5. Conclusion Children vs. adults in second-language learning
Who is better? Children or adults?
In a natural situation
Predicting from the values in the table
In the natural situation, younger children will do best. Looking along the line, we have a High on Natural Situation and a High on Inductive. (The Low on Explicative is not relevant here because in the Natural Situation learning is through induction not explication.) There are Highs on both Memory and Motor Skills.
Adults have a Low on Natural Situation and Highs on both Inductive and Explicative intellectual learning. Unfortunately, the High on Induction does not help much in learning syntax because the adult learner does not get enough relevant language and non-language data for analysis through the Natural Situation. Explication is not relevant to the Natural Situation because rarely will people be able to explain grammatical points in the learner’s native language (in the rare event that they would want to). Given these facts in addition to the Medium on Memory and the Low on Motor Skills, the adult would be expected to do quite poorly.
Older children would do better than adults because they are Medium on Natural Situation and Medium/High on both Memory and Motor Skills.
The natural situation is more favourable to children because adults generally undergo a marked decline in the quality and quantity of the social interaction conducive to good language learning. Psychologically, while both children and adults have optimal powers of induction, and are able to induce the grammar of a second language more or less equally well, nonetheless, it will be easier for children to learn syntax than it will be for adults.
Conclusion
In the natural situation of second-language learning, young children will do better than adults, with older children doing better than adults too.
In the classroom situation
In the classroom situation, adults will do better than young children, because not only are they better in explicative processing but, simply put, they know how to be students. They have sufficient maturity to meet the rigours of a formal learning environment, where concentration, attention, and even the ability to sit still for a long time all play a role in learning. Older learners have cognitive experience lacking in small chilren, and, thus, can be better learners (Edwards, 2004). Matsui (2000) found out that experience with the native language helps adults even to achieve near-native level of pronunciation if given explicit instruction. In a classroom-based study comparing junior high school students with elementary school students (Politzer and Weiss, 1969), the older students scored higher on all tests.
Because the older child’s memory and motor skills are better than the adult’s, the advantage in explicative processing enjoyed by the adult may not be sufficient to overcome the disadvantages experienced in these areas. Thus, the older child will probably do better than the adult in the classroom situation. Research from as long ago as 60 years (Thorndike, 1928; Cheydleur, 1932) has yielded the same result. The best age to learn a second language in the typical explication classroom situation is probably that age where the individual retains much of the memory and motor skills of the very young, but where the individual has begun to reason and understand like an adult. That age would probably be somewhere around 10 years.
Conclusion
In the classroom situation, older children will do best. Adults will do better than young children to the extent that the young children’s classroom is not a simulation of the natural situation.