ADULT PERFORMANCE ON THE SLOPE TEST: MORE EVIDENCE FOR A NATURAL SEQUENCE IN ADULT SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Sixty‐six adult speakers of English as a second language were tested on the SLOPE test, a measure of oral production covering 20 structures in English. The difficulty order found was not significantly different from that found in children learning English as a second language in previous studies (Fathman 1975b), and no significant difference was found between speakers of different first languages. These results confirm and extend Bailey, Madden, and Krashen's (1974) findings and support the hypothesis that certain similarities exist in the language acquisition processes utilized by children and adults.