Correlations between Age of Onset and English Phonetic and Phonological Accuracy in an EFL Context

Correlations between Age of Onset and English Phonetic and Phonological Accuracy in an EFL Context

There are some explanations for age difference in L2 acquisition and L2 learning. According to the neuro-biological explanations which support the critical period hypothesis (CPH), L2 learners with different age of onset show different degrees of phonetic and phonological accuracy. As an effort to testify these neuro-biological explanations an experiment was conducted with Korean learners of English in order to investigate the age effect on the Korean learners’ phonetic and phonological accuracy of English in an EFL context. The purposes of the study were to investigate such age-related factors as age of onset (AO) and length of exposure (LOE). The subjects are 75 elementary, middle, and high school students ranging from age of 9 to 18. A list of words, sentences, a passage, and an interview were used as a means to measure their phonetic and phonological accuracy. Their pronunciation was measured on a 7-point Likert scale. For the analyses of the data, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and correlations were conducted and followed by regressions. The results of this study were as follows: AO in an EFL context in Korea has moderate correlations with the phonetic and phonological accuracy, whereas LOE has very low correlations with Korean learners’ achievements in their phonetic and phonological accuracy of English. These results appeared to support the CPH which was based on the neuro- biological explanations.