Critical Period Effects in Second Language Acquisition: The Effect of Written versus Auditory Materials on the Assessment of Grammatical Competence*

Abstract

Current research has supported the existence of a critical period for the acquisition of the grammar of a second language. In one study, native speakers of Chinese and Korean, who had arrived in the U.S. at varying ages, were tested on their knowledge of English grammar using an auditory grammaticality judgment task (Johnson & Newport, 1989). Subjects were tested only after having lived in the U.S. for many years as students or academicians. The present study asks whether the poorer performance exhibited by the older arrivals was due to their difficulty with English grammar or merely due to extragrammatical properties associated with an auditory task. The same subjects who participated in the earlier study were tested a year later using an untimed written version of the same test. A strong negative correlation was still observed between age of arrival and performance on the written test: r=‐.54 for subjects of all ages of arrival; r=‐.73 for subjects who arrived to the U.S. before adulthood. Performance was higher on the written version than on the auditory version, but only for the older arrivals. The possibility that earlier formal classroom training boosted the adult arrivals’ performance on the written test is discussed.

Auditory-Visual Matching and Language-Based Learning Disorders: Two Studies of Specific Language Impairment and Developmental Dyslexia

“…The results for the children diagnosed with SLI support the view of auditory deficits (Tallal, 2000). The Assessment Inventory showed no significant differences between the four categories, which supports the view of previous studies (Bishop, 1990;Johnson, 1992) that children with SLI have problems with auditory, visual, tactile, and phonetic perception, as well as with motor tasks. Difficulties in auditory discrimination in the category of sensory development, as well as difficulties in auditory memory and in linguistic skills such as semantics and dysnomia in the category of cognitive development, were expected based on common theories about core deficits in SLI (Tallal, 2000).…”

Judgments of information structure in L2 French: Nativelike performance and the Critical Period Hypothesis

“…In addition to DeKeyser's (2000) study, there is a large body of work presenting evidence in favor of the Critical Period Hypothesis for second language acquisition; e.g., Johnson (1992), Johnson & Newport (1991), among others.…”

Acquisition of Modern Standard Arabic by Speakers of Different Arabic Colloquial Varieties: Resumption in Object Relative Clauses *1

“…Also, when recruiting the participants of the study, the criterion of requiring minimum 5 years of exposure to MSA was adopted to ensure testing the end-state grammar. This criterion is common in the field and has been adopted by many researchers (e.g., Patkowski, 1980;Johnson & Newport, 1989;Johnson, 1992;Shim, 1993). Table 1 provides detailed information about the groups of participants and from where they were recruited.…”