Contrasting Effects of Starting Age and Input on the Oral Performance of Foreign Language Learners

Abstract

The present study focuses on the influence of starting age and input on foreign language learning. In relation to starting age, the study investigates whether early starters in instructional settings achieve the same kind of long-term advantage as learners in naturalistic settings and it complements previous research by using data from oral performance. In relation to input, this study examines and compares the relative impact on learners' oral performance of different input measures: number of years of instruction, number of hours of curricular and extracurricular lessons, number of hours spent abroad in an English-speaking setting, and current contact with the target language. Film-retelling oral narratives from 160 learners of English are analysed in terms of fluency, lexical diversity, and syntactic complexity. Correlational and regression analyses show that input has a stronger association with measures of oral performance than starting age, and that cumulative exposure and, above all, contact with high-quality input are good predictors of learners' oral performance in the foreign language.