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Do kids forget faster than adults? | ||
Tags: Forgetting a language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3538 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes  Studies: Serbian | Message 9 of 10 29 March 2015 at 5:20am | IP Logged |
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Yes, children lose the language as fast as they learn it. I went from speaking nothing but Serbian growing up
to being only able to speak English a year or two down the track, aside from a few words or phrases. A friend of mine lives in South Korea and her children spoke English and Korean, they went for a long trip to another country (less than a year) and spoke that language fluently and have come back home being unable to speak any Korean. They are now starting to forget their other language as they're recovering their English and Korean skills. So in my experience, native lang or not the price for being able to learn a language quickly is losing it quickly. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4446 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 10 of 10 30 March 2015 at 3:35am | IP Logged |
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When we talk about learning a new language, it is a different matter from maintaining a language we were
exposed to for a few years. For instance, 2 complete beginners (1 child and 1 adult) goes to Japanese classes together is different from the same 2 people who were brought up in a Japanese-speaking environment but relocated to an English-speaking country. If we talk about people who came from Japan or had exposure to the language as a mother-tongue, then the adult would have a bigger advantage because he/she had more years of exposure and possibly had achieved a higher academic level in Japanese. When it comes to memory, other factors influence your results such as stress, smoking, etc. The other factor is exposure to a language. I know 1 man who took Japanese classes as an adult for a few years but went nowhere. The problem isn't because of his memory but because he lived in a country with very few native speakers. The same with children. If they moved to France, I'm sure their French would improve to the level of being native speakers. I came from a Chines-speaking environment to an English-speaking one at an early age. While my older siblings are still fluent in Chinese, they have forgotten how to read the characters. I read Chinese news online regularly. Other members of the family came to Canada when they were much older. I can't say I have a better memory or that I can remember Chinese characters better because I was educated in Chinese up to Gr. 4 in primary school. Over 20 years ago when I left Hong Kong, I haven't yet master half of the characters I now read in news articles. Many of the Chinese characters I recognize, my older siblings would have been exposed to many years earlier. In my opinion, having regular exposure to a language is equally important as having a good memory. The debate whether kids or adults have better memory is not easy to prove / disprove 1 way or the other unless we have w controlled groups in different surroundings and monitor them 1 years from the day they started the test. In order to test whether a child is more forgetful than adults, one must put kids & adults in an environment completely free from any exposure from a language for at least 6 months and test which group maintains a higher level of fluency. When we were younger, we tend to be playful and socialize with people around us. When our peers in school talk about the latest American drama on TV, we wouldn't tell them that we watched a Chinese movie the night before. Many adults from another country tend to socialize with people from their countries they can relate to. How many of us as kids who live in an English-speaking country would go to the Chinese section of the library and take out a novel to read? Or pick up a Chinese newspaper to get news from Taiwan? The other day I went online and saw a news article from Hong Kong (on the front page) that the former president of Singapore "Lee Kuan Yew" died in hospital from pneumonia. I came across a similar article in a local report in Canada later but definitely not on the front page. How many kids would pick up local newspapers to follow the latest news? Edited by shk00design on 30 March 2015 at 3:59am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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