Huang Becky H
Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies, University of Texas San Antonio, One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX, 78249, USA,
J Psycholinguist Res. 2014 Aug;43(4):397-420. doi: 10.1007/s10936-013-9261-7.
The current study examined the age of learning effect on second language (L2) acquisition. The research goals of the study were twofold: to test whether there is an independent age effect controlling for other potentially confounding variables, and to clarify the age effect across L2 grammar and speech production domains. The study included 118 Mandarin-speaking immigrants and 24 native English speakers. Grammar knowledge was assessed by a grammaticality judgment task, and speech production was measured by native English speaking raters' ratings of participants' foreign accents. Results from the study revealed that the age of learning effect was robust for both L2 domains even after controlling for the influences of other variables, such as length of residence and years of education in the United States. However, the age of learning variable had a stronger impact on speech production than on grammar. The current results support the framework of multiple critical/sensitive periods (Long in Int Rev Appl Linguist 43(4):287-317, 2005; Newport et al. in Language, brain and cognitive development: Essays in honor of Jacques Mehler. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001; Werker and Tees in Dev Psychobiol 46(3):233-251, 2005).
本研究考察了学习年龄对第二语言（L2）习得的影响。该研究的目标有两个：一是检验在控制其他潜在混杂变量的情况下是否存在独立的年龄效应，二是阐明L2语法和言语产出领域的年龄效应。该研究包括118名说普通话的移民和24名以英语为母语的人。语法知识通过语法判断任务进行评估，言语产出则由以英语为母语的评分者对参与者的外国口音进行评分来衡量。研究结果表明，即使在控制了其他变量（如在美国的居住时间和受教育年限）的影响后，学习年龄效应在两个L2领域都很显著。然而，学习年龄变量对言语产出的影响比对语法的影响更大。目前的结果支持多关键期/敏感期框架（Long于《国际应用语言学评论》43(4):287 - 317, 2005年；Newport等人于《语言、大脑与认知发展：纪念雅克·梅勒的论文集》。麻省理工学院出版社，马萨诸塞州剑桥，2001年；Werker和Tees于《发展心理生物学》46(3):233 - 251, 2005年）。
