Do adolescents and adults learn foreign languages quickly/better than young children?

[anomouse]

If adults and children learn foreign languages in the same environment, who will learn better and more quickly?

Usually, children learn their second language well in a foreign country, because they go to school, but adults don't.

In my experience, pronunciation is about the only thing that young children do better. They are good at sounding like a "native", but that's about it.

Is it a myth that young children learn foreign languages better than adolescents and adults do?

 

[Elizabeth]

If adults and children learn foreign languages in the same environment, who will learn better and more quickly?
Usually, children learn their second language well in a foreign country, because they go to school, but adults don't.
In my experience, pronunciation is about the only thing that young children do better. They are good at sounding like a "native", but that's about it.
Is it a myth that young children learn foreign languages better than adolescents and adults do?

You'll need to break down for us what's supposed to be going on here. Just saying something based on personal "experience," with a million factors going unconsidered, the question is far too general for a deeply structured or focused discussion.

That said, however, I do believe children provided with the proper amount of exposure to a second language, either from a parent, peers or school environment, will generally outperform older children and adults who have studied that language the same number of years but who begin their study in later adolescence or adulthood. That isn't to say motivation, aptitude, effective study materials/habits and an immersive environment can't help older students to overcome some age-related factors in second language learning but just that the threshold for children to become perfectly bilingual is much, much lower.

In short, it's pretty clear that young kids will absorb a language painlessly through nothing more than being talked to on a regular basis. Older children and adults need rely much more on planning, intelligence and at times sheer, dumb luck (NOT classwork) to accelerate themselves.

 

[Yan]

I've been learning English since 13 years old and I learnd more than what we're learning at school. Now I'm 16 and I'm enough good in English to talk with you on a forum. Teenagers have better capacities to learn than adults because their brain is in development. My mother doesn't speak a word in English and she never learnd any second language. Now she's 46 years old and she would have a lot of difficulty to learn a second language.

I'm not studying the brain but it's only a constatation.

 

[Elizabeth]

I've been learning English since 13 years old and I learnd more than what we're learning at school. Now I'm 16 and I'm enough good in English to talk with you on a forum. Teenagers have better capacities to learn than adults because their brain is in development. My mother doesn't speak a word in English and she never learnd any second language. Now she's 46 years old and she would have a lot of difficulty to learn a second language.
I'm not studying the brain but it's only a constatation.

Yan,

That's a funny reversal of roles between you and your mother. You must feel yourselves in a time warp.

The Quebec government of the 1970's made it so easy to learn how to speak, read and write English the entire seperate language/seperate state concept was endangered. But now that French laws don't require a second language, you are still doing so well ! (Just hearsay, but my impression of the Canadian culture wars). Omedetou gozaimasu !


Did you learn English in school? And reinforce it by "crossing the border" into globalization with English media, travel, etc ? ☝

 

[Nall-ohki]

I've been learning English since 13 years old and I learnd more than what we're learning at school. Now I'm 16 and I'm enough good in English to talk with you on a forum. Teenagers have better capacities to learn than adults because their brain is in development. My mother doesn't speak a word in English and she never learnd any second language. Now she's 46 years old and she would have a lot of difficulty to learn a second language.
I'm not studying the brain but it's only a constatation.

I'm not convinced of what you're saying.

While there is definitely a capacity for learning language present in young children all the way up to adulthood, adults generally have better mental capacity and can often learn things very quickly.

A couple things that never seem to come up in these discussions are the following:
- Motivation
- Expectation
- Time to dedicate
- Interaction with language
- Willingness to fail

If we assume motivation is equal, in most situations, children have the advantage in all these areas. They have more free time, make friends easier, are willing to make mistakes, and have less expected of them overall.

Adults, by contrast, generally have more expected of them which leads to them being more afraid of appearing stupid in front of others, which detracts from their ability to learn and interact (these are all interconnected).

