The Impact of Critical Age Issues on Reading Skills of Female Gifted Students in Tehran

Abstract

Teaching foreign languages to young learners is gaining popularity all over the world and as a result the age for learning a second/foreign language is being reduced in many countries. However, the consequence of early language teaching hasn’t been entirely investigated and the question related to why we are teaching English at younger ages is not answered sufficiently. The SLA research has investigated the issue of age as a result of L1 acquisition research. The studies related to age and the ‘Critical Period Hypothesis’ (CPH) were mostly conducted in the second language environments and neglected the foreign language contexts. Moreover, the results of such studies, where adults versus children; and younger children versus older children are compared, have conflicting findings. In this research, we are debating over 2 different ages close to puberty age and puberty age on learning reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is one of the areas of difficulty especially at the beginning stages for children. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between critical period hypothesis and reading skills of female gifted students in Tehran. Intellectual giftedness is an intellectual ability significantly higher than average. It is a characteristic of children, variously defined, that motivates differences in school programming. It is thought to persist as a trait into adult life, with various consequences studied in longitudinal studies of giftedness over the last century. There is no generally agreed definition of giftedness for either children or adults, but most school placement decisions and most longitudinal studies over the course of individual lives have been based on IQ in the top 2 percent of the population, that is above IQ 130, the range of giftedness is between 130 to 144 based on Coren test. This study showed that there was a significant relationship between age and reading comprehension performance of the gifted female students.