English Language Teaching in its Social Context

38 PATSY M. LIGHTBOWN AND NINA SPADA2o I2+ 3 3+ 4 4+ 5Pre-puberty learnersPost-puberty learnersFigure 2.1 Bar charts showing the language levels of prc- and post-puberty lcarncrs of EnglishSource: Patkowski I980Patkowski’s first question, ‘Will there be a difference between learners who began tolearn English before pubcrty and those who began learning English later?’, was answercd witha very resounding ‘yes’. When hc examined the other factors which might be thought toaffect success in second language acquisition, the picture was much less clear. There was,naturally, some relationship between these other factors and learning success. However, itoften turned out that age was so closely related to the other factors that it was not reallypossible to separate them completely. For example, length of residence in the United Statessometimes seemed to be a fairly good predictor. However, while it was truc that a personwho had lived in the country for 15 years might speak better than one who had been therefor only 10 years, it was often the case that the onc with longer residence had also arrivedat an earlier age. However, a person who had arrived in the United States at the age of 18and had lived there for 20 years did not score significantly better than someone who hadarrived at the age of 18 but had only lived there for 10 years. Similarly, amount of instruction,when separated from age, did not predict success to the extent that age of immigration did.Thus, Patkowski found that age of acquisition i.; a very important factor in setting limitson the development of native-like mastery of a second language and that this limitation doesnot apply only to acccnt.These results gave added support to the Critical Period Hypothesisfor second language acquisition.Experience and research have shown that native-like mastcry of thc spoken language isdifficult to attain by older learners. Surprisingly, even the ability to distinguish between