L?influence de l?

Sammanfattning: In the light of recent findings regarding age and cumulative language exposure in the domain of Second Language Acquisition, the present study examines how starting age and linguistic input influences Swedish learners of French in a formal instructional setting. In contrast to natural settings, research suggests that a younger starting age in formal settings does not result in more advanced long-term competences in the target language. For the benefits associated with a younger age to be triggered, significant amounts of rich linguistic input need to be obtained by the learner on a daily basis. To test the validity of these findings, two groups with different starting ages were asked to fill in a questionnaire about their age and language contact as well as to perform a grammar and vocabulary test. A correlation analysis showed that an older starting age did in fact have a statistically significant relationship with higher test results and that the participants who reported having more frequent self-regulatory habits of studying French also performed better than the ones with little to no extracurricular exposure. However, a regression analysis did not manage to confirm these correlations and did instead find that other variables such as motivation and which group the participants belonged to have a much stronger significance than mere starting age and the amount of received input.