A Study On The Relationship Between Age-onset Of English Learning And English Achievements

Based on studies, neuropsychologist Penfield and Roberts (1959) claim that the capability of children's language acquisition is related to the development of the brain. They point out that the starting age of language learning should be between 4-10 years of age because of brain plasticity during this period. With the arrival of puberty, this plasticity begins to disappear. Psychological linguist Lenneberg (1967) accepted and developed this viewpoint and proposed a Critical Period Hypothesis. This hypothesis was initially proposed for first language acquisition. Linguists later introduced it into second language acquisition (including foreign language learning). Some scholars find that children starting second language earlier can get higher proficiency of that language than adults starting later; therefore, Critical Period Hypothesis exists in second language acquisition, and starting age is important in second language learning. However, some other scholars report that learners who began learning a second language at very early age did not do better in the long run than those who began in early adolescence. The present study attempts to explore if there is a relationship between age-onset of English learning and English achievements, and to investigate whether it is true that the earlier a learner begins learning a second language, the greater achievements he or she makes in second language learning.To investigate whether age-onset has impact on English achievements, the author of the thesis carried out a study about relationship between age-onset of English learning and English achievements among non-English major students who were enrolled in Liaoning Normal University in 2007. According to their different starting age of English learning, the subjects were divided into three groups. English tests, including grammar tests and reading comprehension test, were given to them and the results of the tests were analyzed.The overall data analysis shows that the differences among the three groups are not very big, and the overall analysis of the data does not show that any one group of the three groups showed a very clear and absolute advantage over the other two groups. The thesis comes to a conclusion that learners who begin learning English very early do not necessarily make better achievements than the learners who begin learning English a few years later, so the popular point of view,"the earlier the better", in foreign language learning is questionable.