Exploring Distribution‐of‐Practice Effects on L2 Grammar Learning Among Older Adults

Abstract

This paper examines the effects of practice distribution among older adult learners of L2 English, an understudied population in both second language acquisition and distributed practice research. Additionally, it considers the effects of proficiency and age. Healthy older adults ( N  = 53) aged between 56 and 78 years learned the simple past and present perfect in L2 English over three classroom‐based lessons with either a 3.5‐day or 7‐day intersession interval (ISI). Their knowledge of the target forms was tested through a grammaticality judgment test at two retention intervals (RIs) of 7 and 21 days. Results showed no main effect of ISI and no interaction between ISI and RI, in contrast to prior research with college‐aged participants using similar tasks. Similarly, proficiency did not interact with ISI. However, a significant main effect of age was found with younger participants outperforming older participants. Additionally, although the interaction between age and ISI was not statistically significant, an interesting pattern emerged: performance was stable across ages under the shorter ISI, but under the longer ISI, predicted accuracy declined with age, indicating greater age‐related difficulty with longer spacing.