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Are Young Learners Better Learners of Foreign Language Learning or

Adults?

Mohammad Reza Oroji1 and Azam Ghane2* 1 Department of English, College of Humanities, Zanjan Science and Research Branch,

Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran 2 Department of English, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran

* Corresponding Author’s Email: azam.qane@gmail.com

Abstract

The present paper investigated a number of grammatical errors committed by young learners

around the age of six to thirteen and adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty five.

They were at the same proficiency level (elementary level). Adults were studying the “Intro”

book from the Interchange series and young learners, “family and friends 2”. The

grammatical points were taught deductively so that they could become more familiar with

them and their errors could be removed. The classes were held three sessions per week,

lasting six weeks. At first, Pre-test was administered and 40 students out of 60, whose scores

were somewhat identical, were chosen. Their errors were categorized into morpho-syntactic

and lexico-semantic ones. Towards the end of the course, a Post-test was administered. The

errors were classified into the same two groups. Afterwards, the errors were analyzed. The

grammatical errors made by these two age groups could not be remedied during the whole

term in the classroom. Errors of 20 young learners and 20 adults in four classes (each class

consisting of 10 students) in the academic year of 2012 were examined. Findings showed that

most of adults’ errors were interlanguage errors, indicating the influence of the mother

language, while most of young learners’ errors were due to overgeneralization.

Keywords: Interlanguage, Error Analysis, Grammatical Errors, Learners’ Errors

Introduction

Generally, it is said that children are better learners than adults. When considering second

language acquisition, a child introduced to a second language at the same time as an adult

will, in almost every case, acquire a much better pronunciation. Young learners will also do

better when it comes to grammar skills and fluency (Lightbrown, Spada, 60). Research that

was made during one year’s time showed that the groups of adults and adolescents had the

best results in almost all the tasks that were tested. A number of observations have shown that

young learners seem to pick up another language quickly, without having been taught formal

rules, but adults need to be taught rules and principles deductively. According to Steinberg

(2006), children under seven years display a phenomenal ability at rote memorization.

Adults, however, do not. Adults apply their cognitive abilities to the analysis of the syntactic

rules of the second language, while young learners rely more heavily on their use of rote

memory for language learning. Adults are eager to learn syntactic analysis sooner because

they realize that they have difficulty in remembering all the sentences that they have heard.

The SLA researchers and structural traditions prior to the 1960s strictly emphasized that

second language learners’ errors be prevented and, in case of occurrence, corrected at all

costs. They were believed to destroy the whole process of language learning. Over the past

few decades, however, attitudes towards learners’ errors have undergone significant changes

following the changes in the methodological approaches to foreign language teaching, new

insights from SLA research about the nature and significance of errors, and revolutionary

research into the nature of interlanguage errors are considered as signs of developmental

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processes involved in the learning of language (Corder 1967, 1976, 1981, Selinker 1972,

1984, Eckman 1981, 1984).

Cultural background is a variable that may become potent with the age of the learners. It is an

important consideration in the classroom situation that children have less background than

adults, so this issue does not seem to have any effects on young learners learning a second

language (Gardner and Lambert, 1972).

A number of factors affecting second language learning operate only in certain types of

situations. In Gardner’s model, one of the most influential one in the second language

acquisition is the four individual differences: intelligence, language aptitude, motivation, and

situational anxiety. According to the influence of the strong version of the Contrastive

Analysis Hypothesis, the source of language learners’ errors was recognized as transfer from

the learners’ native language. Errors resulting from mother tongue interference are called

interlingual errors. However, in error analysis, it is acknowledged as one source of errors, not

the only source of errors.

According to Keshavarz’s taxonomy (2012) of the sources of errors, interlingual errors result

from the transfer of phonological, morphological, grammatical, lexico-semantic, and stylistic

elements of the learner’s mother tongue to the learning of the target language. This research

focused on the study of transfer of grammatical structures as one source of interlanguage

errors.

The underlying assumption was that the students’ errors in grammar were systematic and

classifiable. So, this study carried out a systematic research into the field of error analysis to

investigate a number of grammatical errors committed by the elementary level of young and

adult learners. The researcher wanted to find out what types of grammatical errors were

mostly made. The frequency of error occurrences was taken into consideration.

Two questions were composed in order to analyze the grammatical errors:

1) Do adult learners commit more errors than younger learners?

2) To what extent, are adult learners’ errors similar to young learners’?

Literature Review

According to James (1998) “the target language speaker knows everything and foreign

language learner is more or less ignorant. Interlanguage is, therefore, a product of ignorance.

An interlanguage is an emerging linguistic system that has been developed by a learner of a

second language (or L2) who has not become fully proficient yet but is approximating the

target language: preserving some features of their first language (or L1), or overgeneralizing

target language rules in speaking or writing the target language and creating innovations. It

can fossilize, or cease developing, in any of its developmental stages. The interlanguage rules

are claimed to be shaped by several factors, including: L1 transfer, transfer of training,

strategies of L2 learning (e.g. simplification), strategies of L2 communication (or

communication strategies like circumlocution), and overgeneralization of the target language

patterns”.

Keshavarz (2012) Considers two categorizations for errors; the first categorization is

syntactical - morphological errors which include: errors in the use of prepositions, errors in

the use of articles, wrong use of plural morphemes, wrong use of quantifiers and intensifiers,

and the use of typical Persian constructions in English. The second one is Lexico-semantic

errors, including errors in choosing the proper vocabulary which can be semantically

meaningful in particular constructs.