One of the biggest things I always say to anyone seriously taking on another language is to throw away their pride. If you are prideful, you will not learn anything. As long as you're unwilling to do something that someone might laugh at you for, or appear awkward, your progress will be slow and excruciating.

I believe that Adults can learn language very well given the right circumstances and approach, but it requires a bit of work on the part of the learner, and requires a lot more thinking like a child.

 

[theAlphaDuck]

children learn languages faster....

for really young kids its not even an effort....

kids learn things very quickly... it is in thier nature

 

[Elizabeth]

children learn languages faster....

for really young kids its not even an effort....

kids learn things very quickly... it is in thier nature

Yes, I agree. Children being exposed to two languages in the home, for example, results in extremely natural bilingualism only slightly under the rate of a one-language child.

They pick up fully in a few years what would take teens or other adults in the household a decade or two of arduous effort only to most likely plateau in the end with a highly fractured, imperfect, accented, foreign inflected speech pattern.

 

[Kirakira1232]

Nope its no myth. Children do indeed learn languages much faster than an adult. I spoke Khmer first and then acquired english when I went to school around 3 or 4. I understand both languages fluently...my English is slightly stronger than my Khmer because I only use my Khmer when speaking to family members.

As a child you gain a lot of the phonemes or sounds of your language. The Japanese for example lose that ability to distinguish between "L" and "R" sounds early in their childhood because Japanese does not have any differentiation between the two sounds. This is why for a lot of people learning a second language, even after years and years of learning they will still carry their native accent. A Japanese tutor of mine was originally from New York and had lived in Japan for nearly 15 years but you can still detect the Brooklyn accent in his Japanese. Suffice to say some people can acquire a second language as an adult and have it perfectly accented but they are very rare. A lot of Chinese migrants I've come across that have lived in Australia for 10's of years and speak perfect english (not perfect grammatically but still understandable) but still carry the accent of their first language.

Another more controversial theory for Child language acquisition is the "Critical Age Hypothesis". In that a child's ability to obtain grammar is at its greatest before the age of around 12-14 (basically before puberty kicks in). Then the ability gradually deteriorates as you become older. The evidence for this largely comes from Down syndrome patients that have much slower learning rates than normal children and "Wild Children" or children that have been abused for prolonged periods (with access to very little language) of time such as the very sad case of Genie.

Genie (feral child) - Wikipedia

This theory is still hotly debated among a lot of linguists.

Critical period hypothesis - Wikipedia

While I think that elements of the hypothesis do ring true...some people I think can display more of a talent for acquiring language than others. This is related I think to the "lateralisation" of the brain. Language is stored in the "left side" of the brain while visual information is relayed from the "right side" of the brain. In some rare cases the opposite occurs. Some people may favour their left brain more than their right...and thus I think may find it a bit easier to acquire a second language.

Adults can indeed acquire second languages but the learning rate will never be as quickly as a child acquires it. Grammar is more difficult to acquire as an adult although you can acquire vocabulary throughout your lifetime.

 

[anomouse]

Yeah, I already said in #1 that children pick up the sounds better than adults, but I'm curious about other advantages.

Think of it as a control experiment.
The same environment, the same learning hours, who will do better, adults, adolescents, or children?

In the real world, this experiment is impossible.
In the real world, immigrant children have more privileges in terms of the environment than adults and adolescents, as they are allowed to have many more years of formal education than older kids or adults. They are allowed to slowly mature, but older people aren't.

 

[Kirakira1232]

Yes true there are far too many variables and ethical considerations for an experiment like that to give anything fruitful to the linguistic community.

As I said in my post, Children and prepubescents dont only acquire sounds much more quickly, but they can also acquire grammar much more quickly than an adult can.

The experiment of putting a child and an adult in the same learning environment is impossible I think because trying to teach a child and trying to teach an adult are two very very different methods. You cannot teach an adult like a child and you cannot teach a child like they are an adult. Trying to assess which one is better than the other would also be difficult.

