The article explores whether there is an age effect in the acquisition of L2 prosody. I was not familiar with the difference between AoA (Age of Arrival) as a categorical variable versus a continuous variable. It seems that the experiment reports a “decline in plasticity†in the acquisition of prosody, however, this finding only corroborates the previously held view that overall L2 acquisition decreases with age. The association between meaning and prosody seems to be more difficult for adults with higher AoAs and the only distinction between the Mandarin speakers who arrived as children and those who arrived as adolescents seemed to be characterized by variations in prosody. In this respect, the study supports the idea of a “sensitive period†for prosodic acquisition.
It’s an interesting paper because most of articles I have read were focused on other linguistic concepts such as phonology, not prosody. This paper reminded me of the critical period hypothesis. Also, the format of this paper will help me when I do the experiment and write a paper.
This reading addressed the concept of a “sensitive period” in L2 acquisition. The findings of the study discussed did not support the traditional concept of a “critical period” in L2 acquisition, which proposes that puberty is the last point at which an L2 can be fully acquired. While the critical period seems to be a cut-off point of sorts, the sensitive period is more elastic, pointing out that plasticity and L2 outcomes vary as age increases, but that the ability to acquire the language does not necessarily decrease as age increases.
I thought the methods of the study were very interesting. By establishing dominant patterns among a control group of native speakers, the authors of the study were able to qualify the performance of their different subject groups. It was especially interesting that it was very difficult to establish a baseline of intonation for some of the sentences read during the experiment. Because there was such variation in the group of native speakers, it made identifying the dominant pattern more difficult. In the conclusion, though, the authors suggest a method that could be used to get more consistent output from the native speaker control group.
Although AoA is definitely affects proper production of L2 phonology, as this study highlights that immigrants’ ages of arrival (AoA) in the L2-speaking constrain the phonology domain more than the morphosyntax domain, but I personally believe that intonation patterns of speech production, stressed syllabus and phrase accents are more for the L2 learners to acquire that the phonology of L2 and this is of course relative to the AoA. In other words, adults may have more difficulty than adolescents regarding their AoA.
Not coming from a linguistic background, I was not familiar with the meaning of many of the terms given and had to look them up. After my initial confusion, I found the article to be very interesting, although the results were not entirely what I had expected. For example, several aspects of the study found no difference between what it labeled Child Arrivals (5-9) and Adolescent Arrivals (12-17). I expected that the Child Arrivals would be much better than the Adolescent Arrivals in all areas, but for prosodic organization, both the Child Arrivals and Adolescent Arrivals were similar to the Native Speakers that were tested.
This article looked at the effect of age on the acquisition of prosody. It suggested that while it may be possible for adolescent or adult learners to acquire the syntax and morphology of their L2 to a near native level, prosody, like phonology, has a clear critical period. It was interesting that they mentioned that the L1 prosody is actually acquired before the segments themselves. This reminded me of a study I think we read in this class, but I know I have seen before that showed that infants cry at pitch levels that imitate the prosody of their mother’s language. Given that this study suggests adult learners are simply unable to fully acquire the prosodic patterns of their L2, I don’t know how they want to relate their results to classroom practices. They mention in their goals, “educators can take advantage of the findings and accordingly tailor the curriculum and instruction for ESL learners of different ages. The findings will also be useful in policy-making decisions regarding the optimal age for teaching a foreign/second language.” However they do not pick up this thread in the conclusion. I can only assume they mean their results emphasize first, the importance of beginning language education early, and second, that perhaps teachers of adults should not bother attempting to teach prosody to their students and just focus are other grammatical elements.
“Age Effect on the Acquisition of Second Language Prosody†focused on how age effects the attainment of English prosody for native Mandarin Chinese speakers. The study researched different aspects of speech. The participants’ age of arrival (AoA) ranged from five to twenty-seven and the researchers broke down the participants into subgroups: AoA (5-9), AoA (12-17), and AoA (20-26). I was wondering the logic for the breakdown between the groups because twelve is at the cusp of puberty and may fit into the 5-9 grouping. I agree that the AoA should be a continuous variable rather than a categorical one. The researchers found adult speakers (20-26) had a slower speech rate than child arrivals, but there was not a large difference for adolescences between child and adult rates. The results for native speaker judgments of foreign prosody had the same breakdown. Researchers also found adult arrivals intermediate phrases (signaled by a high or low tone) than other speakers, but there were not any significant differences. Adult showed more high tones than child or adolescent speakers, but there were no significant differences between children and adolescents. Dominant phrases showed a variation in the in how the speakers handled them, but the adult speakers showed more variation compared to the native speakers. This type of research is extremely helpful in learning more about teaching ESL and other second languages.
This paper also reminded me of the discussion about critical period in language acquisition we had in class some time ago. The findings in this research showed that Adult Arrivals were significantly slower in speech rate compared to other groups and were also perceived to have a stronger foreign prosody. This clearly indicated that there is a critical period, which I personally believe so myself based on my experience. I was first introduced to my L2, English, when I was 5 or 6 years old and did not start formal grammatical training in English until I was 12 years old. But as a child I listened to a lot of English music and programs – especially Sesame Street-, and I think this contributed to my less prominent accent compared to typical Indonesian L1 English L2 speakers. Because I was used to listening American English since early age, it is easier for me to produce or should I say imitate the sound of the English phonemes.
