Age of onset, motivation, and anxiety as predictors of grammar and vocabulary outcomes in English as a foreign language learners with developmental language disorder

Introduction

Like children with typical language development, their peers with developmental language disorder (DLD) are expected to learn English as a foreign language (EFL). For pupils without DLD, it is well-established that amount of informal exposure to English outside of the classroom, starting age of EFL instruction and motivation are strong positive predictors of EFL learning rate and/or achievement, whereas anxiety is negatively related to performance. This paper is the first attempt to investigate how these predictors of EFL performance operate in learners with DLD.

Methods

Participants were nineteen Dutch-speaking 7^th graders with DLD learning English as a school subject at a specialist education facility in the Netherlands. English receptive grammar and receptive vocabulary were measured twice, with a four-month interval. Foreign language learning motivation, anxiety and (length and amount of) informal exposure to and instruction in English were measured via questionnaires.

Results

The participants did not show any progress on English vocabulary and grammar. At Time 1, vocabulary and grammar scores were positively related to starting age of EFL instruction and negatively related to anxiety. For vocabulary, achievement was also positively predicted by attitudes towards English lessons. Only the relationship between starting age of instruction and vocabulary outcomes was visible at Time 2. Amount and length of informal exposure to English did not predict performance, which is in stark contrast to the patterns observed in EFL learners with typical language development.

Conclusions

We conclude that children with DLD benefit from a later onset of foreign language lessons, whereas length and amount of out-of-school exposure to English are less important in the context of DLD, possibly due to difficulty with implicit learning.