Page 24 - ELG1806 June Issue 458

COMMENT .

Step into

the linguistic

boxing

ring

Don’t worry whether there’s a critical period for
language learning, just do whatever works to
achieve your goal, says Melanie Butler

tephen Pinker has well and truly So, what’s the big deal? sociolinguists concerned how language is
thrown the MIT cat among the The MIT research upsets a lot of linguists used.
proverbial ELT pigeons. The They don’t believe in the critical age
Scelebrity psycholinguist is among In the red corner we hypothesis at all. The only way to acquire
the authors of a new paper based on a have the sociolinguists a language, they believe, is implicitly –
grammar quiz taken by over half a million acquiring it through input rather than
learners on Facebook. concerned how language is ‘lessons’. And they believe virtually any
It claims to show that, when it comes to human being can do it – no matter their
natural acquisition of native-level syntax used. In the blue corner age.
even native-speakers don’t achieve it until are the psycholinguists and In the blue corner are the psycholinguists
they are 30. And the rate of acquisition and the neuroscientists arguing about how
slows dramatically once they hit 18. the neuroscientists it is processed. Both of them are obsessed by
The critical age hypothesis – that there is arguing about how it is native-speaker competence.
an age ‘window’ for acquiring language – is In the middle of this linguistic boxing
alive and well and living in Boston. The processed ring are the world’s language teachers
row about it on the internet has gone viral. worrying how the hell they can turn their
Our Twitter feed caught fire, with at least who have long believed that the critical learners into native speakers of English.
two professors and a senior World Bank period was shorter, ending at around eight But why even try?
educationalist copying the Gazette in on years old. There are, say the sociolinguists,
their responses. In the red corner we have the documented cases of adults who do not
24 May 2018

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