In the
introduction of the paper, the author lists some of the “traditional”
explanations for the commonly observed fact that adults and children seem to
cope with language differently, which often leads to different acquisition/learning
outcomes. I would like to list the three traditional explanations mentioned in
this article, and express some considerations about the evidence usually
brought up to support them:
1 – The notion
of critical period (Lenneberg) or sensitive period (Lamandella) is the first
traditional explanation cited in the article. This theory indicates that after
a certain age humans just become very bad at learning new languages, whilst
language acquisition is very natural, effortless and automatic during
childhood. This theory usually finds its supporting evidence in neurological
maturation and consequent lateralization of brain functions (mainly from the
analysis of patients who underwent hemisphere decortication and patients affected
with crossed aphasia). This evidence is still debated: other researchers think that
it is not possible to link lateralization of brain functions to a critical
period, since some evidence of a certain degree of lateralization for verbal
functions might be found also at a very early age (I’m referring to Entus, who
carried experiments on few weeks old infants).
Another argument
that is used to support this theory is the impossibility to teach language to
so called “feral children”, i.e. children that for various reasons grew up in
isolation and verbal deprivation. This evidence is also controversial, since
some of the children who grew in verbal deprivation but normal or semi-normal
environment (like hearing children of deaf parents, or deaf children of hearing
parents who do not teach them sign language) could usually catch up with
language acquisition after their exposure to natural language (school years).
The failure of teaching language to “feral children” like Victor of Aveyron
(the young boy “discovered” in France two centuries ago
and who is believed to have grown up in the wilds without human contact) or
Genie (a girl rescued when she was 13 after she lived her childhood in a very
abusive environment in which she was tied to a chair in a dark room and forced
to be silent) is also difficult to be used itself as evidence for a critical
period. In fact, “feral children” who grow up in this kind of situations do not
only suffer of verbal deprivation but also social deprivation and sometimes,
like in the case of Genie, they lack of any experience that is considered
useful for children’s normal cognitive development. Also, it is not possible to
completely exclude the possibility that those children where mentally impaired
since birth.
2 – The second
theory listed in the article claims that adults are impaired in language
learning because they have already reached the cognitive stage of formal
operation (Krashen formulates this theory following the developmental stages
suggested by Piaget). This developmental stage is indicated as when humans become
able of formulating general abstract hypothesis in order to explain recurrent
phenomena.
I do not see how
this ability would impair and not enhance language learning. Being able to
induce rules out of statistical recurrence seems to be a very useful skill in
language acquisition, otherwise language learners would be “stuck” and only be
able to learn language “formulas”, without being able to create new (but
acceptable) sentences.
It seems that
children also have the ability of formulating abstract hypothesis, which are
not always completely correct at first and might need to be “reformulated”
several times. This, for example, seems to happen with lexical learning, when
at the beginning children have the tendency to overgeneralize words. Nevertheless,
we still need to consider that the amount of words overgeneralized by children
is probably overestimated, since observation is often only limited to
children’s production and not comprehension, and also because it is not very
easy to clearly distinguish real overgeneralizations and random mistakes or
strategies that children may use to make up for inaccessibility to the target
lexical item.
But also if not
considering overgeneralization, can word learning be limited to what the child
experiences in the hic et nunc? If
children were not able to formulate abstract hypothesis about words, how would
they be able to name specific empirical objects they have never seen before? (For
example a specific cat never seen before that has a fur with a color
combination never seen before).
3 – The third
and last explanation listed by the author is what Schumann reported after
studying a Costa Rican immigrant’s difficulties in learning the English after
moving to the States. According to Schumann, social factors constitute a very
strong barrier preventing adult learners to be as successful as children in
language learning. For social barriers he means the social contextual
difficulties that for example an adult may encounter if he/she migrates to a
new country, where they not only experience a cultural shock because of the
differences between their own culture and the culture of the new country, but
sometimes also have to deal with the native’s hostility and prejudices, due to
the particular cultural, political, economic dominance relationships between
the two language groups. This may lead to a psychological and social distance
that makes the learners want to isolate themselves rather than become part of
the new community, and the integration might be regarded as negative by the
local community itself.
But does
Schumann’s theory imply that if the social context is not hostile then language
learners can avoid learning difficulties and frustrations? This does not seem
to be the case. The strongest argument against this assumption is given by the
author himself, who lived for one year in a foreign country (Sweden) in a not-hostile
but indeed very welcoming social environment. Nevertheless, he still
encountered many difficulties and frustrations in his process of learning
Swedish as a second language. The author, who is an anthropologist, becomes his
own subject in the investigation of his own language learning “failure”. The result
is a very peculiars “self”-case study in which, mostly through introspection,
note taking and anecdotal evidence, the author tries to reconstruct the path of
his foreign language acquisition.
Since it is not
possible to blame “social shock” or “social distance” in the case of the author
(he describes Swedish people as very welcoming and nice to him), these factors
cannot be regarded alone as the only causes of language learning difficulties
in adults (also for Schumann’s subject). But still, the author does not believe
that the only difference between adult and children language acquisition is
determined by maturation reasons (as with Lenneberg’s or Krashen’s theories).
Adults need to
deal with a learning environment and learning content which is totally different
from what children face while they grow up. For example, adults need (and
usually want) to express themselves in a polite way and not to sound rude,
while smaller children are not that concerned about manners. This makes adults
deal with very complex structures from the very beginning in order to learn how
to address other people respectfully. But even though there is a stress on
manners in instructional language teaching, if a learner uses an expression
which is not considered polite in a real social context, other adults are
likely to feel offended (while they will be more forgiving towards a child) or
would feel that it is not appropriate in the moment to instruct the adult
learner about what he should have said (while caregivers usually give explicit instructions
on manner to children when they speak impolitely or say what they should not
say). According to the author, this deprives adults of a very useful and
context-transparent language feedback.
Also the content
of the language learned by adults and children presents differences: children
are more exposed to or interested in “everyday life” content, or content
related to actions they see performed or that they perform at the moment, while
adult are expected to and interested in more complex contents and feel the need
to express complex opinions. These content related discrepancies also reflect
on the very different order of acquisition of lexical items for children and
adult learners.
With all this
differences between child and adult learning related to content, environment,
behavior, social expectations, social interactions, language exposure, language
use and so on, it seems to be very difficult (and probably not fair) to blame
adults, both in instructional and non-instructional learning environment, to be
naturally non inclined to language learning as an explanation of their learning
“failures”.
