The document discusses factors that influence the acquisition of English as a second language. It analyzes how age of starting English education, experience attending English-only kindergartens, and attitude towards learning English can impact a learner's proficiency in English grammar. The study found initial age, time in English kindergarten, and positive attitude were correlated with stronger grammar skills, while other factors like years or frequency of English classes did not significantly influence acquisition.

1. Factors Influencing the Acquisition
of English as a Second Language
EUN KYOUNG LEE
GYEONGGI ACADEMY OF FOREIGN
LANGUAGES, SOUTH KOREA

2. Table of Contents
 Introduction
 Research Question
 Motivation for Research
 Research Purposes
 Theoretical Background
 Age in Second Language Acquisition
 English-only Kindergartens in South Korea
 Other Factors that Affect a Second-language-learner’s English Proficiency
 Research Methods
 Research Design
 Subjects & Materials
 Procedure
 Results
 Discussion & Conclusion
 References & Acknowledgement

3. Introduction

4. Research Question
 What factors affect the acquisition of English
grammar of children learning English as a second
language?
 Does the starting age have an influence?
 How about the hours children spend each day
on learning English?
 What is the relationship between such factors
and a child’s English
proficiency, specifically, related to
grammatical knowledge?

5. Motivation for Research
 South Korea: high enthusiasm towards learning English
as a second language
 Students, parents, teachers  lots of effort into English
education
HOWEVER!
 Is all that effort into early childhood English education
necessary? How about English academies?
 What are some effective ways people can learn English as
their second language?

6. Research Purposes
 Determine factors that could possibly influence a child’s acquisition of
English as a second language
 Guide teachers, parents, students in finding the most effective ways to
acquire English as a second language
Factors to be Examined
Initial age of learning English
Past attendance of English-only kindergarten
Years of attending English-only kindergarten
Frequency of attending English-only kindergarten (per week)
Attitude towards English education at school
Current attendance of English academies
Experience of living in an English-speaking country
Overall attitude towards learning English

7. Hypothesis
Factors to be Examined Hypothesized to
have an Effect
Initial age of learning English V
Past attendance of English-only kindergarten
Years of attending English-only kindergarten V
Frequency of attending English-only kindergarten (per week)
Attitude towards English education at school
Current attendance of English academies V
Experience of living in an English-speaking country V
Overall attitude towards learning English V

8. Theoretical Background

9. Age in Second Language Acquisition
 Lenneberg (1967)
 The critical period: “a biologically determined period of life
when language can be acquired more easily and beyond which
time language is increasingly difficult to acquire”
 Johnson and Newport (1989)
 “success in learning is almost entirely predicted by the age at
which it begins.”
  Increased passion for early English education in
many nations.

10. English-only Kindergartens in South Korea
 Yang (2004)
 Students who had received early English education performed
better on the English listening test taken compared to those
who had not
HOWEVER!
 The difference was minor
  Questions the effectiveness of early childhood
English education (e.g. the attendance of English-
only kindergartens)

11. Other Factors that Affect a
Second-language-learner’s English Proficiency
 Johnson and Newport (1989)
 “no significant effect of the number of years of exposure on
language performance for learners beyond the first few
years of exposure”
 “the correlations show a strong relationship between these
attitudinal variables and both test score and age of arrival”
  initial age does not matter
  motivation was a factor that caused better
English performance.

12. Research Methods

13. Research Design
 Experimental research
 Testing of grammatical
knowledge of the subjects
 Survey that asks for the
background information of
each participant

14. Subjects
 60 5th grade elementary school students randomly
recruited from a local elementary school

15. Materials
 Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) – listening
version
 Popular data collection method used by many researchers
 Tests subjects’ implicit grammatical knowledge
 In this research:
 Tests 3 grammatical features (30 questions each)
 Word order (I ate an apple / I an apple ate*)
 Question (Do you know? / You do know?*)
 Negation (I do not see it / I no see it*)

16. Materials
 Language Background Questionnaire (LBQ)
 A set of questions that asks for the subjects’ background
information (especially related to English education)
 Used to examine factors that might have influenced the
subjects’ English grammatical knowledge
Factors to be Examined
Initial age of learning English
Past attendance of English-only kindergarten
Years of attending English-only kindergarten
Frequency of attending English-only kindergarten (per week)
Attitude towards English education at school
Current attendance of English academies
Experience of living in an English-speaking country
Overall attitude towards learning English

