UNIVERSITY OF JUBA

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
ENGLISH LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT
MASTER PROGRAM

Assignment:

EARLIE IS BETTER

Presented by :
Has
san A/Rhman Ali

Course: Psycholinguistics

Supervisor :
Dr: Amna Badri
Date: 10/8/2009
 The "window of opportunity" idea is widely accepted. Here is a
very simplified explanation: From birth until puberty, the brain literally
formats itself to perform various specialized functions, such as
language, based upon the input it gets from the world. Neural
networks gradually form, and they function more and more efficiently
as they are used. If a second language is part of that input, networks
for understanding and using it grow richer. Therefore, early exposure
to a second language actually causes more connections to grow in a
child's brain, and those connections, in turn, allow for easier
additional learning in the second and first languages.

This "formatting" process, especially active in the first six years,

ends at puberty, or around age 12, and the brain begins to shed
connections it no longer uses. The capacity to distinguish and make
sounds not encountered in languages the child speaks diminishes or
disappears.

Many scientists believe that a newborn's brain is genetically

"programmed" to learn language, just as a bird is programmed to sing
or a spider to weave a web. No one actually teaches a child to talk.
Rather, parents and others enable her learning by speaking while
they interact with her. The interaction is a critical part of this process;
merely hearing TV or radio is not enough by itself.

Baby talk by adults is part of this interaction. It involves simple

sentence structure and vocabulary, exaggerated intonation and
sounds, repetition, and questions, all of which help a child sort out
meanings, sounds, and sentence patterns of a language.
 During this early period, two languages can be learned
simultaneously as long as the child regularly interacts with speakers
of both languages. Pronunciation is more like that of a native speaker
when language study begins early. Some experts believe this is due
in part to physiological changes at puberty; by age 15, a child's facial
muscles and bones are nearly mature, and his musculature loses
sensitivity to phonetic distinctions that are not relevant to the
languages he speaks. It is simply harder for the older student to make
new, unfamiliar sounds. A psychological factor may also be at work:
Older children are more inhibited in trying out new sounds and more
concerned about making mistakes.

"A child taught a second language after the age of 10 or so is

unlikely ever to speak it like a native," said a February 1996
Newsweek article. Through extensive research it has been proven
that the earlier a child is introduced to a second language the greater
the chances are that this child will master both languages. A number
of experts attribute this mastery to physiological changes that occur in
the maturing brain as a child enters puberty.

If you, as a parent, truly want your child to have a greater

understanding of the English language and to do better in school,
then start teaching your children a foreign language now. Studies
have shown that native English speakers who study a foreign
language when young do not fall behind in their native language
development. In fact, children enrolled in foreign language programs
score statistically higher on standardized tests conducted in English.
A number of reports have demonstrated that children who have
learned a second language earn higher SAT scores, particularly on
the verbal section of the test. One study showed that by the fifth year
of an immersion program students outperform all comparison groups
and remain high academic achievers throughout their schooling.

There are many benefits that a child and a parent receive through
the study of a new language. A foreign language opens a whole new
cultural world to your child. Your child will be able to express himself
in new, profound ways. And knowing a second language will give your
child a competitive edge when entering the workforce. Professionals
who speak a second language are called on to travel and exchange
information with people in other countries throughout their careers.
Knowing more than one language enhances opportunities in
government, business, medicine and health care, law enforcement,
teaching, technology, the military, communications, industry, social
service, and marketing. An employer will see you as a bridge to new
clients or customers if you know a second language.

The key to helping your child learn a new language is to become

actively involved yourself. Take your child to cultural events that
feature music, dance, or food from the country that they are learning
about. Learn the language yourself. Help motivate your child by
learning beside him; working together on language-learning exercises
is time well spent. If possible, surround your children with books,
videos, TV programs and software in the target second language to
help them learn.

Teaching your children a second language will provide them with

the skills to succeed in the future, and the process can be an
enjoyable project for families. Even if your children are no longer
under age 10, learning a second language is a valuable skill at any
age, so start sooner rather than later.
 Puberty may be the time of many new beginnings independence,
physical changes, social experimentation but it also marks the end of
a child's window of opportunity for easily acquiring additional
languages. (Some parents insist that adolescence also means the
end of English communication itself but that's a subject for a whole
other article.)

