A Critical Look at the Available Literature on the Best Time to Start a Foreign Language in Iranian Pupils

Scholars believe that many factors can affect foreign language learning, that among them age has been always regarded as a key factor. The starting age to learning a foreign language is a controversial topic about which different ideas have been proposed by various beneficiaries and scholars. Some scholars refer to the critical period hypothesis for L۱ acquisition and believe that before puberty is the best time to start learning foreign language. From another point of view, scholars reject the appropriateness of this claim in second language learning regarding the evidence that adult learners, in some aspect of language, are said to acquire a foreign language more easily. These researchers claim that concepts such as multiple critical period and the presence of motivation based on which any person can start learning foreign language at any age can be good examples. In final section of this paper, comment from ۲۵ participants were shown regarding the best time to start learning a foreign language. The findings of the current paper can have considerable notions for the field of ELT.

Keywords:

critical period hypothesis , multiple critical period , motivation , foreign language learning