It is widely assumed that ultimate attainment in adult second language (L2) learners often differs quite radically from ultimate attainment in child L2 learners. This article addresses the question of whether learners at different ages also show qualitative differences in the process of L2 acquisition. Longitudinal production data from two…

This study examined the receptive vocabulary of 102 first-, third-, and sixth-grade Spanish/English bilingual students of Hispanic origin. It found that, although students in all three grade levels functioned comparably well on the Spanish instruments, performance on the English instruments increased with grade level. (41 references) (MDM)