Beyond Age Effects in Instructional L2 Learning: Revisiting the Age Factor - Paperback

by Simone E. Pfenninger (Author), David Singleton (Author)

Combining advanced quantitative methods in classroom research with individual-level qualitative data, this study demonstrates that the capacity of late starters vastly surpasses popular expectations. It shows that age of onset is irrelevant for many aspects of language acquisition and that for a variety of reasons a later onset can be beneficial.

Author Biography

Simone E. Pfenninger is Assistant Professor of Psycholinguistics and Language Acquisition at the University of Salzburg, Austria. Her research interests include multilingualism, psycholinguistics and the age factor in SLA and she is co-editor (with Judit Navracsics) of Future Research Directions for Applied Linguistics (2017, Multilingual Matters).

David Singleton is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Pannonia, Hungary and Fellow Emeritus, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He has published widely on second language acquisition, multilingualism and lexicology and is co-author (with Vivian Cook) of Key Topics in Second Language Acquisition (2014, Multilingual Matters).