Language and Puberty

Many people argue that mastering second language for adult will be more difficult than the children. Some people even have statement that it is very impossible for adult to master second language, particularly mastering English. To answer this case, we have to understand the correlation between language and age or puberty. According to the theory of attaining second language, there are two ways of mastering second language. The first, human gets second language through acquisition process. The second point is that human gains the second language from learning process. The language acquisition process usually happens for children who are in 2-10 years old, or unpuberty children. Most of them acquire language in unconscious process. The children on the age are very good in acquiring the sound of the second language. They are able to utter appropriate accent and prononciation. Children are able to imitate and utter fluent English sound since their brain capacity is still flexible. Thus, it is not surprisingly that there is a child who speaks in English as second language, but he is able to utter it like native speaker. He is able to speak like a native speaker since he acquires English before he is 10 years language. He speaks the language unconsciously so that never feel afraid to make mistake in producing the language.  

People who have been puberty, on the other hand, actually are still able to gain the second language.  People who are on this age mostly gain the language through learning process so we call them English learners. They gain the language consciously in the classroom process. Most of them are enthusiastic learn the second language from the aspect of syntaxis or the structure of the language. Since they try to master the language consciously, they tend to be reluctant to use the language for communication because they are anxious to make a mistake in prononciation or accent. The puberty English learners are lack in uttering the correct English accent and prononciation. According to some research, the puberty English learners have less brain flexibility that cause them get difficulty to utter the English sound. Therefore, children who have not been puberty will have better competence in producing English sound than adult learners. Moreover, it is not true that adult people are not able to master the second language, particularly English.  They only face big difficulty to utter the language like native speaker.