A Psycholinguistic Study on Adults Learning a Second Language

Abstract

The fact that many adult learners throughout the world are enrolling second language classes with different purposes provides a baseline for the development of this thesis. This study focuses on the psycholinguistic and socially-oriented factors that define adults learning a second language. It reviews the main physiological characteristics of the human brain as individuals grow older. This thesis also studies some models of second language acquisition that concentrate on adult learners. Once the adult learner is characterized, a set of proposed guidelines for second language teachers is presented. Those guidelines are applied to practical strategies to help an adult learning a second language. The applicability of those guidelines ranges from linguistic (phonological, semantic, syntactic) to social elements that have a definite effect on the adult second language learner 1