Individual differences in child English second language acquisition

TLDR

The study examined how child‑internal and child‑external factors predict English L2 vocabulary size and verb morphology accuracy in children. The study involved 169 children aged 4.8–7.0 years (mean 5.8 years) with 3–62 months of English exposure (average 20 months) from newcomer families in Canada. Results indicated that language aptitude, age, L1 typology, exposure length, and environmental richness significantly predicted L2 outcomes, with child‑internal factors accounting for more variance, supporting Usage‑Based theory.

Abstract

This study investigated how various child-internal and child-external factors predict English L2 children’s acquisition outcomes for vocabulary size and accuracy with verb morphology. The children who participated (N=169) were between 4;10 and 7;0 years old (mean = 5;10), had between 3 to 62 months of exposure to English (mean = 20 months), and were from newcomer families to Canada. Results showed that factors such as language aptitude (phonological short term memory and analytic reasoning), age, L1 typology, length of exposure to English, and richness of the child’s English environment were significant predictors of variation in children’s L2 outcomes. However, on balance, child-internal factors explained more of the variance in outcomes than child-external factors. Relevance of these findings for Usage-Based theory of language acquisition is discussed.