The relation of chronological age to achievement in the study of French.

Abstract

The extent to which achievement in the study of language is related to age has been made the subject of little careful investigation. The nature of some of the more important studies of this relationship, together with the conclusions reached, will be discussed briefly before any new data are presented.Cheydleur 4 compared the achievement in French of thirty-nine adults ranging in age from eighteen to sixty-two years with that of fifty-four college freshmen. He used as a measure of achievement the American Council Alpha French Tests. When the adults had devoted forty-two class hours and the college students sixty-four class hours to instruction in French, the test revealed approximately the same average score in the two groups. The scores of the adults were more variable than were those of the younger students. When twice the above time had been devoted to the study of French, thirty-two adults and forty-six college students were again tested. The scores at this time indicated some superiority of the adult group. When the sections of the tests are considered separately, the adults appear superior in vocabulary and silent reading, but inferior in grammar. It is not easy to evaluate the effects of differences in time available or, what is more important, differences in motivation, interest, and ability arising from selective factors determining the composition of the two groups.Buswell 3 photographed the eye movements of subjects of various ages while reading French. Unfortunately data were collected on very small groups of students, and while great care was apparently exercised in obtaining records on the subjects being studied, it is difficult to determine how nearly these small samples are typical of the ages and grades which they represent. Furthermore, there may be some question as to the validity of photographic records of eye movements as measures of achievement in the reading of a language. l While Buswell concludes that the elementary school groups are distinctly inferior to the others, on certain selections his college freshmen make a poorer showing than either elementary or high school students, and on two 1 Eurich' found little relationship between scores on a number of reading tests and photographic records of eye movements on college students., "52