Factors that influence the performance of a foreign language learner

• Autor(a) principal: Barboza, Letícia da Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: letrônica
• Texto Completo: https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/letronica/article/view/12117
• topic: Age of acquisition; L2 learning; psychological and social factors.; Idade de aquisição; Aprendizagem de L2; Fatores psicológicos e sociais.

Nowadays, there is a growing need and importance for learning another language. Along with this consensus, it is believed that the younger you learn a foreign language (L2), the better your performance will be.It is the case because the age at which learning begins (age of acquisition) has been considered a determining factor for the success of learning, and thus the subject-learner can achieve proficiency levels similar to those achieved by native speakers. In this paper we propose to examine this issue, since it has promoted a lot of discussion. We present some studies that compare the syntactic processing of a foreign language to a native language’s one. These studies illustrate that we should consider psychological and social factors, once they affect the processing of language. Our aim is to emphasize that the performance of individuals in a foreign language is affected by a number of different factors and not only by biological and maturational issues.