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An age limit to achieve fluency? | ||
Tags: Age | Learning Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 25 of 38 22 February 2013 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I really don't want to make a big fuss out of this. I admit that learning a foreign language or a musical instrument at an early age is not for everybody. I recognize that some children react badly to all kinds of imposed activities. But after all is said and done, the question remains: As parent, would you expose your children to learning a foreign language (or a musical instrument) at an early age or not?
I would. But it seems to me that other people are saying that it's not important or that it may do more harm than good, i.e. that the person ends up hating the instrument or the language. If you believe that there's no point exposing children to foreign languages or a musical instrument because they can learn them on their own at an adult age, I respect that opinion. I just think it is terribly wrong. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 26 of 38 22 February 2013 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
The great thing is that I got to choose which instrument and sport to play. The choice wasn't forced. Then it does work. 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 27 of 38 22 February 2013 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For some strange reason, I get the impression the certain readers think that my belief is that if you haven't learned a foreign language as a child, it's too late and you might as well give up. That is the silliest idea that I have seen in a long time. The whole existence of HTLAL is predicated on the fact that one can learn at any age. I don't think anybody is questioning that.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5101 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 28 of 38 22 February 2013 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think it's quite obvious that no one over the age of 25 can learn a foreign language.
Therefore, everyone who is older than that should send all of their now useless language learning materials to me (particularly ones relating to French, but excepting those whose subject is Spanish). 2 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 29 of 38 25 February 2013 at 4:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree. If an adult is fully immersed in a new language; speaking, reading and writing with barely any opportunities to use another more familiar lanaguage, he or she will learn just as well as a child. Age in itself has little to do with language acquisition. If you start at age 6 then you have many more years ahead of you in which you can use the language (and further refine it, learning is a lifelong process after all). But the actual learning can be done just as well at 36. Of course, many people equate moving to another country as immersion, but this isn't necessarily so. If your job permits you to use your native tongue and you take your spouse and kids with you, that seriously erodes the immersion experience. Edited by beano on 25 February 2013 at 4:57pm 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 30 of 38 25 February 2013 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is far from certain. In fact, this is what the whole controversy is about. There is a whole school of thought that believes that learning a language, whether it's first or second, at en early age is fundamentally different from learning it at a later age. I have no doubt that some people can learn a language very well at age 36, but what we all see is that 6-year olds do it better and faster. We know of course that most adults are busy doing all sorts of things besides learning a language. But the fact is that the probability of high achievement, especially in pronunciation, declines gradually with age. 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 31 of 38 25 February 2013 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually, there has been some research suggesting that adults learn faster than children, if not necessarily better. If I recall correctly, sufficiently motivated adults hold an advantage for the first two years or so. Which is unsurprising, when you think about it—the US Foreign Service Institute can take 40-year-olds from no French to C1 in about 24 brutal weeks. A young child in an immersion program may be conversational after 6 months, but they typically need 3 to 7 years to catch up with their native peers in school. (Krashen has claimed as few as 3 to 5 years. Most bilingual schools say things like, "For children to benefit from the investment in bilingual education, the commitment should be no less than 5-7 years minimum.") Children are absolutely good at accents. This, to my mind, is nice but not essential. French speakers who've lived for 10 years in New England sound a lot less exotic than the average Texan or southerner. And children do seem to acquire grammar more reliably than adults (see my post about Jane Birkin for an example of an adult with persistent errors). 5 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 32 of 38 25 February 2013 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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We can argue about this till the cows come home. Sure adults can probably learn certain things faster than children (e.g. technical vocabulary). But it seems to me quite clear that whether it's learning to play a musical instrument, learning a language or learning to sing, early is better than late. Or let's put it the other way, are languages best learned at an early or a late age?
As I've asked before, are there readers here with children who think that it's not worthwhile exposing their children to foreign languages at an early age because languages are best learned at age 40? Edited by s_allard on 25 February 2013 at 10:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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