Recent findings (see, for example, Muñoz and Singleton, 2011) indicate that age of onset is not a strong determinant of instructed foreign language (FL) learners’ achievement and that age is intricately connected with social and psychological factors shaping the learner’s overall FL experience. The present study, accordingly, takes a participant-active approach by examining and comparing second language (L2) data, motivation questionnaire data, and language experience essays collected from a cohort of 200 Swiss learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) at the beginning and end of secondary school. These were used to analyse (1) whether in the long run early instructed FL learners in Switzerland outperform late instructed FL learners, and if so the extent to which motivation can explain this phenomenon, (2) the development of FL motivation and attitudes as students ascend the educational ladder, (3) the degree to which school-level variables affect age-related differences, and (4) learners’ beliefs about the age factor. We set out to combine large-scale quantitative methods (multilevel analyses) with individual-level qualitative data. While the results reveal clear differences with respect to rate of acquisition in favor of the late starters, whose motivation is more strongly goal- and future-focused at the first measurement, there is no main effect for starting age at the end of mandatory school time. Qualitative analyses of language experience essays offer insights into early and late starters’ L2 learning experience over the course of secondary school, capturing the multi-faceted complexity of the role played by starting age.

This article is concerned with age in second language learning. It steers well clear, however, of the well-worn issue of maturational constraints and the intractable problems of locating their consensual offset point and finding indisputable evidence for or against them. Instead we propose something completely different in our agenda for age-related research: a programme on some poorly understoodnon-maturational dimensions of the age factor which will stand some chance of yielding results unlikely to become entangled in theoretical controversy. In other words, the results will, we think, be immediately usable and useful. The topics included in our outlined agenda are: (1) age effects in various dimensions of language teaching and learning (in relation to bilingualism and biliteracy, to different target languages and to Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL); (2) what can be observed in respect of second language (L2) learning in the third age; (3) an ecological perspective on age in classroom L2 research methodology; and (4) an exploration of the attitudes of teachers of different-aged L2 learners.

Despite contrary research findings, many laypeople still claim that starting second language (L2) instruction early yields linguistic advantages. This assertion is again undermined by a 5‐year longitudinal study conducted in Switzerland testing the English language skills of 636 secondary‐school students who had all learned Standard German and French at primary school, but only half of whom had learned English from age 8, the remainder having started English 5 years later. The results suggest that age‐related attainment effects are overshadowed by other effects, yielding diverse outcomes according to individual differences and contextual effects mediating L2 outcomes. An earlier age of learning proved beneficial only for children raised as biliterate simultaneous bilinguals receiving substantial parental support, as opposed to monolinguals and nonbiliterate bilinguals (simultaneous or sequential). These issues require studies that explore what underlies age effects in L2 learning and investigate how learning contexts shape processes of L2 development.

While there is a growing body of research on second language acquisition (SLA) in children, adolescents, young and more mature adults, much remains to be explored about how adults in later life learn a new language and how good additional language learning is forthem. Our goal in this article is to survey and evaluate what is known about the linguistic, socio-affective, neurobiological and cognitive underpinnings of the second language (L2) learning process in older individuals, the extent to which L2 acquisition may be seen as contributing to healthy and active ageing, and how these phenomena are to be approached scientifically, methodologically and pedagogically. Our view is that a developmental enterprise as complex as L2 learning in senior adulthood and its effects in later life cannot be explained by a single theory or set of principles. Furthermore, we take it that L2 acquisition in the third age needs to be regarded not just as a goal in itself but as a means of promoting social interaction and integration, and that it is partly through the stimulation of social well-being that its cognitive effects may potentially be observed.