English Without Age Limits: An Andragogical Communicative Approach to Lifelong Language Learning
Resumen
This paper reports the theoretical and methodological result of an integrative conceptual review on the pedagogical conditions under which adult and older learners can attain communicative competence in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) throughout life. A total of 48 sources from andragogy, communicative language teaching, second language acquisition (SLA), age-effects literature, and affective and neurocognitive literature were integrated to relate Malcolm Knowles’ theory of andragogy to Hymes’ (1972) and Canale and Swain’s (1980) models of communicative competence and to the major constructs of SLA, namely Krashen’s (1982) Input Hypothesis, Long’s (2015) Interaction Hypothesis, Schmidt’s (1990) Noticing Hypothesis, Swain’s (1985) Output Hypothesis, Sweller’s (2011) Cognitive Load Theory, and Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory. This paper revisits the Critical Period Hypothesis (Lenneberg, 1967; Johnson & Newport, 1989) considering the subsequent evidence of extensive variation among adult learners (Birdsong & Molis, 2001; DeKeyser, 2013), and discusses affective, motivational, and neurocognitive factors (Horwitz et al., 1986; MacIntyre & Gardner, 1994; Bandura, 1997; Klimova, 2018) that differentially influence adult success. An Andragogical Communicative Model is thus presented and described in detail across five dimensions (principle, communicative focus, instructional actions, and outcome) for four cyclical stages: needs and goal negotiation, meaningful input exposure, scaffolded communicative practice, and reflective self-evaluation. The results are summarized in five tables and two conceptual diagrams. This paper concludes that chronological age per se does not limit the ceiling of communicative success in EFL; rather, autonomy supportive, meaningful, and low-anxiety instructional environments represent the most powerful documented drivers of lifelong English learning.
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Derechos de autor 2026 Blanca Lucia Cely Betancourt , Jineth Karina García Cendales, Heidy Natalia Ortiz Gonzalez
Esta obra está bajo licencia internacional Creative Commons Reconocimiento 4.0.
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