Abstract Since the reform and opening up, with the deepening of Chinese international exchanges, strengthening of international cooperation, more and more people have realized the importance of learning English。 Domestic English learning trend reaches an unprecedented active situation。 Primary schools, even kindergartens have continued to broaden teaching scale，presenting a younger age tide。 Their theoretical basis is "Learning a foreign language should be as early as possible。" Whether the sooner the better? Which age is best? Whether there is a critical period or not? So far, scholars are still under intense discussion on Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) Lenneberg proposed, which has not yet been finalized。 It's a paper based on this theory that involves pupils in the form of sample surveys and analyses the relationship between the initial age of learning English and their integrative performance。 What’s more, some explicit suggestions on English education are given at the end of the paper。74470

Keywords: Second Language Acquisition；Critical Period Hypothesis; English education   

摘要改革开放以来，随着我国国际交往深化，国际合作加强，越来越多的人意识到英语学习的重要性，国内的英语学习空前活跃，小学乃至幼儿园教学规模不断扩大，呈现低龄化趋势。其理论依据就是“学习外语越早越好”。然而是否真的越早越好？哪一个年龄段学习最好？外语学习是否存在关键期？国内外学者至今为止仍在就Lenneberg提出的关键期假说进行激烈探讨，未有定论。本文以关键期假说为理论基础，对部分城镇小学生采取抽样调查形式，分析其英语初始学习年龄与综合能力间关系,并在文末对于城镇小学英语教育提出相关建议。

毕业论文关键词：二语习得；关键期假说；英语教育

Contents

1。 Introduction1

2。 Literature Review2

3。 Theoretical Introduction of CPH。。。。。。。6

4。 Research Design 。。。。。7

4。1 Research questions7

4。2 Objects of Investigation 7

4。3 Research methods8

4。4 Research results9

4。5 Research analysis 11

5。 Conclusion12

Works Cited。。。15

Appendix。17 

1。 Introduction 

Ever since human being entered into modern times, more and more people have come into realize the significance of mastering a foreign language。 With respect to China, it seems inevitable that a considerable number of Chinese people have to establish interpersonal communication with foreigners。 English education has been growing as a prosperous industry which brought about the emergence of uncountable nationwide afterschool English educational institutions as the times require, promoting “The sooner, the better” as their selling slogan to attract consumers, claiming their theoretical basis is Critical Period Hypothesis。 Nevertheless, whether the symbolic slogan is scientific or there is a critical period still needs further enquiry thoroughly。 Then, what’s the definition of Critical Period Hypothesis? 

In the first place, for better comprehension, we need to know SLA。 Second Language Acquisition (also shorten as SLA) is a brand new scope that linguists pioneered from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, which refers to any other language study after Mother Tongue Acquisition。 Its concept contains two layers of meaning。 On the one hand, SLA is a natural process rather than a process from formal instruction。 On the other hand, so long as it is language acquisition except for mother tongue, it can be named SLA, not necessarily foreign language acquisition。