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

Some adults have been known to acquire an authentic accent in a second language after the age of puberty, but such individuals are few and far between. Anthropologist Jane Hill (1970) provided an intriguing response to Scovel's (1969) study by citing anthropological research on non-Western societies that yielded evidence that adults can, in the normal course of their lives, acquire second languages perfectly. One unique instance of second language acquisition in adulthood was reported by Sorenson (1967), who studied the Tukano culture of South America. At least two dozen languages were spoken among these communities, and each tribal group, identified by the language it speaks, is an exogamous unit; that is, people must marry outside their group, and hence almost always marry someone who speaks another language. Sorenson reported that during adolescence, individuals actively and almost suddenly began to speak two or three other languages to which they had been exposed at some point. Moreover, "in adulthood [a person] may acquire more languages; as he approaches old age, field obser­vation indicates, he will go on to perfect his knowledge of all the languages at his disposal" (Sorenson 1967: 678). In conclusion, Hill suggested that -

Hill's challenge was taken up in subsequent decades. Flege (1987) and Morris and Gerstman (1986), for example, cited motivation, affective vari­ables, social factors, and the quality of input as important in explaining the apparent advantage of the child. However, both Long (1990b) and Patkowski (1990) disputed such conclusions and sided with Scovel in their relatively strong interpretation of an age-related critical period for first and second language acquisition.

Implicit in the comments of the preceding section is the assumption that the emergence of what we commonly call "foreign accent" is of some importance in our arguments about age and acquisition. We can appreciate the fact that given the existence of several hundred muscles (throat, larynx, mouth, lips, tongue, and others) that are used in the articulation of human speech, a tremendous degree of muscular control is required to achieve the fluency of a native speaker of a language. At birth the speech muscles are developed only to the extent that the larynx can control sustained cries. These speech muscles gradually develop, and control of some complex sounds in certain languages (in English the r and / are typical) is sometimes not achieved until after age five, although complete phonemic control is present in virtually all children before puberty.

Research on the acquisition of authentic control of the phonology of a foreign language supports the notion of a critical period. Most of the evi­dence indicates that persons beyond the age of puberty do not acquire what has come to be called authentic (native-speaker) pronunciation of the second language. Possible causes of such an age-based factor have already been discussed: neuromuscular plasticity, cerebral development, sociobiological programs, and the environment of sociocultural influences.

It is tempting immediately to cite exceptions to the rule ("My Aunt Mary learned French at twenty-five, and everyone in France said she sounded just like a native"). These exceptions, however, appear to be (a) isolated instances or (b) only anecdotally supported. True, there are special people who possess somewhere within their competence the ability to override neurobiological critical period effects and to achieve a virtually perfect nativelike pronunciation of a foreign language. But in terms of sta­tistical probability, it is clear that the chances of any one individual commencing a second language after puberty and achieving a scientifically verifiable authentic native accent are infinitesimal.

So, where do we go from here? First, some sample studies, spanning two decades, will serve as examples of the kind of research on adult phono­logical acquisition that appears to contradict Scovel's "strong" CPH.

Gerald Neufeld undertook a set of studies to deter­mine to what extent adults could approximate native-speaker accents in a second language never before encountered. In his earliest experiment, twenty adult native English speakers were taught to imitate ten utterances, each from one to sixteen syllables in length, in Japanese and in Chinese. Native-speaking Japanese and Chinese judges listened to the taped imita­tions. The results indicated that eleven of the Japanese and nine of the Chinese imitations were judged to have been produced by "native speakers." While Neufeld recognized the limitations of his own studies, he suggested that "older students have neither lost their sensitivity to subtle differences in sounds, rhythm, and pitch nor the ability to reproduce these sounds and contours" . Nevertheless, Scovel and Long later pointed out glaring experimental flaws in Neufeld's experiments, stemming from the methodology used to judge "native speaker" and from the information initially given to the judges.

In more recent years, Moyer and Bongaerts, Planken, and Schils have also challenged the strong version of the CPH. Moyer's study with native English-speaking graduate students of German upheld the strong CPH: subjects' performance was not judged to be comparable to native speakers of German. The Bongaerts et al. study reported on a group of adult Dutch speakers of English, all late learners, who recorded a mono­logue, a reading of a short text, and readings of isolated sentences and iso­lated words. Some of the non-native performances, for some of the trials, were judged to have come from native speakers. However, in a later review of this study, Scovel carefully noted that it was also the case that many native speakers of English in their study were judged to be nonnative! The earlier Neufeld experiments and these more recent studies have thus essentially left the strong CPH unchallenged.

Upon reviewing the research on age and accent acquisition, as Scovel did, we are left with powerful evidence of a critical period for accent, but for accent only! It is important to remember in all these con­siderations that pronunciation of a language is not by any means the sole criterion for acquisition, nor is it really the most important one .We all know people who have less than perfect pronunciation but who also have mag­nificent and fluent control of a second language, control that can even exceed that of many native speakers. I like to call this the "Henry Kissinger effect" in honor of the former U.S. Secretary of State whose German accent is so noticeable yet who is clearly more eloquent than the large majority of native speakers of American English. The acquisition of the communicative and functional purposes of language is, in most circumstances, far more important than a perfect native accent. Scovel captured the spirit of this way of looking at second language acquisition:

For me, the acquisition of a new language will remain a phenom­enon of natural fascination and mystery, not simply because it is a special skill of such incredible complexity that it remains one of the greatest achievements of the human mind, but because it also is a testimony of how much we can accomplish within the limi­tations that nature has placed upon us.

Perhaps, in our everyday encounters with second language users, we are too quick to criticize the "failure" of adult second language learners by nitpicking at minor pronunciation points or nonintrusive grammatical errors. Cook (1995: 55) warned against "using native accent as the yard­stick" in our penchant for holding up monolingualism as the standard. And so, maybe instead, we can turn those perspectives into a more positive focus on the "multi-competence" of second language learners. Instead of being so perplexed and concerned about how bad people are at learning second languages, we should be fascinated with how much those same learners have accomplished.

Today researchers are continuing the quest for answers to child-adult differences by looking beyond simple phonological factors. Bongaerts et al. (1995) found results that suggested that certain learner characteristics and contexts may work together to override the disadvantages of a late start. Slavoff and Johnson found that younger children (ages seven to nine) did not have a particular advantage in rate of learning over older (ten-to twelve-year-old) children. Longitudinal studies such as Ioup et al.'s (1994) study of a highly nativelike adult learner of Egyptian Arabic are useful in their focus on the factors beyond phonology that might be rele­vant in helping us to be more successful in teaching second languages to adults. Studies on the effect of input, on lexical acquisition, on Universal Grammar, and on discourse acquisition are highly promising domains of research on age and acquisition.