Text VI, for questions from 34 through 38.

1 Popular tradition would have you believe that

children are effortless second language learners and far

superior to adults in their eventual success. On both counts,

4 some qualifications are in order.

First, children’s widespread success in acquiring

second languages belies a tremendous subconscious effort

7 devoted to the task. Children exercise a good deal of both

cognitive and effective effort in order to internalize both native

and second languages. The difference between children and

10 adults lies primarily in the contrast between the child’s

spontaneous, peripheral attention to language forms and the

adult’s overt, focal awareness of and attention to those forms.

13 Second, adults are not necessarily less successful in

their efforts. Studies have shown that adults, in fact, can be

superior in a number of aspects of acquisition. They can learn

16 and retain a larger vocabulary. They can utilize various

deductive and abstract processes to shortcut the learning of

grammatical and other linguistic concepts. And, in classroom

19 learning, their superior intellect usually helps them to learn

faster than a child. So, while children’s fluency and

naturalness are often the envy of adults struggling with

22 second language, the context of classroom instruction may

introduce some difficulties to children learning a second

language.

25 Third, the popular claim fails to differentiate very

young children (say, four- to six-year-olds) from

pre-pubescent children (twelve to thirteen) and the whole

28 range of ages in between. There are actually many instances

of six- to twelve-year-old children manifesting significant

difficulty in acquiring a second language for a multitude of

31 reasons. Ranking high on that list of reasons are a number of

complex personal, social, cultural, and political factors at play

in elementary school education.

34 Teaching ESL to school-age children, therefore, is

not merely a matter of setting them loose on a plethora of

authentic language tasks in the classroom. To successfully

37 teach children a second language requires specific skills and

intuitions that differ from those appropriate for adult teaching.

H. Douglas Brown. Teaching by Principles.

Longman, 2001, p. 87 (adapted).