Summary and Critique of Johnson and Newport 1989

1586 Words4 Pages

After Lenneberg's (1967) advanced analyses and interpretation of critical period in regards to first language acquisition, many researchers began to relate and study age issue in second language acquisition. In this area of study, Johnson and Newport (1989) is among the most prominent and leading studies which tries to seek evidence to test the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) in second language (L2) acquisition. This study aims to find identifying answers to the question of age-related effects on the proficiency for languages learned prior the puberty.

In their study, Johnson and Newport investigated two hypotheses:

1. The Exercise Hypothesis

2. The Maturational State Hypothesis

First version of their hypothesis is about human beings remarkable ability in language acquisition in their early life. In this hypothesis they predict that people's ability to acquire languages will be fade or decrease with maturity if they do not practice in early life. Whereas, they will have an active ability to acquire languages if they practice in their early life. The second version of their hypothesis is that human beings will completely or partially lose their available ability to acquire languages as time went by with maturity.

Johnson and Newport used 46 native Chinese or Korean second language learners of English who were students and faculty members at an American university. The subjects were presented together because of their native languages dissimilarity to English and lack of difference in the results of two groups. The subjects' ages differentiate between 3 and 39, when they first arrived in the US and they had lived in the target language culture for between the age of 3 and 26. According to their age of arrival in the US, t...

... middle of paper ...

...2, 499-534

Johnson, J. S. (1992). Critical period effects in second language acquisition: The effect of written versus auditory materials on the assessment of grammatical competence. Language Learning, 42, 217-248.

Johnson, J.S. & Newport, E.L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language

learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology 21, 60-99.

Johnson, J. S., & Newport, E. L. (1991). Critical period effects on universal properties of

language: the status of Subjacency in the acquisition of a second language. Cognition, 39, 215- 258. Lenneberg, E. (1967). Biological Foundations of Language. New York: John

Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Shim, R. (1993). Sensitive periods for second language acquisition: A reaction-time study of Korean-English bilinguals. Ideal, 6, 43-64

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