and the language facts studied by Oyama in 1978, results inferred that the earlier the subjects arrived, the more knowledgeable and well rounded they were on the use of English.
The topics pertaining to this research are as follows and are further discussed in the methods section:
“1. age-related effects on learning grammar.
2. nature of relationship.
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3. variables correlating to age effects.
4. areas of grammar causing most and least effect of problems on different ages.”
Research hypotheses in the past that have lead to the present research subject are discussed as follows. In 1967, Lenneberg projected the hypothesis that first language acquirement should occur during a “critical period” defined from early life to adolescence. Lenneberg’s reasoning process for his hypothesis consisted of two components. With no real proof, first he pointed out that first or native language is learned upon exposure initiating from a child’s early life. Recall the statement, “ …the brain enters a final phase of development between the ages 12 and 20. By about the age of 16 the brain reaches its full adult weight (Tanner, 1990)”. Lenneberg was also familiar with the neurological development of the brain such as the prior statement presented. In
accordance to his train of thought, second he pointed out that after the critical period was passed, that the ability to acquire language was also passed.
There was a second research study done by Newport and Supalla in 1987 that showed some discrepancies with Lenneberg’s hypothesis but not that it was entirely unworthy. It tested the ability of deaf subjects to learn American Sign Language, ASL, from childbirth, 4-6 years after childbirth and ages 12 and older; all of whom have been using ASL as their native language for approximately 40 years. In all, they have
concluded that those who learned ASL at the earliest age understood and practiced the language more efficiently than the others whose abilities subsequently decreased. Where the results differed from Lenneberg’s were that language acquirement progressively decreased rather than suddenly but it could still be acquired after the acclaimed critical period.
Under certain measures, participants who were chosen in the study consisted of a mixture of 46 Chinese or Korean immigrants who lived in the U.S. for approximately 5 years and were exposed to the English language generally at school and work and spoke their respective languages in their residences. There were two groups: “the early arrivals
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who arrived before 15 years and the late arrivals who arrived after 17 years of age”. However, these groups were practically almost equal when it came to “years of exposure”. A number of English-speaking individuals from the U.S. were used as the control in order for a comparison to be made and were therefore given the test before the experiment begun.
Subjects were allowed to listen to a tape-recording of 276 sentences and were told to distinguish between the perfectly structured English sentences and their corresponding pairs that were not. “Twelve rule types tested were past tense, plural, third person singular, present progressive, determiners, pronominalization, particle movement, subcategorization, auxiliaries, yes/no questions, wh-questions and word order”. The test was broken into two parts and participants were allowed to take a break whenever they found a necessity for it.
As expected the control group performed flawlessly on the test and this was used to compare the test subjects. Evidence showed that the early arrival subjects performed significantly better on the test than the late arrivals. According to the graph, the native learners and the group of early arrivals who were in the interval between 3-7 years exhibited practically equal results. However after that, the nature of the relationship showed a linear decline where increase in age correlated with decrease in results.
Experimental variables did not reveal many differences on the test results however attitudinal variables might have, so much that prospective studies regarding the topic might be done in order to follow up. There were areas of grammar that were more difficult than some and apparently showed a correlation between age of arrival and test scores for each section, therefore areas that were probably easy for early learners might have been harder for late learners and vice versa. Sections with the rules pertaining to present progressive and word order showed similar results for all test subjects including the controls. Further studies on this occurrence are open.
In all results do show that young children are more capable than adults, including adolescents and older, of second language acquisition. It was found that language-learning abilities decreased until adolescence, after which it leveled off somewhat into
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adulthood. This conclusion has verified the second version of the critical period hypothesis. However, this does not rule out the possibility of the first version since studies on immigrants with first languages other than Chinese and Korean are underway.
One aspect of the study that may have been a surprise was that second language learning started decreasing during the age ranges of “8 to 10” years and maybe the same if not less for first language learning. Even though learning was shown to decrease with age, this does not specify that linguistic learning was impossible, but was rather capricious on the account of each of the participants.
Overall, a critical period has been shown to exist for both types of language attainments. The findings of this study are important as the specifics are now known and will therefore be more influential. This knowledge will be advantageous to parents who want their children to attain a second language or even multiple languages including their first or native language. Learning multiple languages will always be beneficial since pertinent communication skills will always be necessary for successful interactions.
References
Tanner, 1990 in Sigelman, Carol K. Life-span Human Development 3rd ed. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1999.
