Proper Age And Context Are The Key Factors In Children’s Second Language Acquisition

Second language acquisition(SLA)has always been a concern of many educators and linguists.Especially in the current social situation,there are more and more bilingual and multilingual people,and only acquiring one language cannot keep pace with the rapid progress of the society and international trends.Therefore,how to make learners acquire a second language effectively has become a focus of the research.Although there is more and more literature addressing the topic of second language acquisition,the subjects of the research mostly focus on adults,especially college students.Little attention has been paid to children’s second language learning.Language learning is a complex process,among which varied factors would promote or hinder the learning effects.Only by finding the most critical factors that influence children’s second language learning can the researcher put forward instructional targeted strategies for children’s English learning.Therefore,the study on the determining variables of children’s SLA is of great necessity concerning both theoretical and practical significance.But even though in the existing sporadic studies on the factors accounting for children’s second language learning,researchers hold their own opinions.Most of them adopt a quantitative method to collect data,and their research results have not reached an agreement yet.Therefore,the issue of what factors play a crucial role in children’s second language acquisition needs to be further conducted with more empirical studies.Nowadays,with the improvement of people’s economic and living conditions,more and more parents prefer to send their children abroad,participating in winter and summer camps or study abroad programs.Because they firmly believe that immersion in the native speech community provides the best platform for children’s second language learning.Furthermore,it has long been assumed that the earlier the language learning,the better.Therefore,this thesis studies five children who went abroad with their follow-up parents as case studies to investigate how their English proficiency has developed in that ideal language learning environment.At the same time,in order to explore the key factors in children’s SLA,the author also compares the English level of these five SA children with that of their accompanying parents who lived abroad for the same time,and with that of the children at the same age who study at home,trying to identify the similarities and differences among them.This thesis will explore the main influencing factors in children’s SLA through qualitative research methods such as observation,semi-structured interviews and professional raters’ scoring.But because children were young when they were studying abroad,interviews with them are not so effective.While parents,companions to their overseas sojourn,are the best witnesses of their children’s study and life.Therefore,the parents of the subject children are selected as the interviewees in this study.Through in-depth interviews with them,this study strives to dig out the underlying influencing variables behind their children’s learning life and experiences and to analyze why these factors are the most important.The following two questions are going to be explored in the following study:(1)What level of English can the five children achieve after going abroad?(2)What factors contribute to these five children’s achieved English proficiency?In the end,it is found that the English level of five Chinese children who have been abroad for 1-1.5 years has almost reached that of native children of the same age in the target language country.In the children’s English learning process,proper age and appropriate immersion environment are the most decisive factors.In addition,children’s personalities and attitudes will also affect children’s second language learning to a certain extent,which may mainly exert on the speed of a child’s acquisition of an SL.Generally,children with introverted personality and negative learning attitudes acquire a second language much slowly.In contrast,children with extraverted personalities and positive learning attitudes are able to acquire an SL faster.Additionally,this study also provides some inspiration for children’s second language learning.For those second language learners at home,parents can make efforts to create a language learning environment like playing associated audio of picture books and English cartoons for their children or have simple daily communication with their children even if the parents do not have the authentic English pronunciation.For those who can afford to send their children abroad,they had better send their children abroad at a young age under puberty to get more opportunities to interact with native speakers and receive the authentic target language input.But because children will undergo a period of silence in language learning,the length of the sojourn abroad should be at least 6 months for a better learning effect.