International Journal of Linguistics & Communication

A Review of the Critical Period Hypothesis in Second Language Acquisition
Qiao’er Li

Abstract
The issue about the Critical Period Hypothesis in the first and second language acquisition has been on dispute since the notion of the critical period in biology was proposed. In this paper, We make a review of the studies supporting and opposing the existence of a critical period in second language acquisition from the perspectives of psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics and neurolinguistics in different language aspects. We concluded that no consensus on this controversial issue was found, because of the different research methods, materials, participants in different studies and the discrepant measurement standards and understanding of scholars about the critical period in language acquisition. We also suggested significant implications of the research findings for second language teaching, and made some recommendations for the future research on age effect upon second language acquisition in China.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/ijlc.v6n1a5