“A number of studies have supported the popular notion that children enjoy an advantage over adults in learning the pronunciation of a second language (Asher & Garcia, 1969; Scovel, 1969; Siegler, Krashen, & Ladefoged, 1975). Such studies, however, fail to prove that it is impossible for adults to acquire nativelike pronunciation, and several researchers have presented strong evidence to the contrary (Neufeld, 1980; Tarone, 1978). A widely cited study by Snow and Hoefnagel-Hohle (1977) found that adults were actually superior to children in the areas of pronunciation and sound discrimination, at least in the first stages of learning, and, although children excelled in later stages, the only subject in the study identified as acquiring nativelike pronunciation was the teenager. Flege (1987), in a review of the literature, notes that the results of many empirical studies are 'inconsistent with the expectations generated by the critical period hypothesis' (p. 174) and points out that the hypothesis itself is difficult to test, as it is hard to isolate speech learning from other factors associated with age." JONES, Rodney. Beyond 'Listen and Repeat': Pronunciation Teaching Materials and Theories of Second Language Acquisition. In: RICHARDS, J. C. & RENANDYA, W. A. Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. p.179.
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