Universidad
del Valle
Licenciatura
en Lenguas Extranjeras
Composición
escrita en Inglés VII
Profesora: Sol
colmenares
Estudiante:
Leidy Yareth Martínez López
Learning
a Foreign or second language in childhood
(Essay)
I
would like to set first the topic I am going to talk about; it is the theory of
critical period in learning a second language. I chose this topic because I
believe this is a vastly but not completely developed issue in learning a
second language and it could generate some ideas about how to improve learning
a new language in adults and how different could it be from learning in
childhood. They exist several researches about the critical period made by
experts, but although there is a consensus about the existence of a
biologically-based critical period for second-language acquisition, they
disagree about the age when it is supposed the brain has to make a bigger
effort to achieve a new language.
This
essay is addressed basically to people who are interested on knowing more about
learning processes or learning styles. However, the topic could be interesting
for the whole educative community of Second Language Learning and Teaching.
The
main purpose of this text is to show if learning a foreign or second language from
early ages is appropriate or not. Besides,
I would like to know more about this hypothesis because it can help me
understanding my future students’ needs according to their age or cognitive
development.
Along
the essay I will talk about different perspectives that enhance or not learning
a new language in childhood. First, there will be some experts that argue since
there is a biological change in human’s brain that for all people is difficult
to achieve a second or foreign language, so learn another language from
children would be better in order to get it easily. Second there will be
exposed some ideas about learning a new language is easier for adults. Finally
there will be some conclusions.
In my text I have selected a study made in the United States
called
New
Approaches to Using Census Data to Test the Critical-Period Hypothesis for
Second-Language Acquisition
by Kenji Hakuta, a Professor of Education at Stanford University; Ellen
Bialystok, a Research Professor of Psychology at York
University and Edward Wiley, an assistant professor of quantitative methods in
educational policy at the University of Colorado-Boulder. These researchers made a test to
analyze the critical Period Hypothesis with people from several ages. At the
end of the study, they expressed that the results of the test they applied
demonstrated proficiency scores declined with increases in age of initial
exposure to the second language.
Although
they did not say it, there is an implicit idea that encourage people to learn a
new language from childhood since later it would be more difficult.
Another
point of view is the one from David Ausubel in his text Adults Versus Children in Second-Language Learning: Psychological
Considerations, in this work he establishes some differences between adults
and children that help the latest to reach the new language, nevertheless, he
also mentions some ways in which adults are better than children in that
process. In fact, one of the two main aspects he demonstrates in his text is
that adults can acquire new languages more readily than children.
We must appreciate the fact that
the child does not learn his native language with phenomenal ease and rapidity Quite the
contrary, his acquisition of the mother tongue is a long, slow and arduous
process despite prolonged and continuous exposure, and despite exceedingly
strong motivation to learn so that he can communicate with adults and peers.
Typically he is four years old before his use of syntax even begins to
approximate the conventional standards of his language.
Ausubel, D. (1964)
Ausubel
(1964) not only argues that adults have advantages over children in achieving a
new language but he let people to know
that an aspect that is important to define if learning a foreign or second
language from early ages is appropriate or not, because he says that children
are four years old before his use of syntax, so since children need four years
to develop the process of acquiring the syntax of their mother tongue it would
be better to let this process to go beyond before making them get another
language, in that way it would be possible that they learn the second language
by having a solid base of the first one.
Finally,
I have to say this text does not prove children must learn another language
from so early, it is important to realize that learning process involves
several aspects and they have not been touched in this text, however what is
possible to know after reading this essay is that there are some perspectives
that proves children learn easily than adults but there are others which
demonstrate that children need time to learn a language and since it a long and hard process it would be
good to let children grew up developing their mother tongue before trying to
get another.
REFERENCES
Hakuta,
k.; Bialystok, E and Wiley, E. (2005) New Approaches to Using Census Data to
Test the Critical-Period Hypothesis for Second-Language Acquisition
Ausubel,
D. (1964) Adults
versus Children in Second-Language Learning: Psychological Considerations.
