Linguistic Factors in Second‐Language Loss*

Abstract

This study investigated the nature of the linguistic features lost in oral French over the summer vacation period by 89 English speaking Grade 9 students. These students had been studying French in a regular second‐language program since Grade 6 and had completed an average of 120 hours of instruction. Global analyses revealed significant reductions in total time, speaking time, number of pauses, quantity of production and grammatical accuracy on tasks requiring production of discourse, suggesting a general deterioration in language proficiency. There was, however, no significant reduction on tasks requiring production of individual vocabulary items. A more molecular analysis focused on the use of various grammatical structures and specific parts of speech. The results of this latter analysis indicated that losses take place in most grammatical elements, but that effects were most pronounced for those elements that were learned most recently. These results were discussed and contrasted with first‐language loss where vocabulary elements appear to suffer loss before grammatical forms.

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