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Date Posted: 19:57:25 04/16/07 Mon
Author: Lindiane
Subject: Peer Editing From Lindiane To Stella.

Second language acquisition for older people

During the sixties and seventies many scholars and reseachers in second language acquisition, like Lennenberg have defended that learning a language after what they call the critical period _ that would go until 13 years old nad (??) get over after that_ is not possible i (Ww) terms of achievement of full grammatical competence and nativelike oral production.However, recent studies point out in the opposite direction.

-- Here I believe that you`re going to talk about the possibility of old people, as you said, learn a foreing language.


Among the arguments used to support their statements, researchers that proposed the CPH (critical period hypotesis) claim that after this period te human brain suffer a loss of neural plasticity tat (Ww) would empede (Ww) a person in the forties to learn as easily as person of five, for example.But this argument has been contested for (preposition) many specialists since then, whose deffend the point that the neurological cells can be "exercised" just like muscles, and thus inhibiting or delaying this process.
Another argument in favor of the CPH is that of the loss of the learning language faculty, related to he Chomskian notion of UG (universal grammar), and tat (Ww)could affect especially people who spend many years without studying a second language.But this one was also refuted, once this ability is stil present in aulthood (Ww) ;where difficulties arise are in the process of acquiring the L2 parameters, what implicates "unlearn the ones of the mother tongue in order to restore structures.In other words:"Parameter values become progressively resistantto resetting with age, following the critical period" ( Towell and Hawkins,1994,p. 126).
In addition to those contra- arguments, many scholars also argue that there is no conlusive evidence in favor of the existence of a critical period and that, if it does, tat (Ww) it could affect so deeply the grammatical judment or the oral production of a post- pubescent:" there is no clear evidence that after puberty the age of learning onset influences either mean or variance of grammaticality judment scores ( Pulvermuller and Schumann,1994, p.684). Klein(1995) also states that are not absolute barriers to accurate production of a new system of speech sounds by ate learners.
As seen, there are no conclusive studies or proves against the effectiveness of the second language acquisition for older people, whereas many argue the opposite. The older learners that present satisfactory grammatical assimilation and nativelike accent are still a mistery for researchers of both sides, a living evidence to contest the CPH and to show us that the possibilities of the human brain are far yet from our achievements.

-- Stella, you have a very good subject to talk about. However, I believe you can explain better your point, I think you should be more focused in what you want to say, ok?! You started talking about the difficulties that adults have in learning a foreing language. Then you started talking about this CPH. In this manner, I couldn`t get the idea, the point of your text, ok?!
Write is quite difficult, isn`t it?!
At least you were able to post your text on time ... ;)

Big kiss and see youuuuu !!!!

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

BIRDSONG,David;Second Language Acqisiton and the Critical Period Hypothesis.Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah,1999.

LENNENBERG,E.H;Biological foundations of Language.New York, Wiley,1967.

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