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An age limit to achieve fluency? | ||
Tags: Age | Learning Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| cacue23 Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4300 days ago 89 posts - 122 votes  Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 33 of 38 25 February 2013 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm thinking that those who think exposure at too late an age would affect the acquisition of the native accent might have a point. According to my psychology reading, there was a time when kids just randomly blurt out all the sounds of human speech that exist on earth. But after a period of time interacting with a household that speaks a certain language, the sounds that do not belong to that household language gradually die out or get "corrected" by the parents.
I'm Chinese. I don't know whether in my childhood I ever produced that tongue-rolling rrrrr sound, but I can't produce that sound now, no matter how hard I try. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule, but could it be called a general truth? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 34 of 38 26 February 2013 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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We can discuss whether you are better or worse at learning languages late in life, but if you are 59 old as I am now you are in a much better position to learn a new language if you have had 50 years of experience with foreign languages and several foreign language hanging as trophies on your wall. I can't see how anybody can deny that. It is quite another discussion whether an older person should use different methods than a young kid should. Maybe my basic memory isn't what it was at 20 years (and my eye sight certainly isn't), but my methods and resources for homestudy now are much better then they were in the 60s - not least thanks to the internet. On the other hand I have never had as much time for language learning as I had while I was a fulltime student, but if I still have this hobby when I retire I might get that advantage back.
Those of you who have children could definitely do worse things to your kids than presenting them with materials in foreign languages, like TV in funny languages and travels to places where people speak weirdly. Maybe they don't catch on to it by that time, and if you push them too hard they might revolt (like DaraghM with his Irish) but if they do they will have an immense advantage if they decide to taking up language learning later. As for the question about accents... well, that's a problem. I don't feel that I have problems with specific sounds, but I simply can't tell how much my pronunciation is off in any language because because I don't get (or seek) feedback on that. While I studied French we had a 'language lab' with taperecorders and a teacher who occasionally would break in with specific advice, and for me that would be the ideal setup - much better than having some random native speaker telling me that my pronunciation is a mess. Eh, WHICH kind of mess? Details please. Maybe kids can pick up complete sound systems and adapt to them without a conscious effort, but for me as an adult the golden path to anything in language is to make the things I have to learn conscious and visible (Goodbye, Krashen!). Only after that phase does it make sense to me to try to recognize and use them (Hello again, Krashen!). And that may a question of age. Edited by Iversen on 27 February 2013 at 4:47pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4370 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 35 of 38 26 February 2013 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think there should be much of a disagreement that it's better to get as much exposure as possible, as quickly as possible. I don't believe this has so much to do with children inherently being better, but just with the number of hours and what they do during those hours. Just because the music comparison came up, I started voice when I was around 13, and started flute around 9. Voice came very naturally to me; I never had the same types of problems that a lot of singers my age will study for years to fix, even though we started around the same ages. Personally, I don't think I really became good at flute until years after starting, and in the case of singing, I would almost argue that there really *can't* be true voice prodigies because the muscles just need a certain amount of time to develop.
My apologies for going so off-topic there! But my point is that while I do consider myself to be a good classical musician and vocalist, I don't know that my skills are due to starting at a certain age; I think it's moreso because I started younger I had the time to learn the details and perfect them. I think in that sense, it also applies to language learning--if I had the desire to go to an academic program in the language, and read standard literature, write and be corrected repeatedly on essays and the use of the language, my skills would probably be much better than what they are now. Accents probably are more difficult as adults, because to do it correctly physically "feels" different. But even then, it's not impossible, it just takes time which most adults don't want to spend on making it indistinguishable. But I think my real conclusion, which has been displayed many times by people on this forum, is that if one is really willing to put in the time and effort required, one can learn a language to a level that much greater than merely "just enough." 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 36 of 38 26 February 2013 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that this debate over starting early or late is rather moot here because all of us are over the age of puberty. The question really is what do we do with the resources that we have. Given our learning style, our age and our situation, what are the best methods and strategies?
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 37 of 38 26 February 2013 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | ||
My experience is halfway between that of a child and what you describe here. I pick up maybe 75% of the language automatically. For example, my French Ts are properly non-aspirated. I never studied this, practiced this, or even noticed this. It all happened completely automatically at some point, and I don't even know when. But on the other hand, my brain decided that French Rs should be tapped. This is wrong, at least by the standards of French speakers I interact with regularly. So I've had to become very conscious of this problem and correct myself. So for me, learning French requires a combination of input and selective "debugging". I don't need to raise every detail of French into my consciousness. In fact, if I do, I feel like the millipede who accidentally thought about how all his legs worked, and found he couldn't walk. I mostly just need to get input, and look for the places where the process is going wrong. 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 38 of 38 27 February 2013 at 12:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I think that many of us here at HTLAL are fans of conscious formal learning. We actually like to read grammar books and wordlists because we see them as shortcuts that take us straight to the core of the target language. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is how does this translate to performance, and particularly speaking performance. What happens when you open your mouth?
I think the idea behind massive CI is that the learner spontaneously builds entire discourse elements that can be regurgitated in a relatively fluent fashion. This is the idea, it seems to me, behind all the podcast sites for many languages. In fact, while we talk endlessly about comprehensible input, the real problem is comprehensible output. This is where things are more murky. How does all of the above translate into fluent, accurate and idiomatic speech? I think the jury is out on all this. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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