The purpose of this study is to test the commonly held assumption that younger children are superior to those who are older in learning to speak a second language with a good accent. Students from the elementary, junior high, and college levels are tested after receiving identical instruction in German phonemes. Post-test results indicate that both the junior high and college groups are superior to the elementary age group. There is good evidence that the age-language acquisition relationships

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... avoring younger students hold for first languages only. The common observation that children acquire better language pronunciation than adults may have an environmental-socioeconomic explanation and depend on the differences in the way each group is able to acquire the second language. It is more probable that children would have a closer approximation to native-like pronunciation because they are surrounded by good models more of the time than their adult counterparts.