 

[Elizabeth]

Yes true there are far too many variables and ethical considerations for an experiment like that to give anything fruitful to the linguistic community.
As I said in my post, Children dont only acquire sounds much more quickly, but they can also acquire grammar much more quickly than an adult can.
The experiment of putting a child and an adult in the same learning environment is impossible I think because trying to teach a child and trying to teach an adult are two very very different methods. You cannot teach an adult like a child and you cannot teach a child like they are an adult. Trying to assess which one is better than the other would also be difficult.

An adult and child living both with a second language speaker are essentially exposed to the same environmental variables. The difference is a child will imitate and make sense of the imput in the same way they were/had their first language if the two are not being gained simultaneously. And they will acquire it via essentially an identical method.
Listen. Rapidly process the information. Speak.

An older teenager or adult will require a period of "foundational," "non-direct" learning (books, tapes, tutoring) designed to orient the learner to the grammatical layout, vocab, range of sounds & pronounciations, etc before "trying out" any of these productions in a native setting. Who do you think will come out ahead further and manage it faster ?

 

[Mikawa Ossan]

If you are talking about immersion, then I think that children without question learn faster and better than older people.

If you are talking about identical classroom settings, assuming that the adult has as much time to study out of class as the child, I think the adult will learn better, but only because the adult is more likely to be focused and motivated to learn than the child, IMHO.

 

[Kirakira1232]

It would take many years but lets say hypothetically...

We put a child and an adult who both have a first languge (english). Lets make the adult a 25 year old and the child will be a 10 year old (there is no scientific basis since this is purely hypothetical). Also make sure their learning ability is typical for a person their age (in that they are not gifted or slow) and neither have had any prior contact with a second language. Give them a bilingual person (that say speaks both english and Japanese perfectly with inflection for both) and have them cater for the child and the adults learning needs.

Given that they give equal time to both the child and adult and that they both pay attention fully to the teacher and are both equally motivated then I think the child would learn at a much faster pace after a year. Children are more prone to experiment with grammar such as "overextending" grammar rules (you know how children sometimes say "I go'ed home" instead of "I went home" or "He eated it" instead of "He ate it") rather than listen to copious explanations of grammar whereas adults typically are more reserved and need a lot of examples of usage and explanations before going on their own and experimenting with what they've acquired.

Children "just do it" while adult learners might be more reserved. This is in my opinion anyway. Then there are many other behavioural factors that affect learning in children and adults. As mikawa ossan says, adults may be more focussed and have a stronger desire than children. But given all things equal (which would be extremely hard to do) a child I think would come on top.

 

[epigene]

In my experience involved with "kikokushijo," Japanese repatriates returning to Japan after extended stays (from those born abroad to those who have lived in foreign countries for more than 5 years), I found that learning a language is quickest when you're young because language is absorbed intuitively. They don't need to be told how, absorption of a language happens alongside learning from other aspects of their environment.

Adults and adolescents, on the other hand, have to be "taught with a logical approach" into the "hows and whys" of the language and its structure, grammar and vocabulary. That is why it takes longer and absorption is harder, the greatest impediment being their "first language" since adults are inclined to rely on the linguistic structure and cultural values reflected in their native language when learning a new one.

The upside is:
Children lose language faster if they're not reinforced with more of the second language as they grow up. Also, without such reinforcement (in the adult-style logical learning approach), they do not attain sophistication in grammar and vocabulary. Speak to a Japanese who had lived abroad until, say, age 12 and you can see why.

Adults, on the other hand, lose a well-acquired second language only with senility...

Another upside of mastery of a second language that applies both to children and adults is that the third and subsequent new languages come easier than for those learning a second language.

 

[Elizabeth]

The upside is:
Children lose language faster if they're not reinforced with more of the second language as they grow up. Also, without such reinforcement (in the adult-style logical learning approach), they do not attain sophistication in grammar and vocabulary. Speak to a Japanese who had lived abroad until, say, age 12 and you can see why.

