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Date Posted: 11:04:34 11/19/07 Mon
Author: paul
Subject: Re: Final paper for evaluation
In reply to: Vicente de Paulo Gonçalves 's message, "Final paper for evaluation" on 13:58:27 10/18/05 Tue

>The age factor on the acquisition of native-speaker
>proficiency
>
>There is a strong belief that younger L2 learners
>reach higher levels of proficiency than older
>learners. This belief is widely influenced by the
>Critical Period Hypothesis according to which there is
>a fixed span of years when language learning can take
>place. According to ELLIS (1994), Penfield and
>Roberts (1959) argued that the optimum period for
>language acquisition falls within the first ten years
>of life, when the brain retains its plasticity and the
>lateralization of the language function to the left
>side of the brain is completed. Lenneberg (1967) is
>mentioned as reinforcing this argumentation with his
>work involving children and adults who had experienced
>brain injuries or operations. His studies showed that
>the damages in the left hemisphere caused few speech
>disorders and was rapidly repaired in the case of
>children but not adults. Despite all this
>argumentation, Krashen (1973) Whitaker, Bub and
>Leventer (1981) challenged the precise age when
>lateralization takes place and the neurological basis
>of the Critical Period Hypothesis, what attracted the
>attention of many researchers.
>
>In order to find out whether age plays a crucial role
>on the acquisition of native-speaker proficiency in a
>second language relevant studies were done. Neufeld
>(1977 and 1978), for instance, took 20 adult native
>speakers of English and gave them 18 hours of
>intensive instruction in the pronunciation of Chinese
>and Japanese. The results suggested that under the
>right conditions adults can achieve native ability in
>pronunciation. Coppieters (1987) tested 21
>American-native highly proficient speakers of French
>who had begun learning as adults, and compared their
>performance on a grammaticality judgement task with
>that of 20 native speakers. The results suggested that
>they had native-like performance in language
>production, although their grammatical competence
>differed from that of native speakers. Birdsong
>(1992), in turn, administered similar test involving
>20 students who started learning a L2 after puberty.
>His work demonstrated that at least some learners
>achieved indistinguishable level of competence from
>that of native speakers. On the other hand Thompson
>(1991), studying foreign accents in Russian
>immigrants in the United States, found that the
>learners who had arrived before they were 10 years old
>had a more native-like English accent than those who
>came after this age. However, in this group, two
>subjects who had arrived at the age of 4 were found as
>having a slight Russian accent, suggesting that even
>if students start studying before they are 10 years
>old they may not achieve native-speaker proficiency,
>which also brings notorious embarrassment for the
>Critical Period Hypothesis (Ellis, 1994).
>
>In summary, it is possible to say that under ideal
>circumstances learners who start learning a L2 after
>puberty can achieve native-like proficiency (Neufeld,
>1977/78) (Birdsong, 1992). Besides that, there is no
>guarantee that native-speaker abilities can be
>achieved even if learners start before they are ten
>years old (Thompson, 1991). Altogether, the age factor
>appears not to have a crucial role on the acquisition
>of native-speaker proficiency as the Critical Period
>Hypothesis supports. Nevertheless, because of the
>difficulty of comparing results of experiments that
>have used different methods, further investigation is
>needed.
>Acquiring a native like accent, in my experience, largely depends on personality and musical intelligenc
>REFERENCES
>
>ELLIS, R. (1994) The Study of Second Language
>Acquisition.
>Oxford: Oxford University Press

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