Introduction: Ultimate attainment and the critical period hypothesis for second language acquisition

Second Language Acquisition and Ultimate Attainment

In second language acquisition (L2A) research, ultimate attainment refers to the outcome or end point of acquisition, and is used interchangeably with the terms final state, end state, and asymptote. "Ultimate" is not to be thought of as synonymous with "nativelike," although nativelikeness is one of the observed outcomes of L2A. Most L2A studies have focused on the initial state, stages in L2 ...

Ultimate Attainment in Second Language Acquisition

Assess the Critical Period Hypothesis in Second Language Acquisition

The ultimate attainment level of Second Language Acquisition (L2A) contrasts sharply with that of First Language Acquisition (L1A) (Birdsong, 1999, p.1). That is: various success versus universal success (Gleitman & Newport, 1995, p.1). This significant difference between L1A and L2A is explained by the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH). The CPH states that for language acquisition, either first...

Critical evidence: a test of the critical-period hypothesis for second-language acquisition.

The critical-period hypothesis for second-language acquisition was tested on data from the 1990 U.S. Census using responses from 2.3 million immigrants with Spanish or Chinese language backgrounds. The analyses tested a key prediction of the hypothesis, namely, that the line regressing second-language attainment on age of immigration would be markedly different on either side of the critical-ag...

The Critical Period Hypothesis for Second Language Acquisition: Tailoring the Coat of Many Colors

The present contribution represents an extension of David Singleton’s (2005) IRAL chapter, ‘‘The Critical Period Hypothesis: A coat of many colours’’. I suggest that the CPH in its application to L2 acquisition could benefit from methodological and theoretical tailoring with respect to: the shape of the function that relates age of acquisition to proficiency, the use of nativelikeness for falsi...