Bibliographic Details
| Title: |
Salvaging a childhood language. |
| Authors: |
Au TK (AUTHOR), Oh JS (AUTHOR), Knightly LM (AUTHOR), Jun S (AUTHOR), Romo LF (AUTHOR) |
| Source: |
Journal of Memory & Language. May2008, Vol. 58 Issue 4, p998-1011. 14p. |
| Abstract: |
Childhood experience with a language seems to help adult learners speak it with a more native-like accent. Can analogous benefits be found beyond phonology? This study focused on adult learners of Spanish who had spoken Spanish as their native language before age 7 and only minimally, if at all, thereafter until they began to re-learn Spanish around age 14 years. They were compared with native speakers, childhood overhearers, and typical late-second-language (L2)-learners of Spanish. Both childhood speakers and overhearers spoke Spanish with a more native-like accent than typical late-L2-learners. On grammar measures, childhood speakers -- although far from native-like -- reliably outperformed childhood overhearers as well as typical late-L2-learners. These results suggest that while simply overhearing a language during childhood could help adult learners speak it with a more native-like phonology, speaking a language regularly during childhood could help re-learners use it with more native-like grammar as well as phonology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| Database: |
Education Research Complete |