It is now well established that young children tend to absorb

relatively easily any language that they are surrounded by, and they
appear to learn to speak a new language more easily than adults do.
Compared to an older student, a child’s language learning advantage
is greatest in the area of pronunciation, somewhat weaker in the area
of grammar usage, and slight when considering the size of their
vocabulary. Still, the apparent overall benefit of early learning is
leading many to implement foreign language programs in elementary
school or even earlier.
Is this the best or even an advisable use of resources, especially
children’s time? The answer depends on what you want to achieve
and how much you are willing to invest. A few hours a week of foreign
language instruction focusing on learning words, songs, and a few
ritualized exchanges is good for cultural exposure and appreciation,
but do not expect real mastery. The implication of the research is not
so much that one should start language teaching early — say, age 6
— and expect spectacular results, but rather that the teaching should
be age appropriate. When considering the “earlier is better”
approach, these points often are overlooked:

• A young child tends to absorb a language through massive

amounts of input and exposure, while explicit learning,
 involving rules and systematic practice, plays an important
role for adolescents and adults.
• The impact of age of learning on ultimate proficiency is not
always clear cut; in other words, some child learners end up
with accents and incomplete second language grammars, and
some adult learners become, for all practical purposes, as
skilled as native speakers.
• While young learners are more likely than older students to
ultimately speak a new language like native speakers,
adolescents and adults actually learn foreign languages faster.
If proficiency is the goal, teaching young children a foreign
language in an age-appropriate manner means providing a
full-immersion education, taught by teachers who know the
language well. Such programs simulate the environment of
growing up with a language by:
• Integrating the second language with instruction in other
subjects;
• Giving learner's ample opportunities to engage in meaningful
discourse with other students and teachers using the foreign
language;
• Exposing learners to a variety of native speakers of the target
language; and
• Focusing instruction on attaining the language skills needed
for communicating about and understanding academic subject
matter, not on mastering a foreign language for its own sake.
Some parents and teachers may be concerned that total
immersion in a foreign language could impede a child’s grasp of
English and ability to learn other subjects. However, studies have
shown that, while there can be an initial lag in English achievement,
full immersion students catch up, scoring at least as well as other
students on verbal and mathematics skills. They may even exceed
monolingual children on some measures of cognitive processing.

For young children, starting early can lead to mastery of a foreign

language — with no long-term detriment to their grasp of English —
only if it is taught through a well-developed form of total immersion
instruction. A program consisting of a few hours of foreign language
teaching per week is not enough. Older students and adults, on the
other hand, need a judicious mixture of practice and communication.
Deliberate direct instruction (e.g., studying grammatical structures,
memorizing lists of vocabulary words) is vital, along with ample
classroom and study time. As such students progress, their
instruction should become increasingly communicative and should
include an extended stay abroad for greatest effect.

Lenneberg (1967) hypothesized that language could be acquired

only within a critical period, extending from early infancy until puberty.
In its basic form, the critical period hypothesis need only have
consequences for first language acquisition. Nevertheless, it is
essential to our understanding of the nature of the hypothesized
critical period to determine whether or not it extends as well to
second language acquisition. If so, it should be the case that young
children are better second language learners than adults and should
consequently reach higher levels of final proficiency in the second
language. This prediction was tested by comparing the English
proficiency attained by 46 native Korean or Chinese speakers who
had arrived in the United States between the ages of 3 and 39, and
who had lived in the United States between 3 and 26 years by the
time of testing. These subjects were tested on a wide variety of
structures of English grammar, using a grammaticality judgment task.
Both correlation and t-test analyses demonstrated a clear and strong
advantage for earlier arrivals over the later arrivals. Test performance
was linearly related to age of arrival up to puberty; after puberty,
performance was low but highly variable and unrelated to age of
arrival. This age effect was shown not to be an inadvertent result of
differences in amount of experience with English, motivation, self-
consciousness, or American identification. The effect also appeared
on every grammatical structure tested, although the structures varied
markedly in the degree to which they were well mastered by later
learners. The results support the conclusion that a critical period for
language acquisition extends its effects to second language
acquisition.
References:

1. Eric Heinz Lenneberg "The Capacity of Language Acquisition,"

2. Internet.