Relatore Chiar mo Prof. Graziano Serragiotto Correlatore

2. 
Factors Affecting the Learning of Pronunciation 
As Wong points out, 
“the teaching of pronunciation is not exclusively a linguistic matter” 
(Wong, 1987: 17)
. Therefore, teachers need to take into account factors (such as the learner’s age, the 
exposure to the target language, aptitude, identity, personality, attitude, motivation and the native 
language) which can affect significantly the learning of pronunciation. The following sections 
introduce some of these factors and explain how they might affect the learning of pronunciation. 
2.1. Age 
One important factor to take into account is the age of the learner, a much researched and 
controversial topic. In 1966 Lenneberg suggested that after about the age of 12 years, the ‘‘ability for 
self-organization and adjustment 
to the physiological demands of verbal behaviour quickly declines’’ 
(Lenneberg, 1966: 239
–240). In 1967 he hypothesises that there is a “critical period” for learning a 
second language (Critical Period Hypothesis), 
“between age 2 and puberty”, observing that 
“automatic acquisition from mere exposure to a given language seems to disappear after this age” and 
“foreign accents [in an L2] cannot be overcome easily after puberty” (Lenneberg, 1967: 176). 
However, in 1988 Scovel discussed that the Critical Period Hypothesis is only valid when considering 
the acquisition of the pronunciation of a second language (Scovel, 1988). According to the scholar, 
this hypothesis is not applicable to other aspects of the language, because pronunciation is “the only 
aspect of language performance that has a neuromuscular basis”, requires “neuromotor involvement”, 
and has a “physical reality” (Scovel, 1988: 101). He predicted that learners who start to learn a second 
language later than around age 12 will never be able “to pass themselves off as native speakers” and 
will “end up easily identified as non-native speakers of that language (Scovel, 1988: 185). In fact, it 
is generally accepted that learners who learn an L2 after the end of the critical period have 
‘‘neurological or motor skill constraints’’ that render native-like speech production ‘‘highly unlikely 
or impossible’’ (Moyer, 1999: 82). Nevertheless, it should be pointed out, that Scovel (1988) claimed 
that there may be some exceptions concerning a very limited number of foreign language late learners, 
who may not have these kind of limitations (Scovel, 1988: 181). Even though, as Kenworthy states, 
“we do not yet have evidence for a simple and straightforward link between age and the ability to 
pronounce a new language” (Kenworthy, 1990: 6), several studies (Asher and Garcia 1969; Oyama 
1976; Patkowski 1990; Thompson 1991) have demonstrated that, when it comes to acquiring 
pronunciation, children have a tendency to perform much better than adults. On the other hand, these 
studies have not shown such significantly different results between children and adults when taking 

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into account the acquisition of other linguistic elements such as syntax, morphology, etc. In 
conclusion, it has to be noted that, despite these results, the age factor remains a quite controversial 
topic since not all researchers agree with these assumptions.