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Learning like a Child | ||
Tags: Language Acquisition Theory | Immersion | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 5087 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 8 10 April 2011 at 4:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have seen a lot of popular language programs that talk about learning naturally as a child learns and other fun stuff like that, and it got me thinking. Do we really want to learn like a child learns?
The way I see it, a child gets 12-16 hours of immersion a day, has no other way to communicate and still takes 10 years to speak like a 10 year old. Cut off a few years for the time it takes speech production to start, and you're still looking at 7-8 years before they speak like a 10 year old. I want to speak like a German adult in 2 or 3 years. No obviously this isn't a fair comparison... but I think it has some merit. I think given the advantage we do have (a native language as a reference), adults can learn language much more efficiently than a child, and learning like a child is not really something to shoot for. Any thoughts? Vehement disagreement? 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 2 of 8 10 April 2011 at 5:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think adults learning as children is utterly nonsensical. The only respect in which adults should imitate children is
in lacking inhibitions in learning language, particularly as to the pronunciation. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ibraheem Groupie United States Joined 5366 days ago 84 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Mandarin | Message 3 of 8 10 April 2011 at 5:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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If you look at the topic that I created earlier, I explain that learning like a baby/child is not really the best way, that it is better to learn language progressively starting with the very basics (noun+verb). But in reality that is largely how children learn languages, first and foremost they learn simple words for things, and then actions. A baby's first words are never "the" or "sad" or "hello", but words for things, like "mom", "dad". And eventually they start using phrases like "want food" or "give me". As far as I know, only much later are children able to pick up on more complicated parts of speech like prepositions and adverbs. This only shows that as much immersion as you receive, the learning process follows a typical progression. This is what I believe is what we should take away from the "learning like a child" concept.
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| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 8 10 April 2011 at 10:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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There was a fascinating article in a science journal last month (alas, I have lost the
link) which described brain-plasticity research focused on the issue of adults learning like a baby. What the research showed was that if an adult is put into an environment where they act like, and (this is vital!) are treated like, a baby when learning a skill, then the number of new connections formed in the brain is similar to that of a baby (i.e. massively greater than for an adult). I expect we will see more of this research, since (according to the article) it has profound implications for people who have suffered brain damage and need to relearn a lost skill. No mention was made of foreign language learning. However, I have now dropped some of my earlier skepticism on this. Of course, the greatest difficulty for an adult is recreating that baby environment - surrounding yourself with loving and patient adults who, for hours on end, giggle at every tiny mistake you make and offer great praise and encouragement for every success. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 8 10 April 2011 at 11:03am | IP Logged | |||||
Holy smokes! You don't happen to remember the name of the journal? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 6 of 8 10 April 2011 at 11:33am | IP Logged | |||||
Alas, I cannot find the original source, but I did find an overview of the details on Live Science Edited by Splog on 10 April 2011 at 11:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 8 10 April 2011 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When discussing "learning like a child" we have to separate "learning a language" from "learning language".
You learn the basics of "language" through learning your first language(s). Put a child in a foreign language environment and they'll pick up the foreign language to the level of their native language in a few months. So kids don't take 10 years to "learn a language", they take 10 year to "learn language". But that doesn't say whether or not you can "learn a language" like a child. Even people who consciously accept that tend to miss the implications: parent-child interactions are about "learning language". What exactly does a child do to learn a second language? That's not as well understood.... 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Delaunay Pentaglot Newbie Hungary Joined 4990 days ago 16 posts - 27 votes Speaks: German, Hungarian*, English, Japanese, Dutch Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 8 10 April 2011 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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While it might be true that because of the lack of inhibition and general attitude children have, they do pick up languages easily, but, and there's a very big but here, the vocabulary needed by a child to be able to express his thoughts is quite moderate, and I think we can safely call it most time consuming bit. A child needs 3000 or so words. An adult needs 20000. So it should be no surprise that an adult needs more time to master any given language than a child!
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