Grammaticality judgments, metalinguistic awareness and the age factor in EFL

Abstract

This paper deals with the issue of the nature of grammatica/ity judgments {G)s) by second /anguage (Ll) learners of different age groups in an EFL context The two main aims of the study were: (i) to compare the results obtained in GJs tasks by EFL subjects of different age groups and (ii) to determine if a higher cognitive development is related tó a higher degree of metafinguistic awareness. The results show that there are important differences between the two age groups in both implicit (Gfs task) and explicit (language awareness) know/edge of the target language in favor of the older learners.