17. Procedure
1. Construct questions for the GJT and LBQ
2. Record GJT questions and make a listening file
3. Recruit subjects
4. Subjects listen to the recorded file and write their
answers on the provided answer sheet
5. Have all subjects complete the LBQ
6. Analyze data and make connections to the LBQ to
see any common factors that might have influenced
the scores of the GJT

18. Data Analysis
 Statistical analysis
1) Analyze data by examining subjects’ performances on the GJT & LBQ
2) Grade answer sheets and mark scores of each subject for each
grammatical feature (word order, question, negation)
3) Calculate average accuracy for each grammatical feature
4) Record all data on a spreadsheet
5) Conduct correlational analysis: find the correlation between two sets
of data (e.g. compare scores between students who enjoy learning
English and students who do not)
6) Determine whether the two sets of data showed a correlation (refer to
the critical values of the Spearman’s ranked correlation coefficient)

19. Results
 Factors that affected subjects’ performances on the
GJT
 Initial age of receiving English education
 Past attendance of an English-only kindergarten
 Attitude towards learning English

20. Results
 The correlational value (p) of two sets of data should be at least 0.255 (in
absolute value) in order to say that the two sets of data have a correlation
Table 1. Correlational Values
Correlational Significant
Factors
Values (p) (│p│≥ 0.255)
Initial age of learning English -0.3888 *
Past attendance of English-only kindergarten -0.3633 *
Years of attending English-only kindergarten 0.14098
Frequency of attending English-only kindergarten -0.0968
Attitude towards English education at school 0.02369
Current attendance of English academies -0.0268
Experience of living in an English-speaking country -0.0991
Attitude towards learning English -0.6351 *

21. Results
Figure 1. Correlational Values
* values are graphed as absolute values
* EOK = English-only kindergarten
* red line: minimum correlational value (0.255)

22. Discussion & Conclusion
 Results of this research show that the following factors have
an influence on the acquisition of the English grammatical
knowledge by young learners in Korea:
 Initial age of learning English as a second language
 students who started learning English at an earlier age have higher
English grammatical knowledge than those who started at a later age.
 Experience of attending an English-only kindergarten
 students who had attended an English-only kindergarten for at least
a year have higher English grammatical knowledge than those who
never attended one.
 Attitude towards learning English as a second language
 students who have a positive attitude towards learning English have
higher English grammatical knowledge than those who do not enjoy
learning English.

23. Discussion & Conclusion
 Other factors (listed in table below) do not have a
significant impact on the acquisition of English grammar:
Factors Correlational Values
Years of attending English-only kindergarten 0.14098
Frequency of attending English-only kindergarten -0.0968
Attitude towards English education at school 0.02369
Current attendance of English academies -0.0268
Experience of living in an English-speaking country -0.0991
 However, due to the lack of examination of the relationships among
factors, it cannot be determined whether they affect the English
grammatical knowledge alone or along other factors affecting it.

24. Discussion & Conclusion
 Limitations
 Subjects limited to 5th grade elementary school students in Korea
 Results may differ for other age groups
 Only focuses on subjects’ grammatical knowledge
 Results may differ for testing other English abilities (e.g. reading,
speaking abilities)
 Further studies
 Similar to this research with different subjects and English abilities
 Work as a guide for English learners when deciding how to proceed with
their English education
 Help learners of English find better and more effective ways to acquire
what is now called the global language

25. References
 Brown, H. Douglas (2000). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. 4th
ed. New York: Pearson.
 Gass, S., and Selinker, L. (Eds.) (1992). Language Transfer in Language
Learning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
 Johnson, J., and Newport, E. (1989). Critical period effects in second language
learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of ESL.
Cognitive Psychology, 21, 60-99.
 Snow, Catherine E., and Marian Hoefnagel-Höhle (1978). "The Critical Period
for Language Acquisition: Evidence from Second Language Learning." Child
Development 4th ser. 49: 1114-128.
 Yang, So Yeong (2004). The Effectiveness of Early English Education Seen by
the Performance of Elementary School English. Thesis. Hankuk University of
Foreign Studies, 2004. N.p.: n.p. Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

26. Acknowledgement
 Special thanks to…
 My mother who has been a great guidance throughout the
entire research
 The local school that willingly participated in this research

27. THE END 