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

learning and the issue of exposure time. It is hoped that some light will be shed
on Hatch's (1983) statement that 'research findings do not exclusively support
the notion that younger is necessarily better nor do they support the opposite
view'.

2.3.2 Maturational Constraints and Phonological Development

As second language speakers who started learning a second language at an
older age generally speak with a 'non-native' accent, much of the research into
the age factor in language learning has focused on the aspect of phonological
development. Scovel (1969, 1988) related Lenneberg¹S theory on lateralization
at puberty to evidence of puberty as the time when foreign accents appear and
argued that it was biologically impossible to speak a second language without
an accent if it was acquired after that time. It is still a widely held belief that if a
second language is acquired or learned after puberty, native-like pronunciation
is impossible due to biological factors. Indeed, some of the least controversial
data on the effect of age on language learning seem to result from phonological
studies where the concept of a 'biological clock' and a 'critical or sensitive
period' appears to be most relevant. The bulk of the evidence seems to
suggest the existence of a critical period for the acquisition of native-speaker-
like pronunciation and intonation in a second language.

Data from second language acquisition research (Asher & Garcia 1969,
Ekstrand 1976, Fathman 1975, Oyama 1976, Snow& Hoefnagel-Hohle 1978,
Tahta, Wood & Loewenthal 1981a and 1981b, Snow 1987, Flege 1987)

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