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Method

a) Participants: Since the aim of the study was to compare the errors of young with adult

learners, 40 students from four classes in a language school in Tehran took part in the present

study: 20 students formed the younger group and 20 students the adult one.

b) Data Analysis Procedures: In order to figure out the possible linguistic errors of

participants, the researchers decided to record the learners’ utterances in the class and then

transcribe them. The collected data was analyzed according to Keshavarz (2012) model of

error analysis. Transcription of recorded utterances was done and grammatical errors were

identified. These were followed by the categorizing the errors into syntactic and

morphological types. Having been classified, the errors were counted to realize how frequent

the errors had been made by the learners. Once the errors were counted, the results were

tabulated.

Data Analysis and Results

a) Analysis of errors: This study explained the grammatical errors made by the adult and

young learners of foreign language. Based on Keshvarz model, eight types of the

grammatical errors were figured out. In this article, only morpho-syntactic errors were

accounted for and the second category of lexico-semantic was ignored. Table 1 displays

morpho-syntactic errors committed by elementary level adult and young learners. According

to the corpus, 162 and 152 errors were made by young and adult learners respectively:

Table 1: The relative frequency of error type

The relative frequency of morpho-syntactic error types No.

adults %

No.

young %

Errors in the use of tenses

Errors in the use of inversion to make question

Errors in the use of infinitive

Errors in the use of prepositions

Errors in the use of articles

Errors in the use of “it is” instead of “there is”

Errors in the use of possessive construction

Errors in the use of typical Persian structure

Wrong use of parts of speech

Total number of errors

25

18

12

21

19

21

15

15

28

174

12.5

9

6

10.5

9.5

10.5

7.5

7.5

14

--

31

26

15

23

27

18

10

0

17

167

15.5

13.5

7.5

11.5

13.5

9

5

0

8.5

--

Some samples of errors made by young and adult learners are as follows:

Adult Group Errors in the use of tenses:

b. Present perfect instead of simple past

I have eaten breakfast in the morning this morning.

c. Past continuous instead of simple past

We were taking exam last week.

Errors in the use of infinitive :

I like see a movie every day.

Errors in the use of preposition:

a. Wrong use of preposition

My husband’s office is in first floor.

b. Redundant use of preposition

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We go to home.

c. Omission of preposition

We went movie theater.

Errors in the use of article:

a. Omission of article a, an, the:

I live in apartment.

b. Redundant use of article a, an, the

My father went the shopping.

Errors in the use of “it is” instead of “there is”:

It is a big mall on main street.

Errors in the use of possessive construction:

The car’s door.

Lack of subject- verb inversion in Wh questions:

Where your father work?

Use of typical Persian structure:

I did mistake for solving the problems.

Wrong use of parts of speech:

They are boring by watching that movie.

Younger Group

Errors in the use of tenses:

a. Present tense but wrong use of to be verb with the main

verb:

I am play in the playground.

b. Use of past tense but incorrect (overgeneralization):

I speaked English with my father last night.

Errors in the use of infinitive:

I like eat pizza every day.

Errors in the use of preposition:

a. Wrong use of preposition :

My Dad gets to the car.

b. Redundant use of preposition:

I was playing with the game.

c. Omission of preposition:

The basket is full apple.

Errors in the use of article:

a. Omission of article a, an, the:

My sister has apple in her hand.

b. Redundant use of article:

My father takes me to the school.

Errors in the use of “it is “ instead of “there is”:

It is a puppy in the box.

Errors in the use of possessive construction:

Bag of Tim. The car’s father.

Lack of subject- verb inversion in Wh questions:

How many cars you have? What you like?

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Results

According to Table 1, in most cases, young learners made more mistakes than adults did. In

cases of typical Persian structure, possessive, using ‘there is’ and parts of speech, the children

made fewer errors. As discussed earlier, the reason is that younger learners’ background

knowledge of their L1 was almost limited; hence, they received less interference compared to

that of adults. However, in other domains, adults did much better and made fewer errors,

therefore, they are considered better learners of grammatical rules. Also, as clearly shown in

Table 1, errors made by both groups were similar except for the case of typical Persian

Structure errors which younger learners didn’t make any at all. Based on our findings, in

learning English as a foreign language, adults’ errors are almost similar to the ones made by

children. As mentioned above, children are not usually under negative transfers or

interference from their L1, whereas adults (in the elementary level) usually are faced with

interference. When it comes to EFL, we cannot say with certainty which group are better

learners, because their errors are almost identical and the number of errors made by the two

groups is almost the same. We believe that in order to help adult learners improve their

knowledge of English; teachers are advised to teach grammar deductively and with details.

The instructors can benefit from a contrastive method as well; that is, they can compare the

structures of both languages and try to illustrate that the structures are whether identical or

different. This helps the adult learners to have a better understanding of the target language.

For children, the teachers should not confuse the young learners with the grammatical details.

Instructors can benefit from drills; that is, having written a definite structure on the board,

they can ask the students to repeat it several times. Students can be asked to compose

different sentences based on the patterns given. Involving the young learners with

grammatical intricacies can make them confused; thus, a comparative study of both L1 and

L2 structures is not suggested at all.

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To cite this article: Oroji, M.R. & Ghane, A. (2014). Are Young Learners Better Learners of Foreign

Language Learning or Adults? Frontiers of Language and Teaching, 5(1), 99-104.