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Key Issues in Second Language Acquisition (SLA)more

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7effect of the L2 on the L1 has been found in a number of

language areas such asintonation (Mennen, 2004), voice onset time (Zampini & Green, 2001), andpragmatics (Pavlenko, 2003

). A person who speaks another language is nolonger a pure speaker of their first language but speaks a version that has

beenaffected by the other language or languages they know (Cook, 2003).

L2 users have greater

effectiveness in their first language Learning another language may also change your ability to communicate in

yourfirst language. This might be a general effect of learning any second language orthe specific effect of learning

a particular language. To take two examples,Hungari an children who had been taught English were better at

L1 essaywritingthan those who had not met English (Kecskes & Papp, 2000); English childrenta ught Italian for an hour a week were

better at reading English (Yelland et al,1993). Not to mention such bilingual writers as Nabokov, Conrad or Brink. Indeedthe claims

for a knock-on effect on L1 support the old adage of braintrainingoften used in England to justify the

teaching of Latin.People who know more than one language are distinct from monolingual nativespeakers in several ways.

Learning a L2 changes people overall in thinking andlanguage knowledge and use. Learning a L2 is not just

adding an extension tothe exterior of your house; it is rebuilding most of the interior walls.

2 What is the best age for learning a second language? The question of the best age for learning a second language has

aroused manypeoples curiosity and has practical concerns for parents bringing children upbilingually and for governments

deciding the age to start teaching a secondlanguage to children. Undoubtedly there is a popular belief that young childrenare best

at L2 learning, shared by many mainstream linguists: It is a common 8observation that a young child of immigrant parents

may learn a secondlanguage in the streets, from other children, with amazing rapidity . . . while thesubtleties that

become second nature to the child may elude his parents despitehigh motivation and continued practice

(Chomsky, 1959, 49). But is there anyempirical support for this common observation?It looks a simple matter: test some

people who start young and some who startold and see who is better. However, like most academic questions, it turns out tobe almost

unanswerable in the form in which it is asked. The answer cannot forexample be assumed to be the same for those acquiring the

second language innatural circumstances and for those being taught in a classroom; though it maybe that situations for

natural L2 learning are fairly few in number, those forclassroom learners vary according to the educational syste

m and the languageteaching methods involved. Even the word age is problematic; L2 researchersoften use it to refer to

the age of arrival (AoA) in another country, thusconfounding age with immigration, restricting the people studied to

immigrants,usuall y to the USA far from a random selection of L2 learners (Cook, 1986) and leaving it uncertain how

much L2 teaching or exposure the people hadreceived before immigrating one reason for going to a

specific country may bea familiarity with the language spoken there. The research design is also highlyproblemati

c: a proper balancing of young and old would also involve themhaving the same amounts of L2 exposure

(Munoz, 2008); The crucial comparisonis between the language proficiency of learners of two age groups who

havelearnt the second language for the same period of time; time has to be takeninto account not only as the age at

which learning started, but also as theduration of learning (Cook, 1986). Comparing childrens acquisition with

that of adults is also fraught with problems, given the many nonlanguage ways in whichchildren are developing (Cook, 2010),

for example memory capacity and 9Piagetian stage of development, and the many differences in their situations

andlanguage input.Underlying much of the discussion is the idea of critical period. The ethologistKonrad Lorenz originally

based the idea of critical period on the imprintingbeh aviour of ducks (Lorenz, 1949); after hatching, ducklings imprint a singleperson as

mother once and for all and cannot do so after this critical period. The idea that there are certain periods of physiological

development duringwhich an organism can learn particular behaviour then spread to much study of animal behaviour and

was applied to language develop ment by Eric Lenneberg,who suggested the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) that

the ability to learnlanguage naturally atrophies after the early teens (Lenneberg, 1967); forexample while

all babies start by distinguishing pairs of sounds like /ba~da/ bythe age of 12 months they are only sensitive to the sound contrasts

used in theirfirst language (Werker & Tees, 1984) and cannot distinguish between nonnativesounds.A common way of

expressing the conclusions on age in SLA initiated by Krashen,Scarcella & Long (1982) is as a set of slightly paradoxical

statements, given inCook (1986) as:1. Older children are better than younger children at learning asecond language2. Adults

are better than children at learning a second language3. Immigrants who start learning a second language younger end

upbetter speakers than those who start older 10 Younger children in classroomsOlder childrenin classroomsC h i

ldren in cl assrooms A d u l t s i n cl ass Younger immigrantsOlderi mmigrants Fig. 2 Differences with age

More recent research does not seem to have undermined these mixed findings.Given the same circumstances for

acquiring the second language for the sameamount of time, older children are better than younger children,

particularly inschool. Cenoz (2003) for instance compared Spanish/Basque speaking childrenaged 4, 8

and 11 who had learnt English for the same period and found the olderchildren were better. Munoz (2008) sums up the

current view on classroomacquisit ion as supporting the ideas that older learners learn faster than youngerones and that younger

learners only have an advantage when they have moreexposure, particularly in listening compreh ension.If we

apply the idea that L2 users are intrinsically different from monolingualnativ e speaker presented earlier to the age issue

any conclusions becomeproblemat ic. The measure of success in age studies is always approximation tomonolingual

native speakers (Birdsong, 2005); Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson( 2003) for instance claim absolute nativelike command of an

L2 may in factnever be possible for older learners; Johnson and Newport (1989) find that laterage of acquisition

determines that one will not become native [like] or nearnative [-like] in a language. The effects of age on second language

acquisitionare not necessarily established by demonstrating that speakers speak more likeor less like

monolingual nativ e speakers. 3 How is second language vocabulary acquired?

11 The acquisition of vocabulary has turned out a difficult area to research. It ispossible to describe the

nature of the vocabulary that people have to learn in afirst or a second language; it is possible to test how many words people

know ina language; it is far harder to say how they actually acquire them. This sectiondraws on ideas that are

developed further in Cook (2009). The nature of vocabulary It is conventional to start the discussion of vocabulary

acquisition by describingthe sheer complexity of the problem. Most psychologis ts and many languageteachers for example

assume that a word has a single distinct meaning thatbridges the real world and the concept in the human mind, the relationshipcalled

reference diagrammed in Fig 3. In English the word dog refers to the thing , i.e. it links a real dog to the

concept of dog. The relationship always involvesthe human mind, whether wanting to talk about a and saying

dog or hearing dog and working out it means . word

dog
thingconcept
Fig 3 linking things and concepts

Would that vocabulary were so simple! Dog can refer to people dirty dog , thingsthat fail

that record was a real dog , a constellation in the sky the dog star , aninstrument with jaws iron dog

, and many more: most words in English have morethan one meaning. The word with the highest number of distinct meanings

in theOxford English Dictionary (OED, 1996) is set , with no less than 430. Learning alanguage means

far more than learning one meaning per word. It involveslearning a variety of information about a word, such as:

dog is pronounced /d g/

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