Abstract
Adult L2 acquisition has often been framed within research on the Critical Period Hypothesis, and the age factor is one of the most researched topics of SLA. However, several researchers suggest that while age is the most important factor for differences between child and adult SLA, variation in adult SLA is more dependent on social and psychological factors than on age of onset. The present qualitative study investigates the role of migratory experience, language use/social networks, language learning experience, identity and attitudes for high performance among Swedish L1 French L2 users in France. The study constitutes an in-depth thematic analysis of interviews with six high-performing individuals and four low-performing individuals. The main results show that the high performers differ from the low performers on all dimensions, except for attitudes towards the host community. High performers are above all characterized by self-reported language aptitude and an early interest in languages, which appears to have led to rich exposure to French. Also, they exhibit self-regulatory behaviors and attribute importance to being perceived as a native speaker of French—both for instrumental and existential reasons.
Highlights
It is a well-known fact, both from research and our everyday experiences, that adult language learners differ remarkably in how well they come to master additional languages.Hyltenstam (2018) argues that while the difference between pre-puberty and post-puberty learners in second language acquisition is largely related to maturational constraints, differences in outcomes among adult second language learners are affectedo a much larger extent by factors such as aptitude, motivation and practice
Several researchers argue for the importance to study additional individual factors to understand the complexity of adult SLA and have long stressed the need to examine the effect of cognitive, affective and social factors among adult second language learners (Douglas Fir Group 2016; Kinsella and Singleton 2014; Moyer 2014; Muñoz and Singleton 2011)
The quantitative study preceding the present study investigated how individual factors relate to perceived nativelikeness
Summary
It is a well-known fact, both from research and our everyday experiences, that adult language learners differ remarkably in how well they come to master additional languages.Hyltenstam (2018) argues that while the difference between pre-puberty and post-puberty learners in second language acquisition is largely related to maturational constraints, differences in outcomes among adult second language learners are affectedo a much larger extent by factors such as aptitude, motivation and practice. Several researchers argue for the importance to study additional individual factors to understand the complexity of adult SLA and have long stressed the need to examine the effect of cognitive, affective and social factors among adult second language learners (Douglas Fir Group 2016; Kinsella and Singleton 2014; Moyer 2014; Muñoz and Singleton 2011). A recent attempt was made by Muñoz (2014), who searched for characteristics of high-achievers vs low-achievers in a formal learning context among university students of English She considered the learners’ starting age, and other contextual and affective factors. Her study shows that starting age is important for some, but that aptitude, motivation and intensive language contact seem to play important roles for others She concludes that second language long-term attainment is most likely the result of interaction between many factors.
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