Day 24: Universal Influences in SLA: Age

Objectives

Students will be able to

read and discuss the Critical Period Hypothesis and its relevance in Second Language Acquisition.

 . 

Lenneberg's Critical Period Hypothesis

Discussion.  How might age  influence the rate of L2 acquisition?  Use  your own experience of second language learning.  What does Ortega say about this? (pages 16-17). What about Ioup et al's account of Julie's learning  of Arabic? What other variables may interact with age to affect the rate of SLA?

Homework 

The studies done on feral children (children raised in social isolation with little or no human contact) have tested Lenneberg's theory. Please, watch the videos about Genie posted on this blog. We'll have a discussion about them in tomorrow's class.