The Studies Challenge a Decades-Old Hypothesis on Language Acquisition

The following discussion addresses the disproof corresponding to the first aspects of the perquisites for CPH to become a theory.

Once the individual development phase passes the critical period, the resulting learning achievement almost cannot show the same effectiveness of learning as that before the critical period.

Birdsong and Molis (2001) repeated the research of Johnson and Newport but could not get the same results. The difference in the two studies is that Birdsong and Molis used Spanish immigrants in the U.S. while the subjects of Johnson and Newport’s study were Korean immigrants.

As to the rest of the study including test procedures and experimental designs, they were all the same. Something worth mentioning is that the study conducted by Birdsong and Molis found that adult immigrants could possibly show performance as good as people with English as their mother tongue.

According to the CPH, the language performance of learners who had passed the critical period should not be as good as that of the native speakers. So this research challenges the CPH for learning the second language.

Through those studies about the age influence on second language learning, we can find that even if the learning of the second language started at the late stage of puberty or after puberty, there still is a possibility of performance being as good as the native speaker (Ioup, 1994).

Moreover, not all pieces of evidence support ‘the sooner the better’. There’s also research that found that when learning happened during adolescence, better result was obtained.

Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle (1978) studied American immigrants living in Holland. The subjects were tested once every 4–5 months for Dutch listening comprehension, pronunciation, and lexicon competence. Results showed that the 12–15-year-old group had the most rapid progress. And one year later, only the 8–10-year-old group and 12–15-year-old group reached the level of Dutch-speaking people. The 3–5-year-old group showed the worst scores.

Although the research of Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle dealt with Dutch and not English as the second language, their study not only provided disproof for the critical period but they also found the reason for better results when learning was started during puberty instead of during childhood.

This is mainly because the cognitive capacity is more mature and different strategies can be utilized to help to learn during the adolescent period.

Werker and Tees (1983) also presented similar results. They pointed out that 8–12-year-old kids would use specific cognitive strategies but 4-year-old kids only passively followed the instructions without assimilation.

Adults and adolescents, due to better learning strategies, can learn the second language more effectively. They have better abilities in the areas of memory, attention, and cognition than young children. So they can utilize these abilities in developing learning strategies to allow them to have relatively better performance in second language learning than children.

Based on the above-motioned research findings, the inference can be made that learning the second language or foreign language sooner does not necessarily show better results.

References

Birdsong, D. & Molis, M. (2001). On the evidence for maturational constraints in second-language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 235–249.

Ioup, G. (1994). Preexamining the critical period hypothesis: a case study of successful adult SLA in a naturalistic environment. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 16, 73–98.

Snow, C.E. & Hoefnagel-Hohle, M. (1978). The critical age for language acquisition: Evidence from second language learning. Child Development, 49, 1114–1128.

Werker, J.F., & Tees, R.C. (1983). Developmental changes across childhood in the perception of non-native speech sounds. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 37, 278–286.

Originally published at http://poeticmindfulness.wordpress.com on September 24, 2020.