaction mainly occurs through the medium of language. Few native-speaker adults are willing to devote time to interacting with someone who does not speak the language…In contrast, the young child is often readily accepted by other children, and even adults…Adults rarely find themselves in similar situations…Without such acceptance, second-language learning in a natural situation can hardly begin.”

This fact shows that younger children will do best in the natural situation. Differ from the classroom situation; we cannot set the learning process in the natural situation. It needs more effort for adults to deal with this kind of situation.

From the factors above, we can see that children are better than adults in acquiring second language. For the first factor, we know that children are low in explication but have high ability in induction. If we describe explication as a classroom activity where teacher teaches the students some rules in English, we can overcome the problem by implementing some methodology in language teaching for example suggestopedia method, direct method, etc. In the case of memory, we know that children have a great ability in memorizing and we also have to consider that memory is essential for language learning. It is expected that children can learn faster than adults because of a better memory. Although adults may divise memory strategies and can seek out more practice, nevertheless, this places an additional burden on them, one that the child does not have (Danny, 1993: p214). The environment of the natural situation also gives adults some additional burden because they have to adjust their behavior in order that the other adults (may be a native speaker) accept them (considering that children have already had social acceptance because children use language not essential to social interaction (Danny, 1993: p211)). In the part of motor skills, all we can say for sure is that children are generally better than adults at acquiring native-speaker pronunciation in a second language (Rod Ellis, 1985: p185). From all of the discussion, we can conclude that children are better in acquiring second language than adults. In other words, we can say that the sooner we learn language, the better we acquire the language.

References

Ellis, Rod. 1985. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. New York: Oxford University Press.

Steinberg, D Danny. 1993. An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. England: Longman Group UK Limited.

Sutton, Andre & Sharon Hilles. 2001. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language: Focus on Learner, Teaching Adults. USA: Heinle & Heinle.