Eric Lenneberg in 1967 proposed a critical period hypothesis which explained why children can pick up a new language more easily than adults. He theorized that the acquisition of language is a process determined by biological factors which limit the “critical period” of language learning from about two years old to the age of puberty. Lenneberg believed that once the brain becomes lateralized (when the two sides develop specialized functions), it lose

The greater cognitive development of older students plays a role in their language acquisition in another way also. Cummins (1979,1980, in Diaz-Rico and Weed 2002) distinguishes between the level of language acquisition required in an academic setting and that required for basic interpersonal communication. Cummins calls basic face-to-face communication “context embedded”, meaning that there are many other clues to tell the listener what is being said other than the language itself. This is different than the “context-reduced” language in an academic setting. Language in school becomes increasingly abstract with each grade level and a greater cognitive development would help a student to have greater success. Older students have that cognitive maturity which may give them more strategies for acquiring a new language.

As a science teacher, I was very interested to see if age had any effect on a student’s performance in the content areas. Collier (1987) completed an in-depth study on that very topic which had some interesting results. Collier used a sample of 1548 5 to 15 year-olds who were immigrants to the U.S. They all were at grade level when they entered the U.S. and had no prior exposure to English. All the sample students were from middle to upper class families in their home countries and had strong middle-class aspirations once they were in the U.S. The students were tested in forth, sixth, eighth, and eleventh grades on reading, language arts, science, social studies, and mathematics. Collier found that the students who were 8 to 11 years old on arrival to the U.S. were the first to reach native student levels of competency. It took these students four to five years to reach the 50th percentile on all the content tests. The 5 to 7 year old students needed five to eight years and the 12 to 15 year-olds needed six to eight years to reach the 50th percentile.

These results were very interesting to me because the age group that picked up English the fastest is the age group that feeds into the Jr. High. I was surprised to find out that it only took 4-5 years for these students to rea

Some topics in this essay:
Eric Lenneberg, , Diaz-Rico Weed, language acquisition, collier 1987, cognitive development, sample students, language easily, reach 50th percentile, awareness language, grade level, 50th percentile, reach 50th, students cognitive, sample students middle, conscious awareness language, students middle upper, critical period hypothesis,