Third Version of my PWP

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.