That is a very interesting observation, epigene. Although the distinguishing factor may be less the lack of structured grammar instruction than adapting to an English-only school or "classroom" discourse in which teachers' language to children is more formal than what most of them are accustomed to from home or peer environments. It is true that while Japanese and American schools might develop communicative competence in different ways, kids that are born and raised in Japan no doubt do end up with a more impressive repertoire of written and oral communication skills, as well as conversational strategies and vocabulary, than their "home-language" ex-patriate peers. Good point !

If only there were a sure-fire way not to lose second language abilities, then to continue towards the goal of adult-directed speech, once back in their mother country....Although the two Japanese kids I know best, ages 3 and 4, have been living in the states approximately 30 months shuttled for the most part among a highly sheltered, close knit bond of relocated Japanese families. They are in part day preschool, get some television/computer access but whom I have never heard utter a word of English. With me (which they have "pegged" as Japanese speaker) or other non-Japanese children. It's discouraging. What
a mis-spent opportunity those early years may someday prove to have been....

 

[anomouse]

One reason that children seem more competent in their foreign language is that they can reach their age-appropriate language skills rather quickly. If you are just 5, then simple words are good enough.
But if you are 20, you are expected to speak like a 20 year old from the very beginning. If you are in college, you are expected to speak and write at the college level, even though you may have studied the language only for a few years. Speaking like a 5 year old makes you look dumb. It takes way longer to reach the age appropriate level. But it doesn't mean his learning process is slower than that of a 5-year-old.
It's hard to say that the knowledge of the first language becomes an impediment for adults. Because what you have learned in their first language can be transfered to a foreign language.
Adults may study 2 years or so, and they are able to read adult books in a foreign language, but children probably cannot, even though they can say simple things with their childish language skills. It may require a couple of more years of maturing for them to be able to read adult books.
So are adults better at learning a language?

 

[Elizabeth]

One reason that children seem more competent in their foreign language is that they can reach their age-appropriate language skills rather quickly. If you are just 5, then simple words are good enough.

Listen, anomouse, young children who are acquiring a second language at the ages of 2-5 even with their limited range of vocabulary and grammatical structures will generally be able to integrate a variety of linguistic knowledge. For instance they can share in a conversation, spontaneously begin a conversation, respond appropriately to another's topic of conversation, tell a story, formulate a request, give a sample narration etc.

In contrast, it is not considered in the least unusual for adolescents or adults who have studied only two years to struggle through a simple textbook exercise or formulaic dialog designed to get them to the next grammar point. Comprehending even the most basic of adult books or college-age materials is laughable. You may be a linguistic genius...but for most of the rest of us, even attempting to listen at that stage, it's a bad joke.


As epigene-san pointed out, children clearly have less conscious awareness of their language formulation (grammatical rules, processing strategies etc) thus making their gains more suseptible to decay over time. They don't dissect, analyze and reflect logically on the process the way adults are taught. But they can SPEAK easily and naturally and they can fully UNDERSTAND other people's speech that is adopted to their vocabulary/syntax level.

In short, there is absolutely no doubt at the points of learning I have described above, it's the kids who can produce the most fluent, coherent speech at a native, age-appropriate level.

 

[anomouse]

I know relevant theories, critical periods and such, but they are mostly hypotheses, and difficult to confirm.
You say, it's intuitive for children, but It doesn't seem so intuitive to me. Even the first language takes years of rigorous education, and still many fail to learn. How can a foreign language be easier than that?
Another poster has been saying that he learned his 2000 kanji within 4 years, while Japanese children study it for 12 years and still don't know their kanji. How slow that is! (Perhaps, he just wanted to say he is smarter than Japanese, but I know this happens. Happened to me as well.) If a language is easier for children, can anyone explain me why?
Mental maturity makes learning easier for older people, don't you think? There's no reason to think that "intuitive learning" is better than another approach..

