preview

Examples Of The Critical Period Hypothesis

Decent Essays

1- The critical period hypothesis

The critical period hypothesis is a controversy in linguistics and acquiring language, in the extent if the language acquisition is related to age. Which this hypothesis states that there is a certain age which is the ideal time to acquire a fully command of language, and after this time it becomes much more harder and needs a lot of effort to acquire language whether it’s first or second language. In other words the childhood period is the perfect time to acquire language, which in adulthood it becomes more difficult to acquire language. This hypothesis raised the question if there is a real period for language acquisition. And this is what motivates the scholars to do studies and experiments on the critical period hypothesis. Moreover that most scholars …show more content…

Somehow it’s possible until the age of 10 and some other scholars suggest that it could be until the age of 12. So some scholars states that to succeed in learning a language is related to the age when the language is being learned on. And other scholars states that the critical period is only in the pronunciation, which maturation has a big effect on pronunciation. As a result to that many adult learner achieve an accellent knowledge of the syntax, morphology, and vocabulary of a second language. Yet they still have a foreign accent, and maybe one of a thousand people may be able to achieve a nativelike accent.

2- How the critical period hypothesis came to life:

The critical period hypothesis came to life in 1956, and it was produced by the neurologist Wilder Penfield, and Lamar Roberts in their book Speech and Brain Mechanisms. But it was popularized in 1967 by Eric Lenneberg in his book Biological Foundations of Language. And his hypothesis was of a two part, one is on the age effect on language acquisition. Second was on

Get Access