s_allard wrote:Why are we even talking about a critical period in the first place if it's just a question of earlier is better?
Because no-one here can go back in time to start learning earlier, so that point is hardly relevant. The critical period hypothesis is a point of discussion for two reasons:
1) because it often leads people to believe they've "left it too late to learn", an idea that certainly hampers achievement; and
2) because the critical period hypothesis has repercussions for techniques and methods of learning.
These are things that are directly relevant to people on this board.
The real question is why are
you so interested in this thread if you find it so trivial and pointless? Why not leave those of us who are interested in the topic to discuss it instead?
I happen to believe that the so-called critical period for secondary language learning is simply the period of all language learning, including one's native language.
And that's where the critical period becomes interesting -- is there a difference between native language and adult-learned language? Is a native bilingual biologically or psychologically different from an adult bilingual? What does this tell us about the appropriate techniques for study at different stages of life?
Bilingual people are people who have learned both languages basically at the same time. This critical cognitive period for language learning explains why early exposure leads to good phonetic ability.
But only early exposure
to a good model, and this why early teaching can just as often lead to absolutely awful phonetic ability. In a classroom where no-one nasalises French vowels in words like "un", "en" etc, that element of pronunciation will never be acquired. I've taught high school kids in Spain and Italy who've had English instruction since the start of primary schooling, and they can't pronounce the difference between "six" and "seeks", which is particularly problematic for me because the slight fronting of the vowel in a Scottish accent means they all think my "six" sounds like "sex" (even their fluent teachers).
I used to know a French tutor in Edinburgh who spoke English with a very heavy French accent, because throughout his schooling he'd been exposed to French-accented English, not natural English. He never pronounced either TH correctly. He
could -- he new the articulatory phonetics and could pronounce English very naturally-sounding when demonstrating a conscious point of pronunciation, but the model of the language he worked from automatically was totally set, and he had found himself unable to do otherwise.
Why? Fossilised errors -- or if you prefer, the interference from previously-learned language. He knew he
could learn to speak English right, but he knew it meant relearning the whole language and was simply too big a task.
But more than this, a great many studies have shown that the biggest influence on kids' phonetic systems is their peers. Young kids will favour the accents of their friends over their parents and teachers. Studies in bilingual classrooms have shown that where the native speakers are less than 50% of the class, kids will not acquire an accurate model of the target language.
I have seen this in English, and I have seen this in Scottish Gaelic. Kids who speak in L1 phonemes and L1 idiom, using some degree of L2 words and grammar. They come out of school thinking they can speak the language, and continue with their fossilised errors.
You say adults struggle with phonetics... but maybe that's because we've rarely been
teaching them. Of all the high-level adult learners I've met in all the languages I've studied, the most successful are those of us who've taken the time to understand the articulatory phonetics. Right now, that mostly means consciously studying articulatory phonetics outside of the classroom, but there are teachers who incorporate it into their teaching in a way that's less conscious for the student.
An infant can learn pronunciation from exposure, but can't be taught articulatory phonetics; an adult can learn near-perfect pronunciation through articulatory phonetics, but will struggle to learn accurate pronunciation from exposure. High school kids fairly often get some level of basic articulatory phonetics. This is one of the normal points of discussion over where the critical period ends.
The secondary language is being acquired more or less at the same time as the native one.
This is only true if you're talking about preschoolers, so yet again you're conflating lots of different variables and situations into one.
Similarly, I would argue that the reason it is so hard to learn a language at a later age is simply the dominant presence of the native language. The secondary language is not really being acquired; it's being layered on to the first and this creates all sorts of problems of interference of which we are all aware.
By primary age, children already have a dominant first language.
But at the end of the day, whether we believe in cognitive age differences or not, I'm convinced that nearly all the participants of this forum - with some exceptions - believe that the best time to be exposed to other languages is at an early age. I would go so far as to say that all parents and all education systems in the world, certainly in the European Union, agree.
See, what I find infinitely frustrating about conversations with you is that you state something, I give a counterargument, and then you repeat your original statement, sweeping aside my counterargument without addressing or acknowledging it.
Scientific truth is not a democracy -- no number of people holding an erroneous belief overturns empirically-observed data.
No researchers I've come across think that early starting with language is an unqualified good thing.