Critique Of The Critical Age Hypothesis

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What is the Critical Period Hypothesis? The Critical Period Hypothesis, or CPH as it will be referred to hereon in, was born out of a nativist theory claiming that language acquisition is biologically linked to age. The father and developer of CPH Lenneberg proposed that there was a statue of limitations (age) to language acquisition which is the core of this hypothesis. For Lenneberg this critical period spanned the ages of two to puberty. The hypothesis has been used both in first and second language attainment and particularly in the latter it has often been used to explain the shortcomings of older adult learners who do not readily display nativelike achievement when compared to younger learners. According to CPH the propensity of achieving native like language ultimately rests with the age of the learner. Diminishment in second language acquisition within this theory stems from neurophysiologic factors. Those who reject this theory can fall into three categories. Firstly some researchers posit that children learn quicker than adults but not due to physical factors. The second propose that the only difference between child and adult L2 learning is in pronunciation. The third do not recognise any adult learning inferiority not even in pronunciation. Alternative explanations of variable language acquisition such as social environment, attitudes, motivation and needs can sufficiently explicate linguistic performance of the young and old and it is these that I will use when drawing upon my own teaching experience to provide a critique of CPH. My first example is of two students in the same class preparing for Cambridge CPE examination. Both are females with ages of 16 (learner 1) and 37 (learner 2) and have achieved near native likeness on a comparable level syntactically, lexically, morphologically and phonologically. Learner 1 started learning English with
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