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Adults vs. Kids learning | ||
Tags: Natural method | Native Fluency | Age | Scientific Research | Native Language | Children | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 17 of 77 09 May 2013 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I understand how people can live on a military base or oil industry compound in a different country and not learn the local language, but when you hear stories of people actually marrying a native of that country and still not learning the language (while continuing to live there) you have to wonder what it's all about. What happens when they socialise with their spouse's family and friends? How do they interact with the general population? Surely they must develop at least a passive comprehension, or are their actually people who stop up their ears when exposed to a language they don't speak....even if it happens every day? Edited by beano on 09 May 2013 at 12:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 77 09 May 2013 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Khatzumoto has a good article on how there's no way to "win" this conversation:
Let me add that once you do learn a language to near fluency, everyone is going to say, "Well, but you're really good at languages, so that doesn't really count." You really can't win this argument, at least with someone who wants to make excuses. I don't need studies to tell me adults can learn languages. I've personally watched adults go from somewhere around B2/C1 to near-native without doing any language study whatsoever. I started learning French in my 30s, and sometimes, when I'm bored, I read papers by French linguists—written in French—explaining how adults can't really learn foreign languages. Somehow those papers never quite manage to convince me. :-) Anyway, here's a good starting point:
If you look at the citation list below the paper, you can find lots of research on adult language acquisition. But none of this is going to convince anybody who doesn't want to be convinced. You're almost certainly right when you say this is about making excuses. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 19 of 77 09 May 2013 at 12:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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When Brazilian football / soccer legend Pele moved to the New York Cosmos in 1977, he could barely speak
English. Now he gives presentations in this language. If a man from the favelas with little in the way of formal education can do it, I think it's fair to say that pretty much all adults can learn a foreign language to a high standard if they have the will to do so. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| JacobTM Groupie United States Joined 5599 days ago 56 posts - 67 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 20 of 77 14 May 2013 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Of course, there are many many counter-examples to this. It's easy for someone to say that if you've learned a language as an adult, it's just proof that you're "good with languages". A hundred people try, 10 succeed, and those are just the "gifted language learners". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 21 of 77 16 May 2013 at 7:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Like most people here, I wish that the Critical Period Hypothesis were not true and that the scientific evidence would demonstrate once and for all that adults can learn second languages just as well as children.
We can argue all we want over the existence of neurological or physiological processes that define a window of opportunity for second language learning. But the sad truth that we all see every day is that whatever the biological or sociological factors at work, nothing beats starting a language at an early age especially for overall fluency and phonological accuracy. I have no doubt that adults, with the right kind of massive exposure, lots of time and some good correction can achieve native-like proficiency. On the other hand, a 10 year old adopted into a foreign language will sound like a native in a year. Despite all the counter-examples that we can dig up, the plain truth is that the vast majority of true multilinguals and even our polyglot friends started at an early age. So, I don't think there's much to argue about. The younger you start the better you will do, but you have to play with the cards you nave been dealt. I wouldn't worry about age. There's nothing you can do about it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4534 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 22 of 77 16 May 2013 at 10:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I am sad to say that I am one of those people. I lived on and off in Germany for several years, and married a German, even went to German classes, but never really got beyond A1. Why? My wife is C2 in English, enjoys speaking it and we just got locked into a certain language. She also really didn't care/want to talk baby German with me for weeks. My jobs were in English. I worked with foreigners, but they mostly non-native English speakers (Russian, Maltese, Israeli etc). I rapidly got to a point where I could order food, buy clothes, etc in German, but that was really a very very low level. When you hang out with people they are happy enough to switch to English or if not you can get by pointing and speaking bad German. I hoped that I would slowly learn German by osmosis, and there is some (minor) truth to that, in the sense I was gradually learning words, but not at the sort of rate that would be useful. Part of the problem was that really thought I needed to learn via going to language schools, and that made me somewhat passive outside the classroom, and really didn't give me the sort of stuff I needed. It wasn't that I didn't want to learn. I was actually quite stressed about my skill level, what I didn't understand was how to do it. I actually think living in your L2 country, up until at least you are intermediate isn't as helpful as people think. I learnt more in my first couple of months in London self-learning full-time before I relocated to Germany, than I had in four years living there. Edited by patrickwilken on 16 May 2013 at 10:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 23 of 77 16 May 2013 at 11:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think the best conditions for learning abroad occur when you go there armed with enough of the language to hit the ground running. You can develop rapidly from there, particularly if you are surrounded by native speakers every day. My wife was probably approaching C2 in English when we met (in the UK). I could dimly remember some basic German from school so naturally we communicated in English. But I was always interested in improving my German. What sealed the deal for me was visiting her parents in a remote farming village and realising that without a decent knowledge of German I could barely communicate with the people around me. Believe me, nobody switches to English in rural Brandenburg. I studied hard at home and practised my speaking at every available opportunity. We make regular trips to Germany and I rarely speak any English over there now. So I managed to learn German without actually living in Germany, but that's not really that impressive because lots of Germans learn English without leaving their homeland. I think it ultimately boils down to a case of how much you want it. You must have been in many situations where your wife was meeting with friends/ family who were all native German speakers. That is a great environment for learning. It involves a lot of listening at first, then chipping in with the odd remark. Eventually you can form complete sentences as part of an argument. Sure, it's easier to speak English, chances are you'll be understood. But you have to jump through the hoops. Edited by beano on 16 May 2013 at 11:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4534 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 24 of 77 16 May 2013 at 11:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Of course you need to want it, but that's not sufficient. I actually did night classes at the Goethe Institute in Berlin up to end of B1, but without systematic vocabulary building nothing stuck. To be honest, what really made the difference for me was systematic vocabulary building with Anki, as well as lots of reading (first lots of comprehensible sentences in Anki, and then once my level improved books), plus lots of dubbed movies/TV shows. To make this a bit more relevant to the thread: I don't believe that adults are worse language learners than children. I do think adults have lots of things to distract them (e.g., work) and that when you interact with other people they simply don't treat you like a child learning a language (a point that EMK has made). Edited by patrickwilken on 16 May 2013 at 11:29am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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