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The critical period hypothesis was advanced by Lenneberg (1957). Lenneberg suggests that there’s a particular biologically determined period during which learning of a language can be accomplished more rapidly and easily than times falling outside the period, in other words beyond this period it becomes increasingly difficult to acquire a language. He calls this period critical period. According to this hypothesis, the biologically endowed mechanisms for language acquisition are operational only at a certain period and this is during the first few years of life. According to this hypothesis, even if a person has successfully acquired L1, by the time he reaches a certain age (presumably past puberty), the mechanisms that were available at an early age that he used to acquire Ll have been “turned off’ therefore SLA does not have access to the same mechanisms. This means a person learning a second language cannot achieve native like proficiency or he can attain reasonable levels of proficiency but without using the same mechanisms as L1 ( VanPatten and Benati 2010)
The foundation for the critical period rests on neurological research that suggests that brain functions become lateralized after puberty. According to neurology, as a child’s brain matures various functions become lateralized to the left or right hemisphere. Some language functions appear mainly controlled by the left side. According to neurologists, before puberty, these functions are not completely assigned to either left or right hemisphere i.e. they are not assigned to either side of the brain. The brain is viewed as elastic. The specific assignment of these functions to either the left or right hemisphere (lateralization) is believed to be completed and set sometime during or after puberty (D.Brown 1993). According to this theory at the stage before puberty the brain is like a “sponge” all learning knowledge and experiences are merely absorbed. This absorption of aspects of language to known specific locations in the brain supposedly makes the learning of language easier for children than adults or older adolescents (ibid).
The critical period hypothesis has been a subject of long standing debate in linguistics and SLA circles. The question has been, is there a critical period? Several positions have been taken by scholars on the question of existence of a critical period (VanPatten & Benati 2010).
francis1897 answered the question on March 8, 2023 at 11:52
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