A Critical Examination of the Beliefs about Learning a Foreign Language at Primary School

language acquisition amounted to around 5%. How these learners achieve
such competence, through partial or total access to universal language
principles, through other general cognitive and learning resources or simply
through exceptional talent remains unclear. In any case, these achievements
do cast at least some doubt on the relevance of a critical period and a biological
clock in all aspects of second language learning.

The notion of a critical period suggesting that 'complete' native-speaker
competence, as indistinguishable from the native-speaker, would not be
possible after puberty, might be better replaced by a 'sensitive' period which
suggests that age limits are not absolute or immutable (Lamendella, 1977).
Multiple critical periods for some aspects of language, as suggested by Walsh
and Diller (1981), are the likely reality of the situation.

An optimum age for second language learning would then depend on the
aspect of language under discussion. Younger might thus be 'better¹ in the area
of phonological development where maturational constraints seem to exist at
least for the majority of second language learners. If learning starts before the
age of six, the child seems to have the best chance of achieving an accent-free
second language. Between the age of six and puberty 'the chances of learning
to speak another language without a foreign accent appear to become
progressively smaller¹ (Bongaerts, Planken & Schils, 1995: 35). Accents before
puberty seem only slight and accent-free competence is still possible if learning
begins before puberty but unlikely if it begins in adolescence or in adulthood.

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