This article focused on an experiment that was done to observe the effects of age on language prosody for L2 speakers. The results of the experiment state that the correlation between age and prosody is what one would expect; older L2 learners have a more unnatural prosody in their speech. Though the variation between the age groups of learners was not as great as one would expect, this could be due to the fact that the oldest adults were only in their 20’s and 30’s. With an additional group of adults in their 30s-60’s the prosodic differences may become more apparent.
Effect of age on second language prosody , all of the participants had been living in the united states for 10 years, having arrived in the U.S. either in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Some have argued that age only affects phonology of second language acquisition. Scovel (1988) Other studies that have examined age affect, have focused primarily on phonology. This study shows a clear link between age of language acquisition and prosodic mastery, with success in L2 prosody reaching closest to native ability with individuals who began their L2 usage in childhood, declining somewhat with those who learned their L2 in adolescence and a steep decline between those who learned their second language in childhood and those who learned it as adults. All of these indications are specifically supported by findings in individuals going from native Mandarin speakers learning English in an English speaking country, but have further reaching indications on age’s effects on second language prosody acquisition in general. I would be interested in seeing results in a similar study conducted among individuals learning a second language in an immersive language environment vs. a bilingual environment among different ages to see which is more successful among child, adolescent, and adult learners, and if perhaps bilingual education is more effective at certain ages. I am also curious if the same results would be produced among individuals studying a second language in a non immersive environment, such as studying English in a Chinese classroom.
As most people have already stated, this article focuses on acquisition of prosody in a second language. I haven’t really come across many prosodic studies so far in my linguistic experience, but I found this article to be interesting. It seems to suggest that there is an advantage to early learners of a language in acquiring prosody, which makes perfect logical sense considering that most people believe that there is a “critical period” for learning languages in general.
I feel like it would be interesting to look at prosody acquisition in languages other than english, because I wonder if the results would be different among languages that are more tonal, such as chinese. (So like look at the way english speakers acquire chinese instead of chinese people acquiring english).
How about looking at prosody acquisition from other languages. The article mentioned that italian native speakers who arrived at a younger age to the United States produced English L2 vowels and consonants more accurately than those who arrived later. Would romance language speakers have a different result in prosody acquisition?
The article explores whether there is an age effect in the acquisition of L2 prosody. I was not familiar with the difference between AoA (Age of Arrival) as a categorical variable versus a continuous variable. It seems that the experiment reports a “decline in plasticity†in the acquisition of prosody, however, this finding only corroborates the previously held view that overall L2 acquisition decreases with age. The association between meaning and prosody seems to be more difficult for adults with higher AoAs and the only distinction between the Mandarin speakers who arrived as children and those who arrived as adolescents seemed to be characterized by variations in prosody. In this respect, the study supports the idea of a “sensitive period†for prosodic acquisition.
It’s an interesting paper because most of articles I have read were focused on other linguistic concepts such as phonology, not prosody. This paper reminded me of the critical period hypothesis. Also, the format of this paper will help me when I do the experiment and write a paper.
This reading addressed the concept of a “sensitive period” in L2 acquisition. The findings of the study discussed did not support the traditional concept of a “critical period” in L2 acquisition, which proposes that puberty is the last point at which an L2 can be fully acquired. While the critical period seems to be a cut-off point of sorts, the sensitive period is more elastic, pointing out that plasticity and L2 outcomes vary as age increases, but that the ability to acquire the language does not necessarily decrease as age increases.
I thought the methods of the study were very interesting. By establishing dominant patterns among a control group of native speakers, the authors of the study were able to qualify the performance of their different subject groups. It was especially interesting that it was very difficult to establish a baseline of intonation for some of the sentences read during the experiment. Because there was such variation in the group of native speakers, it made identifying the dominant pattern more difficult. In the conclusion, though, the authors suggest a method that could be used to get more consistent output from the native speaker control group.
Although AoA is definitely affects proper production of L2 phonology, as this study highlights that immigrants’ ages of arrival (AoA) in the L2-speaking constrain the phonology domain more than the morphosyntax domain, but I personally believe that intonation patterns of speech production, stressed syllabus and phrase accents are more for the L2 learners to acquire that the phonology of L2 and this is of course relative to the AoA. In other words, adults may have more difficulty than adolescents regarding their AoA.
Not coming from a linguistic background, I was not familiar with the meaning of many of the terms given and had to look them up. After my initial confusion, I found the article to be very interesting, although the results were not entirely what I had expected. For example, several aspects of the study found no difference between what it labeled Child Arrivals (5-9) and Adolescent Arrivals (12-17). I expected that the Child Arrivals would be much better than the Adolescent Arrivals in all areas, but for prosodic organization, both the Child Arrivals and Adolescent Arrivals were similar to the Native Speakers that were tested.
