Introduction
When it comes to second language acquisition there has always been an argument on what is the critical period to acquire a second language in the most fluent and efficient way. The hypothesis relates to the idea that there is a age when one can attain a second language much more sufficiently than another age (Child & Adult), when it comes to these tow arguments I believe that the younger the better, in this essay I will present both arguments which argue both points, I will categorise both arguments as followed;
Cognitive factors
Biological aspects
An Affective and Social Basis for Age Differences
Classroom Interaction and the Nature of the Input
Learners ' Errors and Developmental …show more content…
The second advantage is that adults are able to make a mindful grammatical simplification and apply them to appropriate situation children however according to Ausubel 1964 are “limited to the much less efficient approach of discovering syntactical rules through repetitious exposure to models and corrective exposure to models and corrective feedback“
Biological aspects
“Lenneberg 1976” suggests the critical age period where a learner from the age two years up to puberty twelve years biologically can acquire second language in a more efficient and natural way, his theory was that after that the brain loses its plasticity, which is usually after puberty due to lateralization (when the two sides of the brain develop specialized function). He claimed that lateralization of the language function is normally completed at puberty making post adolescent language acquisition …show more content…
Schumann(1979) observes various variables such motivation, compassion, personality,characteristics"in children, the initiating factors are generally favourably tuned or at least sufficiently neutral so that when exposed to the target language, the child 's cognitive processes will function to produce language learning. In adults, however, the development of firm ego boundaries, attitudes and motivational orientations which is concomitant with social and psychological maturation places constraints on the initiating factors such that they may block or at least inhibit the cognitive processes from operating on the target language data to which the adult is exposed."(Schumann, 1975:231–32) through the we can see these initiating factors comes mainly from children rather than