Much More Than Age

The study reported in this article investigated the proficiency in French of a group of anglophone adult L2 learners of the language, all of whom reported passing regularly for native speakers of French. Tests were administered to these learners to gauge their proficiency in different aspects of French, including a lexico-grammatical measure. A regional accent recognition instrument, which required the correct identification of three French regional accents, formed the subsequent element of the testing process. Questionnaire and narrative data were also collected from participants with respect to their attitudes and motivation as well as their fluency before arrival in France; of the 20 participants, three scored within native ranges on all tasks. With regard to these three, a number of affective variables seemed to play a markedly more important role than maturational factors in the high attainment recorded. In this article, such affective variables will be more closely examined, and their possible role in accounting for the achievement of native-like proficiency in an L2 is explored in some depth.