Does Age of Second-Language Acquisition Improve Intellectual Processing Abilities? (original) (raw)
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The Critical Period Hypothesis for Language Acquisition : A Look at the Controversy *
2014
The age factor in second language acquisition (SLA) has long been a controversial topic among researchers and one that has been surrounded by popular beliefs as well. Many of these beliefs have been called into question in recent years and the search for answers has generated a large body of research on the subject. This paper explores the issue of age in SLA, focusing specifically on the debate surrounding the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH). After a brief discussion of the CPH andfirst language acquisition, a more extensive examination of the different positions on the CPH and SLA is made. Finally, consideration is given to alternative explanations of age effects in SLA. While no irrefutable conclusions can be offered, it is clear that the ramifications for second-language teachers, educational planners and second language theorists are great enough to warrant a careful reappraisal of the CPH.
The Effect of the Critical Period for Acquiring the Second Language
Nauka v sovremennom mire
There are many factors, which effects on Second language acquisition, such as cognitive development, cultural background, personal abilities, motivation, socioeconomic background, age and the level of native language acquisition. One of the important factors, which influence second language acquisition, is the age factor. Many types of research have been performed in order to trace the relations between the age and second language acquisition. However, the question remains to what extent age is important. The concept of the critical period for acquiring the second language associated with multiple hypotheses. Some researchers have focused on the fact that younger students are better learners, while others consider older students to be better learners. However, there are different views on how children and adults learn a foreign or second language. Some researchers believe that adults can easily get a second language due to their high cognitive level, clear logical analysis and strong ability to control themselves, while others find that acquiring a second language for adults is very difficult for many uncertain factors. Adults naturally find themselves in situations that require a more complex language and the expression of more complex ideas, while children lack pressure and maturity in the process of learning a second language. This article attempts to explore and analyze the study of age-based critical period hypothesis, and other relevant variables.
The Essence of Critical Age Hypothesis in Second Language Acquisition
2021
Many studies of second language acquisition look at how the first language influences the production of the second, but studies that look at how the acquisition of a second language affects the first are rare. Some scholars argue that the second language cannot be acquired after puberty, while others argue that age isn't a factor being an obstacle to learn a new language and they assume that people in older ages may be successful as the ones whose minds are fresh (adults). The current paper aims at discovering the age and gender influence of second language acquisitions.
International Journal of English Linguistics
This article addresses the effect of age in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), posing the relative question that whether the Critical Period hypothesis (CPH) exists in Second Language (SL), and if existing, how it is associated duly with SLA. The justification of comparing the achievement of L1 and L2 learners on the basis of Ultimate Attainment (UA) in the establishment of Critical Period Hypothesis, is also discussed. In the methodology, secondary data analysis was used to answer of research questions. To achieve a reliable result from the wide range of secondary data primarily from journal articles, a systemic search has been adopted. In conclusion, compare and contrast was made with earlier studies to show the findings of the study and to scope future research.
The launching of critical period hypothesis (CPH) by Lenneberg in 1967 has been so provocative that various experiments for proving or refuting the existence of the age factor in language acquisition have been conducted. Most of the experiments are in support Lenneberg’s CPH; however, the notion of the critical period has changed from “a sudden drop-off” at puberty (i.e. the capacity of learning language will be lost if it is not activated during the critical period, before puberty) to “a continuous linear decline” (i.e. the language acquisition is still possible after puberty but it will be more difficult and in complete). The later notion leads to the use of “sensitive period” term instead of “critical period”. With this notion, in long term the younger they start to learn a language, the more proficient they will be in all aspects the language.
The robustness of critical period effects in second language acquisition
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2000
This study was designed to test the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 1988), which states that, whereas children are known to learn language almost completely through (implicit) domain-specific mechanisms, adults have largely lost the ability to learn a language without reflecting on its structure and have to use alternative mechanisms, drawing especially on their problem-solving capacities, to learn a second language. The hypothesis implies that only adults with a high level of verbal analytical ability will reach near-native competence in their second language, but that this ability will not be a significant predictor of success for childhood second language acquisition. A study with 57 adult Hungarian-speaking immigrants confirmed the hypothesis in the sense that very few adult immigrants scored within the range of child arrivals on a grammaticality judgment test, and that the few who did had high levels of verbal analytical ability; this ability was not a significant predictor for childhood arrivals. This study replicates the findings of Johnson and Newport (1989) and provides an explanation for the apparent exceptions in their study. These findings lead to a reconceptualization of the Critical Period Hypothesis: If the scope of this hypothesis is lim-First and foremost, I thank Anna Fenyvesi and Donald Peckham, who helped with the test design and were in charge of the data collection, and Mary Connerty who helped with the data collection. I am grateful to Jacqueline Johnson and Elissa Newport for sharing their original grammaticality judgment test items with me, to Zoltán Dörnyei for providing me with the Hungarian Language Aptitude Test designed by his student István Ottó, and to István Ottó himself for providing me with a copy of his thesis.
hypothesized that language could be acquired only within a critical period, extending from early infancy until puberty. In its basic form, the critical period hypothesis need only have consequences for first language acquisition. Nevertheless, it is essential to our understanding of the nature of the hypothesized critical period to determine whether or not it extends as well to second language acquisition. If so, it should be the case that young children are better second language learners than adults and should consequently reach higher levels of final proficiency in the second language. This prediction was tested by comparing the English proficiency attained by 46 native Korean or Chinese speakers who had arrived in the United States between the ages of 3 and 39, and who had lived in the United States between 3 and 26 years by the time of testing. These subjects were tested on a wide variety of structures of English grammar, using a grammaticality judgment task. Both correlational and r-test analyses demonstrated a clear and strong advantage for earlier arrivals over the later arrivals. Test performance was linearly related to age of arrival up to puberty; after puberty, performance was low but highly variable and unrelated to age of arrival. This age effect was shown not to be an inadvertent result of differences in amount of experience with English, motivation, self-consciousness, or American identification. The effect also appeared on every grammatical structure tested, although the structures varied markedly in the degree to which they were well mastered by later learners. The results support the conclusion that a critical period for language acquisition extends its effects to second language acquisition. 8 1989 ACTdemic Press, Inc. In most behavioral domains, competence is expected to increase over development, whether gradually or in stages. However, in some domains, it has been suggested that competence does not monotonically increase with development, but rather reaches its peak during a "critical period,"'
International Journal of Linguistics
This research paper is a review of the previous literature that focuses on whether or not there is an influence of second language acquisition during 'critical period'. Critical period refers to acquiring a second language before the age of adulthood. Although there is no consensus among linguists on the impact of the critical period, numerous scholars in the field of second language acquisition agree that language learners gain more benefits during the critical period including mastering the phonological system of the target language. In addition, this paper compares between the potential linguistic benefits between young learners who acquire language at an early age of their lives and their older counterparts who begin learning a language after the age of maturation. Interestingly, those who start studying a second language during the critical period usually outperform their older counterparts due to their exceptional memory traits and fresh speech organs ultimately, it di...