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

"Under a Critical Period Hypothesis for principles and parameters,
parameter-values that have not been set during L1 acquisition would no longer
be available after a certain age." (Martohadjono & Flynn, 1995:141).

Martohadjono & Flynn concluded that the results of their study suggest that UG
remains accessible to adult learners and that:

^,,...UG principles which are not instantiated in the L1 remain available to adult
L2 learners, strongly suggesting that UG is not affected by a critical period."
(Martohadjono & Flynn, 1995: 141)

2.3.3.1 Learning the Syntactical System in the Classroom

A limited number of studies from the foreign language classroom also suggest
that older children are the more efficient learners. One of the earliest studies,
Dunkel & Pillet (1957) suggested that on the FLES programme the older
children outperformed the younger children in syntactical development.

Oller & Nagato (1974) tested English syntactic and lexical competence of
groups OfJapanese girls some with early language experience and some
without and found that there was no significant difference in performance
between those with 6 years of FLES and those without. They regarded their
findings as evidence that older beginners learn as much in one year as younger
learners learn in 5. They found that an early start did not bring any substantial
long-term benefits, however, as in the Pilot Scheme, the potential influence of
integrating early with later starters could not be established. The issue of
mixing children with varying experience will be taken up again in later chapters.

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