Reevaluating the effect of length of residence (LOR) on adults’ performance in a second language

Abstract

Previous work has shown that children but not adults make regular progress in a second language (L2) as length of residence (LOR) in an L2-speaking country increases. These findings might be interpreted to mean that adults’ ability to learn an L2 is severely constrained. The present study examined the effect of LOR in a more controlled fashion than previous studies. Experiment 1 assessed the identification of word-final English consonants. Experiment 2 examined the scores on a 144-item grammaticality judgment test. Experiment 3 examined the scores on a 45-item listening comprehension test. Adult Chinese participants were assigned to one of four groups of 15 each based on LOR in the United States and academic status (students versus nonstudents). In all three experiments, significantly higher scores were obtained for students with a relatively long LOR than students with a shorter LOR. However, the difference between nonstudents differing in LOR was nonsignificant in every instance. When taken together, these results suggested that the negative findings for LOR that were obtained in previous studies might have been due to sampling error. Adults’ performance in an L2 seems to improve measurably as LOR increases, but only if they receive a substantial amount of native-speaker input. [Work supported by NIH.]