What Can Younger Learners Teach Us?
Zack Robertson
Robertson explained the cognitive development stages of young English language learners (YELLs) acquiring their first language, then differences in language learning/acquisition processes between children and adults. He ran us through various physiological/neurological, psychological/cognitive and sociolinguistic patterns that are emerging currently in the fields of SLA, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, noting that individual variation resists compartmentalization, which may prejudice our teaching approaches.
While language development is better viewed as a continuum rather than defined through rigid age brackets, other considerations such as the Critical Period Hypothesis and puberty (both influenced by possibility versus effort) and the Reticular Activating System affect intrinsic/extrinsic and integrative/instrumental motivation. While YELLs tend to look to their teachers to provide these and often fail to negotiate meaning, older learners tend to display a wider variety of learning strategies in their language acquisition and are simply better at finding ways to supplement formal study.
Following this intensive input was a quiz, "Who is better at what?" We answered whether children or adults were likely to be more successful at specified language learning tasks. Robertson then had us review further by discussing in small groups where we see and how we might use the presented concepts in our teaching practice.
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