Scientific literature has been littered with studies over the past 40 years documenting the superior language

skills of girls, but thebiological reason why has remained a mystery until now. Researchers report in the journalNeuropsychologia that the answer lies in the way words are processed: irls completing a linguistic abilities task showed greater activity in brain areas implicated specifically in language encoding, which decipher information abstractly. !oys, on the other hand, showed a lot of activity in regions tied to visual and auditory functions, depending on the way the words were presented during the e"ercise. #he finding suggests that although linguistic information goes directly to the seat of language processing in the female brain, males use sensory machinery to do a great deal of the work in untangling the data. $n a classroom setting, it implies that boys need to be taught language both visually %with a te"tbook& and orally %through a lecture& to get a full grasp of the subject, whereas a girl may be able to pick up the concepts by either method. #he team was able to pinpoint the differences between the se"es by monitoring brain activity in a group of children %'( boys and '( girls, ranging in age from nine to ()& using functional magnetic resonance imaging %f*R$& while the kids tackled language tasks. $n the e"ercises, two words were either flashed in front of, or spoken to them+ they had to determine whether the pair was spelled similarly %omitting the first consonant, as in ,pine, and ,line,& and whether the words rhymed, such as ,gate, and ,hate, or ,pint, and ,mint., $n some cases, the words fit neither criterion: ,ja--, and ,list, being an e"ample. Study co.author /oug !urman, a research associate in 0orthwestern 1niversity2s communication sciences and disorders department, says the team saw greater activity in the so.called language areas of the girls2 brains than in those of the boys. #he areas included the superior temporal gyrus %implicated in decoding heard words&, inferior frontal gyrus %speech processing&, and the fusiform gyrus, which helps spell and determine the meaning of words. 3ctivation of the latter two structures, in particular, seemed to correlate with the girls2 greater language accuracy. ,4or girls, it didn2t matter if they heard the word or read the word,, !urman says. ,$t does suggest that girls are learning 5language attributes6 in a more abstract form, and that2s the ideal objective when we2re teaching things., !urman says that his team now plans to research whether girls2 edge decreases with age, noting that some previous research suggests that the male sensory ,bottleneck, may disappear as boys develop into adults. What is the best age to start a second language? $n a previous article $ discussed the myth that young children are the best second language learners. $n fact, studies have shown that adolescents and adults are in many ways better at learning a new language than children, e"cept in the area of pronunciation. #his is probably because they are already literate in their first language and can use some of their knowledge about language and language learning when learning the second language. 7owever, this doesn2t answer the important 8uestion: 9hat2s the best age to learn a new language: #his 8uestion, like most about language learning, cannot be answered so simply. $t depends on the situation.

4or e"ample, a child who is born to an 3merican father and erman mother living in the 1S3 can start to learn both erman and ;nglish from the moment he is born. #his is probably the most favourable situation for anyone who wishes to speak two languages fluently as an adult. 3 child of school age who emigrates to the 1S3 has no choice, and must start to learn the new language, ;nglish, as soon as she arrives. /epending on the age of the child, it can take up several years for her to reach the level of a native ;nglish speaker. $t is important in this time that she continues her first language development. 3nd it is e8ually important that she, her parents and her teachers do not have unrealistic e"pectations about how easy learning will be and how 8uickly it will happen. #he two situations described above contrast with situations where there is more choice over whether and when the second language is introduced. ;ither the choice is made by the education authorities in the area where the child lives, or parents can decide on an individual basis whether to enrol their child in a foreign language learning program. $t is this last situation that $ wish to discuss a little further. Some specialists in language ac8uisition claim that the sooner a child starts to learn a second language the better. $t certainly seems to make sense that the earlier you start, the longer you will have to learn, and the more progress you will make compared with someone who started later. 7owever, there is evidence that this is not the case, particularly if the second language comes to take the place of the first language, which has never been allowed to develop properly. <ne researcher= talks of the dangers of double semi-lingualism for early learners of a second language+ i.e. the child does not develop full proficiency in either of the two languages. 3nd as mentioned above, it has been found that older learners of a language are more efficient learners, so they may need less time to reach the same level of proficiency as younger learners. 3lso, of course, if more time is spent learning a second language during the school day, then some other subject must be cut or reduced to make way for it. #his may not be desirable. So what is the best age for a person to start learning a foreign language in situations where there is a choice, and where it is not critical that a native. speaker.like pronunciation is ac8uired: #he answer, according to current research, is early adolescence, so about ((.('. 3nd the more motivated the child is to learn the new language, the more successful he will be> References

Scovel T, 1999 The younger the better myth and bilingual education In: Gonzalez, R (ed.) Language Ideologies: Critical Perspectives Urbana, IL: NCTE