A 2010 narrative review reports that even very advanced L2 learners read more slowly than native speakers and miss subtle anaphoric interpretation distinctions¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · theoreticalr3·q2
Currency · newest study 2010 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2015: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? On-line measures repeatedly show non-native readers are slower than natives regardless of advancement, and very advanced learners of Spanish and Italian do not make the native null/overt pronoun interpretation distinction. → Bill VanPatten 2010
Evidence¶
Bill VanPatten 2010¶
Bill VanPatten. (2010). The Two Faces of SLA: Mental Representation and Skill. International Journal of English Studies, 10(1), 1-18. https://www.um.es/ijes doi:10.6018/ijes/2010/1/113951
q2 · i? · theoretical · r3
Narrative review of eye-tracking and self-paced reading research (Frenck-Mestre 2005) and pronoun-interpretation studies (Carminati 2002; Sorace & Filiaci 2006; Jegerski, VanPatten & Keating forthcoming), attributed by the article to those works. The review reports very advanced learners link both null and overt pronouns to the previous subject, missing a subtle comprehension aspect. No effect sizes printed.
"non-native readers are consistently slower than natives in reading sentences no matter how advanced the former are"
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Learners acquired untaught syntactic properties but failed to show sensitivity to agreement they had been explicitly taught and practiced — related
- Mere exposure to the target language does not automatically lead to native-like communicative competence in adult learners — related
- Adult learners generally find pronunciation more difficult than children and are unlikely to achieve native-like pronunciation, though experience and self-monitoring offset this somewhat — related
- Low-frequency or low-salience L2 elements are hard or impossible to learn through mere exposure and require extensive practice to proceduralize form-meaning mappings — a broader claim this one bears on
- A sizable repertoire of formulaic sequences benefits second-language learners, but learners are slow to close the gap with native speakers in formulaic language — related
- Metacognitive monitoring deficits are unlikely to be the primary source of academic performance differences between native and non-native speaking students — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
l2-skill-never-fully-native-like |
title |
A 2010 narrative review reports that even very advanced L2 learners read more slowly than native speakers and miss subtle anaphoric interpretation distinctions |
description |
A 2010 narrative review reports that even very advanced L2 learners read more slowly than native speakers and miss subtle anaphoric interpretation distinctions |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
weak |
newest_evidence |
2010 |
source_checked |
2026-10-20 |
recheck_by |
2015 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-09-27 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — bill-vanpatten-2010 |
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