Older adults’ reported use of metalinguistic awareness in beginner-level L2 learning: comparing a monolingual and a multilingual instructional approach

Second language learning has been shown more difficult for older than younger adults, however, the research trying to identify the sources of difficulty and possible modulating factors is scarce. Extrinsic (learning condition and complexity) and intrinsic factors (executive control) have been related to L2-grammar learning in younger adults. In the present study, we aim to assess whether extrinsic and intrinsic factors are also modulating grammar learning in older adults. We compared the learning performance of younger and older adults in a L2 learning task. 162 Spanish native-speakers (81 young) learnt Japañol (Japanese syntaxis and Spanish lexicon) in either an intentional (metalinguistic explanation) or an incidental (comprehension of sentences) context. The complexity of the sentences was also manipulated by introducing (or not) a subordinate clause. Individual differences in proactivity were measured with the AX-CPT task. After the learning phase, participants performed a Grammatical Judgment Task where they answered if the presented sentences were grammatically correct. No differences between older and younger adults were found. Overall, better results were found for the intentional-condition than for the incidental-condition. A significant interaction between learning context and the proactivity index in the AX-CPT task showed that more proactive participants were better when learning in the incidental-condition. These results suggest that both extrinsic and intrinsic factors are important during language learning and that they equally affect younger and older adults.

Little is known about older adult language learners and effects of aging on L2 learning. This study investigated learning in older age through interactions of learner-internal and -external variables; specifically, late-learned L2 (bilingualism) and provision of grammar explanation (explicit instruction, EI). Forty-three older adults (age 60+) who were monolingual English or bilingual English/Spanish speakers learned basic Latin morphosyntax using a computer program with or without EI. Results showed no overall effects of EI, although bilinguals with EI had advantages when transferring skills. Bilinguals also outperformed monolinguals on interpretation regardless of instruction.This study expands the scope of SLA research to include older adults and bilinguals, when traditionally participants are young adult monolinguals. It bolsters nascent research on older adults by adopting a tried-and-true paradigm: interactions between variables. Older adults’ overall success at learning language counters negative stereotypes of aging and demonstrates that bilingual linguistic advantages are lifelong.

With the increase in international migration, the need for an equitable healthcare system in Canada is increasing. The current biomedical model of healthcare is constructed largely in the Eurocentric tradition of medicine, which often disregards the diverse health perspectives of Canada's racialized immigrant older adults. As a result, current healthcare approaches (adopted in the US and Canada) fall short in addressing the health needs of a considerable segment of the population, impeding their ability to access healthcare services. This study aimed to identify and understand the structural and systemic factors that influence healthcare experiences and well-being among South Asian older adults in Ontario, addressing a significant gap in empirical and theoretical knowledge in the Canadian context. We conducted in-depth individual and dyadic interviews (n = 28) utilizing a descriptive multilingual cross-cultural qualitative approach. Through this research, participants expressed that their understanding of well-being does not align with that of their healthcare providers, resulting in unmet health needs. Our study uses an intersectional lens to demonstrate participants' perceptions of virtual access to care and systemic factors, such as mandatory assimilation and whiteness as a taken-for-granted norm impacting the health and well-being of South Asian older adults. The findings of this research can offer valuable insights to healthcare providers and policymakers in developing culturally competent practices, guidelines, and training policies that effectively address the healthcare needs of the South Asian population in Canada.

Researching older adults’ motivation to learn English in the Chinese universities of the third age: An elicited metaphor analysis

A great deal of research into second‐language (L2) development focuses on the role of cognitive factors and other individual differences. Studies of children and prime‐of‐life adult L2 learners suggest that differences exist in the learning processes of these groups. However, to date, little empirical work has been conducted with older adult learners. In this article we argue that older adults’ L2 learning aptitudes, processes, and outcomes merit investigation. We present interaction and working memory (WM) research as a case in point and then, as a preliminary illustration, report on a small‐scale study of nine older adults, age 65–89, who were native speakers of Spanish learning English as a second language. These learners carried out communicative tasks with native speakers of English, who provided interactional feedback in response to nontargetlike question forms. Interestingly, the only older learners who showed L2 development were those with the highest scores on a first‐language listening‐span test of WM. We conclude by proposing that larger scale longitudinal research into the often overlooked population of older L2 learners is likely to shed interesting light on important questions concerning WM and learning processes in the field of second language acquisition.

