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

human capacity contributes to native-like pronunciation, for example, and how
much can be attributed to individual differences and environmental factors.
The findings from school contexts in the area of syntactical development
therefore need to be taken with a degree of caution for it is likely that accurate
syntactical development in the classroom is affected by age as much as by
methodology and material, language input and intake, opportunities for
language production as well as a host of other factors such as motivation and
attitude. If it should be the case that both initial rate of acquisition and ultimate
attainment depend on the age at which language learning begins, then this
would require careful consideration of the time when learning is likely to be most
effective and the time when learning is likely to become difficult or impossible.
The evidence so far seems best summarised in the words of Singleton:

"...the available empirical evidence cannot be taken to licence the simplistic
'younger=better in all circumstances over any timescale' version of the
CPH that one finds in folk wisdom..." (Singleton, 1995: 4)

He adds that 'even 'the younger=better in the long run' version of the CPH in
respect of second language learning needs to be seen in the perspective of a
general tendency and not as an absolute, immutable law' and that:

"Both research and the informal observations of those who are in daily ∞ntact
with se∞nd- language learners suggest that an early start in a se∞nd
language is neither a strictly necessary nor a universally sufficient condition
for the attainment of native-like proficiency." (Singleton, 1995: 4)

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