How does age affect acquiring Spanish as a second language

Age has a significant effect on acquiring Spanish as a second language. Research generally shows two main points:

1. Younger learners, especially children, tend to have advantages in achieving native-like ultimate attainment in pronunciation, grammar, and fluency. There is a critical or sensitive period in early childhood during which language acquisition happens more naturally, and children can often attain near-native competence. ^{1, 2, 3}

2. Older learners, such as adolescents and adults, often acquire the second language faster initially due to more developed cognitive skills and learning strategies, but they usually do not reach the same level of native-like proficiency as those who start learning earlier. However, they may achieve functional and high levels of proficiency. ^{3, 1}

Specifically for Spanish, early exposure tends to yield better morphosyntactic and phonological outcomes, while older learners may have more variability in these areas but can still achieve high proficiency depending on motivation, exposure, and education context. ^{2, 4, 5}

In summary, starting Spanish acquisition at a young age favors more native-like ultimate mastery, but older learners often progress faster initially and can still become very proficient learners. ^{1, 3}

If you want, a more detailed explanation or factors such as motivation and exposure can be explored.

References

• Plasticity, Variability and Age in Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism

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• Age as a factor determining effectiveness of L2 acquisition

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• How frequent are these verbs?

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• Effect of the development of precursor skills for literacy in Spanish on learning to read in English

• The Effect of Age on Second Language Acquisition in Older Adults

• Language and autobiographical memory development from 5 to 12 years: A longitudinal perspective

• Memory for emotional words in bilinguals: Do words have the same emotional intensity in the first and in the second language?

• Effects of Spanish use on the production of Catalan vowels by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals

• Age of acquisition effects in word recognition and production in first and second languages

• The Implementation of Laryngeal Contrast in Korean as a Second Language

• A brief review of the effects of age on second language acquisition: Is younger better?

• Plasticity, Variability and Age in Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism

• Child-level factors associated with Spanish-English bilingual toddlers’ productive vocabulary growth.

• Off to a good start: Early Spanish-language processing efficiency supports Spanish- and English-language outcomes at 4 ½ years in sequential bilinguals.

• A Study of Age Influence in L2 Acquisition

• The gap between Spanish speakers’ word reading and word knowledge: a longitudinal study.

• The role of age of acquisition and language usage in early, high‐proficient bilinguals: An fMRI study during verbal fluency

• SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION BEYOND CRITICAL AGE: A CASE STUDY OF AN OLD SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNER

• What’s Age Got to Do with It? Accounting for Individual Factors in Second Language Accent.

• Effect of Age in Second Language Acquisition: A Critical Review from the Perspective of Critical Period Hypothesis and Ultimate Attainment

• Spanish Bilingual Morphosyntactic Development in Bilingual Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder: Articles, Clitics, Verbs, and the Subjunctive Mood

• Contributions of bilingual home environment and language proficiency on children’s Spanish-English reading outcomes.

• Relative language exposure, processing efficiency and vocabulary in Spanish–English bilingual toddlers*