South Asians are the largest and fastest-growing racialized group in Canada, yet there are limited data on various aspects of health and well-being within this population. This includes the South Asian older adults’ ethnoculturally informed perceptions of ageing. The study aimed to understand how social and cultural forces impact the meaning assigned to healthy ageing amongst older South Asians in Canada. We recruited with purposeful and snowball sampling strategies in Southern Ontario. We conducted in-depth focus group and individual interviews (n = 19) in five South Asian languages, employing a multilingual and cross-cultural qualitative approach. In our analysis, we identified three central themes: (a) taking care of body (b) taking care of mind and heart and (c) healthy ageing through the integration of mind and body. Our study demonstrates that older immigrants are a diverse and heterogeneous population and that their conception of healthy ageing is strongly influenced by their country of origin. This study also demonstrates how racialized foreign-born older adults might provide distinctive perspectives on the ageing process and on social theories of ageing due to their simultaneous immersion in and belonging to global majority and global minority cultures. This research also adds to the limited body of literature on the theories of ageing, despite migration trends, still has a white-centric lens.

Older adults are at increased risk of falls due to ageing, decreased muscle strength and impaired balance. Clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy and effectiveness of the Falls Management Exercise (FaME) programme in improving functioning and preventing falls. However, programme completion is often low, impacting the potential benefits of FaME. To explore the barriers and facilitators for participation and completion of the FaME programme from an instructor and participant perspective. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 FaME users and seven Postural Stability Instructors from the East Midlands region of England, UK. Interviews were conducted using a topic guide and explored their views of the programme, intended benefits, reasons for participating, instructor's approach and venue facilities. Data were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants and instructors. Common themes identified by participants and instructors for adherence related to perceived health benefits, psychological well-being, intervention characteristics, cost, instructors' qualities, opportunity to socialise, venue accessibility and facilities. Further factors such as maintaining independence, discipline, relationship with peers and caring responsibilities influenced participants' engagement with the programme. Instructor factors such as progression were also reported as important predictors. Instructor and participant factors influence uptake, attendance and adherence of FaME. The findings from this study can inform the development and improvement of additional falls-prevention programmes. It can also guide marketing strategies to promote uptake of exercise-based falls-prevention programmes among older adults.

This qualitative study focuses on the professional development aspects of adult educators who teach languages to older learners by using one-to-one counselling. Open-ended questionnaires were used to explore participating adult educators’ reflective practice during and after the professional development programme. We used a grounded theory approach and network analysis in this research. The scaffolded reflective practice that adult educators experienced in the programme contributed to their development of learner self-awareness. Junior-and mid-career educators underscored the significance of peer- and instructor-supported feedback. In the case of older adult educators, instructional clarity and organisation were identified as particularly crucial in aiming to directly link theory to practical applicability of learner autonomy development. Deepening adult educators’ understanding about instructional approaches that enhance effective learning may also contribute to developing their own learning skills and competences. These findings may have implications for constructing professional development programmes targeted at adult learning professionals who deal with older adults’ learner autonomy development.

Objectives:In this pilot study, we evaluated the use of electrophysiological measures at rest as paradigm-independent predictors of second language (L2) development for the first time in older adult learners. We then assessed EEG correlates of the learning outcome in a language-switching paradigm after the training, which to date has only been done in younger adults and at intermediate to advanced L2 proficiency.Methods:Ten (Swiss) German-speaking adults between 65–74 years of age participated in an intensive 3-week English training for beginners. A resting-state EEG was recorded before the training to predict the ensuing L2 development (Experiment 1). A language-switching ERP experiment was conducted after the training to assess the learning outcome (Experiment 2).Results:All participants improved their L2 skills but differed noticeably in their individual development. Experiment 1 showed that beta1 oscillations at rest (13–14.5 Hz) predicted these individual differences. We interpret resting-state beta1 oscillations as correlates of attentional capacities and semantic working memory that facilitate the extraction and processing of novel forms and meanings from the L2 input.In Experiment 2, we found that language switching from the L2 into the native language (L1) elicited an N400 component, which was reduced in the more advanced learners. Thus, for learners beginning the acquisition of an L2 in third age, language switching appears to become less effortful with increasing proficiency, suggesting that the lexicons of the L1 and L2 become more closely linked.Conclusions:In sum, our findings extend the available evidence of neurological processes in L2 learning from younger to older adults, suggesting that electrophysiological mechanisms are similar across the lifespan.

