Age, Rate and Eventual Attainment in Second Language Acquisition

1979/12/01 by Stephen Krashen, Michael A. Long, Robin Scarcella · 8 citations
Psychology · Arts and Humanities · #Language Development and Disorders #EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning #Reading and Literacy Development #Psychology #Linguistics #Second-language acquisition #Language acquisition #Mathematics education #Philosophy

paper · doi:10.2307/3586451

openalex publication_date 1979/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02

Abstract

(1) Adults proceed through early stages of syntactic and morphological development faster than children (where time and exposure are held constant). (2) Older children acquire faster than younger children (again, in early stages of morphological and syntactic development where time and exposure are held constant). (3) Acquirers who begin natural exposure to second languages during childhood generally achieve higher second language proficiency than those beginning as adults.

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• Second language [wikipedia]