The belief that children should begin their formal learning of a foreign language (FL) as early as possible remains widespread even though several studies have shown that the benefits of early formal FL instruction are extremely limited. This work contains the latest and most comprehensive set of studies to date to address the efficacy of early FL instruction, and the findings that it reports bolster the conclusions of earlier studies concerning the advantages of learners who begin instruction at older ages.

The 10 studies in this book are all part of the Barcelona age factor (BAF) project, which began in 1995 when a new educational policy was enacted in Spain that changed the introduction of FL instruction in public schools from grade 6 (i.e., age 11, the older starters) to grade 3 (i.e., age 8, the younger starters). During the period of transition from the old curriculum to the new curriculum, the researchers in the BAF project tested FL learners from both curricula. The participants were Catalan-Spanish speakers living in the Catalonia region of Spain tested at three time intervals: after 200 h, 416 h, and 726 h of instruction. To enhance their research design, two additional groups of participants who had begun their formal study of English at age 14 and after age 18 were recruited, but these latter groups were tested only at the first two time intervals.

At each time interval, participants were tested on several language skills, such as listening comprehension, phonetic discrimination and imitation, grammar, writing, and oral communication. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the findings of the project as a whole, and the remaining nine chapters are individual studies that deal with the effects of age on the participants’ performance in specific skill areas as well as their strategy use and motivation to learn English. The results of all 10 studies highlight the advantages that older learners enjoy, which include higher levels of performance in most skill areas at all three times of testing, higher levels of metacognitive awareness, greater reported use of complex and elaborated language learning strategies, and higher levels of motivation. A number of intriguing caveats to the findings are also discussed, foremost of which is the observation that learners’ rate of FL learning appears to be affected by cognitive development. This is seen particularly in the fact that the younger starters’ rates of improvement on tasks that involve grammatical and discourse competence increased substantially from the age of 12.

Despite the overwhelming advantages for older learners documented throughout this book, a fairly neutral stance is taken on whether FLs should be introduced to pupils younger than age 12; for example, it is stated that starting young leads to “some growth that has no negative effect” (p. 179). On the positive side, the overall findings of the BAF project indicate that longer periods of exposure to the FL lead to higher levels of attainment. Because younger starters will end up with more years and more hours of FL instruction over the course of their schooling, one might logically surmise that these learners will eventually surpass the older starters. However, the findings reported here suggest that the effects of amount of exposure are moderated by the effects of intensity of exposure, and, unfortunately, the younger starters in the BAF project have had less intense exposure (i.e., fewer hours of instruction per week) than the older starters. This fact is a potential confound to the reported age effects, and it might also mean that the younger starters will never catch up with the older starters in some language skills. At the final testing point, the results of the BAF project show that the younger starters have caught up with the older starters only in a few measures of aural perception, phonetic imitation, and fluency. These might be the only language skills in which the younger starters eventually surpass the older starters by the time they finish their secondary schooling, and this raises the question of whether the extra years of FL instruction provided by an earlier start are worth the investment.

The strengths of this book cannot be overstated. It is remarkable to have such a large collection of well-designed studies that examine the effects of the same variable on several different language abilities among the same groups of participants. This book is also very well written and edited, and its various chapters provide not only enlightening results and interpretations but also clear and satisfying discussions of the relevant theories, past empirical findings, and research methodology.