Introduction: At the beginning of the 21st century, older adults have become another group with special educational needs, not only because of their social and neuropsychological conditions, but also because of the growing number of people aged 60+. One of the fields that responds to those needs is foreign language geragogy. Research Aim: The aim of the paper is to draw attention to retrieval practice (RP) strategy as an applicable method in teaching languages to older adults for maintaining their cognitive skills and to suggest some concrete solutions of the RP implementation in the language education. Method: This study is of a theoretical-conceptual nature. The literature review was conducted in the fields of neurological and psychological characteristics of third-agers, as well as with reference to RP experiences in teaching children and teenagers. Own two-stages research focused on lecturers’ perspective explored through online surveys and a group interview. Results: The RP strategy is an educational need reported by late L2 learners and their teachers. Due to its proven neurocognitive support of people aged 60+, the strategy is a valuable method of working with older adults. Results have allowed for proposing an applicable aspect. A few RP language practice models were offered as a tool facilitating learning, which is a novelty as for many years it was behind the interests of researchers and practitioners working with thirdagers. Conclusion: The RP strategy is a technique worthy of attention because of the goals accompanying language learning in older age, such as cognitive development, supporting memory processes and maintaining social contacts. The use of RP strategies in language exercises allows to diversify the process of language education in a way that is adequate to the late L2 learners’ potential. All of these factors are undoubtedly crucial in the context of seniors’ well-being. This allows us to conclude that the benefits of language learning can have a holistic dimension for older adults, as long as the learning is carried out using appropriate methods.

Haack (1979) purported that the use of language in math-related statistics instruction (i.e., “statistical literacy”) is a good instructional approach to teach introductory statistics to learners. Extending current stereotype threat research on women, older adults, and math, the present research explored math-related anxiety and test performance outcomes between younger (“traditional”) and older (“non-traditional”) women college learners in four different instructional conditions (“math as language/competency enhancing,” “math as language/competency destroying,” “math as numbers/competency enhancing,” and “math as numbers/competency destroying,”). An exploratory investigation examined whether the “math as language/competency enhancing” would elicit significant and assistive “self schema” linkages with positive gender performance (“women are better at verbal tasks” concept) and aging-related expertise (“older adults have accumulated language skills” concept) positive stereotypes based on past language-related socialization experiences for women and older adults. The positive impact of the “math as language/competency enhancing” instructional condition in preliminary results appeared to benefit both younger and older women learners in both personal attitudes toward math ability, general learning capability, and testing performance behaviors. Analyses by age level supported the idea of a math-related “decrement” stereotype threat belief among the older women learners, in comparison to younger women learners, across learning conditions.

Recent work in the field of second language (L2) learning and teaching has aimed for improved representativeness by including older adult participants. Findings to date suggest not only that it is perfectly possible to learn a new L2 late in life, but also that, compared with younger samples, third-age learners’ success may be less dependent on the nature of the instructional approach they are exposed to. Whereas the predictive power of language learning aptitude in young adults’ instructed L2 learning has been amply demonstrated, we know very little about language aptitude as a predictor of late-life learners’ L2 achievement. The present study addressed these issues by comparing the effectiveness of an explicit and an incidental instructional condition at the earliest stage of L2 learning. Volunteers ( n = 80) aged 60–83 completed the LLAMA aptitude battery and a serial reaction time task and participated in a suite of online language lessons targeting adjective-noun gender agreement in beginner-level Croatian. Our results show that the LLAMA tests significantly predicted L2 attainment. Aptitude components played a greater role in the incidental than in the explicit condition, indicating that the latter was cognitively less demanding. Nevertheless, participants were equally successful in the two conditions. The incidental group responded faster to posttest items throughout, and participants performed better on written than auditory items regardless of instructional condition. Taken together, these findings suggest that input modality may be more relevant for older adults than instructional approach. Participants’ occupational status (working vs. retired) and self-concepts, including their confidence in themselves and their knowledge, emerged as important factors, highlighting the link between (meta)cognitive and socioaffective variables in late-life learners.

