Linguistic questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Linguistic questions - Essay Example However, many researchers suggest that when the issue involves non-native speakers, the matter of teaching Standard English (British or American) becomes controversial. With non-native speakers, it is not good to confuse them with phrases like â€Å"Did you take† or â€Å"Have you taken†, so a mix of both standards is commonly used among them. This mix will be called the international English which will be spoken by the non-native speakers. This makes English not a foreign language but an international language where no standard is being followed when the aim of the student is to learn it for instrumental purpose and not to belong to a specific culture. Hence, although it is important to make the students familiar with Standard English because numerous research and publications are written using this dialect, however it is also important not to bound the non-native speakers to learn a specific standard so that they have an open learning horizon in front of them. According to Lenneberg’s Critical Period Hypothesis, an individual’s capability to learn a second language and gain the exact native accent diminishes after a certain age or time period (Moore, 1999). A child after birth and before entering into puberty has marked performance in learning the second language as compared to post-pubescent children or adults. However, the observations related to Genie’s linguistic development, it becomes quite evident that language acquisition can still occur after the critical period has passed. When Genie, the 13.5 year old adolescent who was kept within the confinement of a room until her discovery, was exposed and put under supervision of Susan Curtiss, linguistic development was observed in Genie which proved Lenneberg’s Critical Period Hypothesis as wrong. When for the first eleven months Genie did not respond to the researchers, they thought that she would never be able to learn language because