report of the amount of leisure time they spent speaking and listening to English. Oller, Perkins, and Murakami (1980), however, examining a similar sample, found no relationship between a report of "time spent with English speakers" and second language proficiency, as measured by dictation and a cloze-type grammar test.

The Heidelberg project, as cited in Schumann (1978b), examined factors predicting proficiency in German as a second language for guest-workers (Italian and Spanish speakers) in Germany. They reported a correlation of 0.64 between German syntactic proficiency and "leisure contact" with Germans and one of 0.53 between German proficiency and "work contact". Both leisure and work contact can plausibly be interpreted as indicating comprehensible input.

4. AGE

It has been popularly assumed that age itself is a predictor of second language proficiency, that younger acquirers are better at second language acquisition than older acquirers. It can be argued, however, that age is not in itself a predictor of second language rate or attainment, and that here too everything reduces down to the quantity of comprehensible input and the level of the affective filter.

Krashen, Long, and Scarcella (1979) reviewed the available empirical research on the effect of age and second language acquisition and concluded that all published studies were consistent with these three generalization:


1.
Adults proceed through the early stages of second language development faster than children do (where time and exposure are held constant).
2.
Older children acquire faster than younger children, time and exposure held constant.
3.
Acquirers who begin natural exposure to second languages during childhood generally achieve higher second language proficiency than those beginning as adults.

Thus, it is not simply the case that "younger is better": children are superior to adults only in the long run.

The explanations for these observed differences that seem most

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