Despite decline in psychoacoustic and statistical learning (SL) abilities, older adults demonstrate remarkably intact perceptual learning in both L2 (tone-word learning) and L1 settings (perceptual adaptation to accented/noise-vocoded speech) but show limited transfer of learning to untrained stimuli. This study tests whether perceptual learning is maintained in an implicit statistical learning task where older adults learn L2 tonal contrasts through exposure to probability distributions of tonal tokens, which may pose higher requirements on both psychoacoustic and SL abilities, and whether sleep-dependent consolidation helps the generalization of perceptual knowledge. L1-Cantonese older adults learned to discriminate a perceptually difficult level-falling tone contrast following a pre-test, training, post- training overnight interval. Training stimuli were synthesized by interpolating naturally produced Mandarin level and high-falling tones into six equidistant steps. Participants either heard a bimodal (two-peak resembling level-falling categories) or unimodal distribution (single-peak) consisting of 256 tokens. ABX discrimination task was administered for testing, with tokens by two genders and on two pseudo-syllables to test generalization. Pilot data of 14 participants showed a trend of group effect with the bimodal group outperforming the unimodal group after training and sleep-dependent consolidation, showing that perceptual learning is maintained in a paradigm that relies heavily on psychoacoustic and SL abilities.

Investigations have shown the benefits of developing multilingual adult students’ metalinguistic awareness (MLA) and cross-linguistic awareness (XLA) for both language learning and the transfer of language learning strategies. MLA refers to the ability to reflect on and manipulate language structures and rules, while XLA involves identifying similarities and differences across languages. However, there is still too little research concerning students’ perceptions of using multilingual education for the cross-linguistic transfer of language learning strategies during the acquisition of two or more languages. This exploratory study examines the perceptions of six multilingual adult students who attended a course at an Austrian university. The course focused on the development of language learning strategies in both Italian and Spanish as third languages through the combination of two multilingual approaches. The study aims to investigate students’ perceived usefulness of the course. Students participated in multilingual activities designed by the researcher for the course, and then reflected on their multilingual learning process. Data were collected through a questionnaire, students’ diaries, and a research journal. Results show the potential of multilingual education to enhance students’ use of language learning strategies in and across languages.

The aim of the study is to investigate foreign language teachers’ perspective on teaching older adults in the context of (glotto-)stereotypes about Polish third-agers. Thirty-seven lecturers, divided into two groups: one with and one without experience in teaching a foreign language to seniors, were examined. The survey study consisted of two stages based on 2 different research tools: online surveys and group interviews. Both individual responses from surveys and opinions expressed during group interviews were analyzed qualitatively with the use of a reflexive thematic analysis (TA) approach. The teachers responded to the questions regarding the following aspects: 1) seniors’ experiences in learning foreign languages; 2) older adults’ motivation, needs and expectations; 3) the role of the teacher; 4) didactic strategies. It turned out that the responses from the two groups did not differ a lot and in general the lecturers declared their willingness to work with late L2 learners. The influence of stereotypical thinking about seniors (based on the opinions of young Poles cited in the literature) on teachers who did not have experience working with this age group, was not as strong as presumed. None of the research groups’ members had had any formal education or training in teaching late L2 learners and, noteworthy, the attitudes and abilities of both teacher groups appeared to differ from the stereotypically held beliefs of Polish seniors. The comments from experienced teachers revealed their deeper awareness of seniors’ psychological needs, such as supporting them or giving positive feedback.