Attrition

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Recommended: How does age affect second language acquisition

At a very young age recovery of a first language may be very difficult for even children. Ventureyraa, Pallierb, and Yooc (2004) found that the Korean adoptees do not have easy access to the phonetic categories of the Korean language, which suggest that L1 may be lost and unrecoverable at native speaker levels depending time and distance away from it practice. Ventureyraa, Pallierb, and Yooc (2004) investigated if early exposure to a language leaves enduring traces in the brain. They examined the issue by testing a group of native Koreans adopted by French-speaking people. Previous results suggest that they are not able to identify Korean sentences, nor determine Korean words. In the current study, Ventureyraa, Pallierb, and Yooc (2004) focus on the possible remnants of L1 phonology, by assessing the adoptees’ capacity to distinguish Korean voiceless consonants which are difficult to detect by native French speakers. Data from groups of adoptees, native speakers of French, and native speakers of Korean show that the adoptees do not recognize the differences between Korean phonemes better than natural French speakers once unexposed to Korean. Also, adoptees having been re-exposed to Korean and those without re-exposure perform similarly on this task.
Factors in Age and Language Attrition for Adults
Adult learners find themselves in a similar position as a second language learners in many regards: 1) they already have a “first language” so to speak, in that they have completed basic education courses; 2) since they are older they are more conservative in their ways and learning new information requires mental flexibility, which means going through the pain of learning something new; 3) they are, in many cases, having pressing o...

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... (2009). Cross-linguistic Similarity in Foreign Language Learning. In M. Long, & C. Doughty, Language Teaching. Blackwell Publishing Inc. Retrieved July 20, 2012, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444315783.ch7/summary
Schmid, M. S., & Keijzer, M. (2009). First language attrition and reversion among older migrants. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 83-101.
Ventureyraa, V. A., Pallierb, C., & Yooc, H.-Y. (2004). The loss of first language phonetic perception in adopted Koreans. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 17, 79-91.
Xie, M. (2010, Spring). First Language Maintenance and Attrition among Young Chinese Adult Immigrants: A Multi-Case Study. Thesis. Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta.
Ziglari, L. (2008). The Role of Interaction in L2 Acquisition: An Emergentist Perspective. European Journal of Scientific Research, 23(3), 226-453.

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