Activity
Which group do you think did best on the first test (that is, who learned fastest)? Which group do you think was best by the end of the year? Do you think some groups would do better on certain tasks than others? For example, who do you think would do best on the pronunciation tasks, and who would do best on the tasks requiring more metalinguistic awareness? Compare your predictions with the results on the different tasks which are presented in Table 3.1. An 'X' indicates that the group was best on this test at the beginning of the year (an indication of the rate of learning), and a 'Y' indicates the group that did best at the end of the year (and indication of eventual attainment).

Table 3. I: Comparison of language learning at different ages
TaskChildAdolescentAdult
PronunciationYYX
Auditory discrimination XY
Morphology XY
Sentence repetition XY
Sentence translation*XY
Sentence judgement*XY
Peabody picture vocabulary test XY
Story comprehensionYX
StorytellingYX
* These tests were too difficult for child learners.

In the Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle study, the adolescents were by far the most successful learners. They were ahead of everyone on all but one of the tests (pronunciation) on the first test session. That is, within the first few months the adolescents had already made the most progress in learning Dutch. As the table indicates, it was the adults who were better than the children and adolescents on the pronunciation test at the first test session. Surprisingly, it was also the adults, not the children, whose scores were second best on the other tests at the first test session. In other words, adolescents an adults learned faster than children in the first few months of exposure to Dutch.

By the end of the year, however, the children were rapidly catching up or had, in fact, surpassed the adults on several measures (for example, pronunciation, story comprehension, and storytelling). Nevertheless, it was the adolescents who retained the highest levels of performance overall.
Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle concluded that their results provide evidence that there is no critical period for language acquisition. However, their results can be interpreted in different ways as well:
1 Some of the tasks, for example, sentence judgement or translation, were too hard for young learners. They were simply beyond the children's cognitive capacities.
2 While adults and adolescents learn faster in the early stages of second language development, young children eventually catch up and even surpass them if their exposure to the language takes place in contexts where they are surrounded by the language on a daily basis. In other words, adults and adolescents learn at a faster rate, while children surpass adults and adolescents in eventual attainment.
3 Adults and adolescents can make considerable and rapid progress towards mastery of a second language in contexts where they can make use of the language on a daily basis in social, personal, professional, or academic interaction.