This article looked at the effect of age on the acquisition of prosody. It suggested that while it may be possible for adolescent or adult learners to acquire the syntax and morphology of their L2 to a near native level, prosody, like phonology, has a clear critical period. It was interesting that they mentioned that the L1 prosody is actually acquired before the segments themselves. This reminded me of a study I think we read in this class, but I know I have seen before that showed that infants cry at pitch levels that imitate the prosody of their mother’s language. Given that this study suggests adult learners are simply unable to fully acquire the prosodic patterns of their L2, I don’t know how they want to relate their results to classroom practices. They mention in their goals, “educators can take advantage of the findings and accordingly tailor the curriculum and instruction for ESL learners of different ages. The findings will also be useful in policy-making decisions regarding the optimal age for teaching a foreign/second language.” However they do not pick up this thread in the conclusion. I can only assume they mean their results emphasize first, the importance of beginning language education early, and second, that perhaps teachers of adults should not bother attempting to teach prosody to their students and just focus are other grammatical elements.
“Age Effect on the Acquisition of Second Language Prosody†focused on how age effects the attainment of English prosody for native Mandarin Chinese speakers. The study researched different aspects of speech. The participants’ age of arrival (AoA) ranged from five to twenty-seven and the researchers broke down the participants into subgroups: AoA (5-9), AoA (12-17), and AoA (20-26). I was wondering the logic for the breakdown between the groups because twelve is at the cusp of puberty and may fit into the 5-9 grouping. I agree that the AoA should be a continuous variable rather than a categorical one. The researchers found adult speakers (20-26) had a slower speech rate than child arrivals, but there was not a large difference for adolescences between child and adult rates. The results for native speaker judgments of foreign prosody had the same breakdown. Researchers also found adult arrivals intermediate phrases (signaled by a high or low tone) than other speakers, but there were not any significant differences. Adult showed more high tones than child or adolescent speakers, but there were no significant differences between children and adolescents. Dominant phrases showed a variation in the in how the speakers handled them, but the adult speakers showed more variation compared to the native speakers. This type of research is extremely helpful in learning more about teaching ESL and other second languages.
This paper also reminded me of the discussion about critical period in language acquisition we had in class some time ago. The findings in this research showed that Adult Arrivals were significantly slower in speech rate compared to other groups and were also perceived to have a stronger foreign prosody. This clearly indicated that there is a critical period, which I personally believe so myself based on my experience. I was first introduced to my L2, English, when I was 5 or 6 years old and did not start formal grammatical training in English until I was 12 years old. But as a child I listened to a lot of English music and programs – especially Sesame Street-, and I think this contributed to my less prominent accent compared to typical Indonesian L1 English L2 speakers. Because I was used to listening American English since early age, it is easier for me to produce or should I say imitate the sound of the English phonemes.
This article focused on an experiment that was done to observe the effects of age on language prosody for L2 speakers. The results of the experiment state that the correlation between age and prosody is what one would expect; older L2 learners have a more unnatural prosody in their speech. Though the variation between the age groups of learners was not as great as one would expect, this could be due to the fact that the oldest adults were only in their 20’s and 30’s. With an additional group of adults in their 30s-60’s the prosodic differences may become more apparent.
Effect of age on second language prosody , all of the participants had been living in the united states for 10 years, having arrived in the U.S. either in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Some have argued that age only affects phonology of second language acquisition. Scovel (1988) Other studies that have examined age affect, have focused primarily on phonology. This study shows a clear link between age of language acquisition and prosodic mastery, with success in L2 prosody reaching closest to native ability with individuals who began their L2 usage in childhood, declining somewhat with those who learned their L2 in adolescence and a steep decline between those who learned their second language in childhood and those who learned it as adults. All of these indications are specifically supported by findings in individuals going from native Mandarin speakers learning English in an English speaking country, but have further reaching indications on age’s effects on second language prosody acquisition in general. I would be interested in seeing results in a similar study conducted among individuals learning a second language in an immersive language environment vs. a bilingual environment among different ages to see which is more successful among child, adolescent, and adult learners, and if perhaps bilingual education is more effective at certain ages. I am also curious if the same results would be produced among individuals studying a second language in a non immersive environment, such as studying English in a Chinese classroom.
As most people have already stated, this article focuses on acquisition of prosody in a second language. I haven’t really come across many prosodic studies so far in my linguistic experience, but I found this article to be interesting. It seems to suggest that there is an advantage to early learners of a language in acquiring prosody, which makes perfect logical sense considering that most people believe that there is a “critical period” for learning languages in general.
I feel like it would be interesting to look at prosody acquisition in languages other than english, because I wonder if the results would be different among languages that are more tonal, such as chinese. (So like look at the way english speakers acquire chinese instead of chinese people acquiring english).
How about looking at prosody acquisition from other languages. The article mentioned that italian native speakers who arrived at a younger age to the United States produced English L2 vowels and consonants more accurately than those who arrived later. Would romance language speakers have a different result in prosody acquisition?