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- Title
ADULT L2 LEARNERS' ACCESS TO UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLESAND ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE SPECIFIC PROPERTIES: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS.
- Authors
Ishaq, Qudsia; Khalique, Shahida; Bukhari, Nadeem Haider
- Abstract
Acquisition of second or target language is a long standing debate among the linguists since early 19s and a large body of research has been conducted to resolve the issue, but unfortunatelyno consensus has been reached yet. In the realm of language learning, many have hypothesised that there exist a critical period that constrains the adult learners native like proficiency. In opposition to this position, several researches have postulated that native like competence can be attained even after the onset of the puberty. The purpose of this paper is to investigatewhether growing age effects L2 learners'acquisition of language specific rules and restricts their access to UG principles or these language learning abilities remain unscathed throughout life. To address these issues, the study was conducted with 60 learners of English who were divided into three groups on the basis of their age and education level. The participants of the first group were the students of SSC level, while group two was comprised of the students of B.A and group three encompassed M.A level. The average ages of these groups were 14, 20 and 25 respectively. Two tasks;namely, the elicitation task, and Grammaticality Judgement Task were used to achieve the desired goals. The categorical performance of the groups revealed that G1 with the average age of 14 are comparatively better E2 learners than G2 and G3. In general the findings of the study led the researcher to conclude that E2 learners have partial access to UG principles with growing age.
- Subjects
LANGUAGE acquisition; QUANTITATIVE chemical analysis; QUANTITATIVE research; RESEARCH management; RESEARCH implementation
- Publication
Kashmir Journal of Language Research, 2013, Vol 16, Issue 1, p61
- ISSN
1028-6640
- Publication type
Article