Білім беру бағдарламасына арналған торм 5206 тілдерді оқытудағы психологиялық МӘселелер пәні бойынша лекция тезистерінің жинағы

One of the most compelling arguments for an accent-related critical period came from Thomas Scovel's (1988) fascinating multidisciplinary review of the evidence that has been amassed. Scovel cited evidence for a sociobiological critical period in various species of mammals and birds. Scovel's evidence pointed toward the development of a socially bonding accent at puberty, enabling species (a) to form an identity with their own community as they anticipate roles of parenting and leadership, and (b) to attract mates of "their own kind" in an instinctive drive to maintain their own species.

If the stabilization of an accepted, authentic accent is biologically pre­programmed for baboons and birds, why not for human beings? The socio-biological evidence that Scovel cited persuades us to conclude that native accents, and therefore "foreign" accents after puberty, may be a genetic left­over that, in our widespread human practice of mating across dialectal, lin­guistic, and racial barriers, is no longer necessary for the preservation of the human species. "In other words," explained Scovel (1988: 80), "an accent emerging after puberty is the price we pay for our preordained ability to be articulate apes."

Following another line of research, Walsh and Diller (1981 concluded that different aspects of a second language are learned optimally at different ages:

This conclusion lends support for a neurologically based critical period, but principally for the acquisition of an authentic (nativelike) accent, and not very strongly for the acquisition of communicative fluency and other "higher-order" processes. We return to the latter issue in the next section.

Yet another branch of neurolinguistic research focused on the role of the right hemisphere in the acquisition of a second language. Obler (1981) noted that in second language learning, there is significant right hemi­sphere participation and that "this participation is particularly active during the early stages of learning the second language." But this "participation" to some extent consists of what we will later define as "strategies" of acquisition. Obler cited the strategy of guessing at meanings, and of using formulaic utterances, as examples of right hemisphere activity. Others also found support for right hemisphere involvement in the form of complex language processing as opposed to early language acquisition.

Genesee (1982) concluded that "there may be greater right hemi­sphere involvement in language processing in bilinguals who acquire their second language late relative to their first language and in bilinguals who learn it in informal contexts." While this conclusion may appear to contra­dict Obler's statement above, it does not. Obler found support for more right hemisphere activity during the early stages of second language acqui­sition, but her conclusions were drawn from a study of seventh-, ninth-, and eleventh-grade subjects—all postpubescent. Such studies seem to suggest that second language learners, particularly adult learners, might benefit from more encouragement of right-brain activity in the classroom context. But, as Scovel (1982) noted, that sort of conclusion needs to be cautious, since the research provides a good deal of conflicting evidence, some of which has been grossly misinterpreted in "an unhappy marriage of single-minded neuropsychologists and double-minded educationalists. . . . Brain research ... will not provide a quick fix to our teaching problems."