 

[Kirakira1232]

I know relevant theories, critical periods and such, but they are mostly hypotheses, and difficult to confirm.
You say, it's intuitive for children, but It doesn't seem so intuitive to me. Even the first language takes years of rigorous education, and still many fail to learn. How can a foreign language be easier than that?
Another poster has been saying that he learned his 2000 kanji within 4 years, while Japanese children study it for 12 years and still don't know their kanji. How slow that is! (Perhaps, he just wanted to say he is smarter than Japanese, but I know this happens. Happened to me as well.) If a language is easier for children, can anyone explain me why?
Mental maturity makes learning easier for older people, don't you think? There's no reason to think that "intuitive learning" is better than another approach..

Writing and speaking are two very different processes. If one particular poster said he "learned 2000 kanji" in four years then thats great. That however doesnt mean all adults can learn 2000 kanji in four years. I know for A LOT of adult Japanese students in my classes the number one complaint is you guessed it: Kanji.

You learn to speak much more quickly than you learn to write. Children also vary in their ability to write there are some children that can write very well and some that do not. With writing there is a spectrum from those who want to write well and go to university or those that prefer to do something like a trade or business that doesnt require such a high level of literacy. Its not something as black and white as "All Japanese children dont know their kanji after 12 years of education". That implies that all Japanese children must be illiterate after 12 years of education which I dont think is the case.

The general idea is that children tend to absorb language with more ease than an adult learner. Adult learners need a lot of attention in terms of explanations, examples, grammar. Children can store and recall language more intuitively and instinctively because their minds are still developing and I think a lot of people say children imitate and absorb the language and mannerisms of their parents.

Adults however can find it hard to wrap their head around grammar if they have been monolingual...esspecially if the language at hand changes the order of words (eg. compare English SVO to Japanese SOV). In a lot of second language courses there is a lot of linguistic jargon such as a "transitive" verb versus an "Intransitive" verb or a "nominalisier". Also note how difficult it can be sometimes to explain the appropiateness of "wa" "ga" and "to" particles of Japanese. Children just know how to use these because they absorb from their parents and peers as well as imitate from them.

As they say you cannot really say you have learned a language from the textbook, you need to go out and use the language. Children dont need textbooks to learn how to speak. They just know instinctively. Bilingual children learn from their parents without the need of textbooks or explanations. Language maintenance of bilinguals however is a different kettle of fish...and can vary from child to child depending on how often they use the second language.

 

[Nall-ohki]

Adults however can find it hard to wrap their head around grammar if they have been monolingual...esspecially if the language at hand changes the order of words (eg. compare English SVO to Japanese SOV).

You're making generalizations about adults here. I do not believe that it is a generality that adults find grammar more difficult than children or even that more children find grammar easier than adults.

I believe that anomouse has postulated some very good points here: it's very easy for children to speak age-appropriately very quickly, but an adult who did the same in less time would not be given the credit he was due because of the fact he was an adult.

Adults do in fact have the ability to learn language intuitively. Children are often given more credit than they're do in this area, I feel.

Also, the critical-age hypothesis does not say anything about rate of learning or ability to learn a second language. Only that language skills must be learned by a certain age or they will never develop. This likely has more to do with the fact that the brain's ability to deal with completely foreign inputs decreases over time. However, this says nothing about the ability to learn a SECOND language, as it is still language - and language is an input that adults have learned.

Most of the evidence for the critical-age hypothesis comes from cases of feral children and/or extreme child abuse where the child was not exposed to language. The problem with using this as evidence, however, is the same over generalization problem I mentioned above: there aren't that many of these children to study. Generalizing the idea that all children under such conditions would have the same outcome is fallacious.

Adults have better mental faculties than children and have more experience to relate new information to. This should not be underestimated when comparing it to a child's "sponge-like" abilities.

Lastly, the idea that children pick up stuff "like a sponge" is also a suspicious argument in general, as it seems to imply that children learn more faster, and that is somehow attributed to their ability to learn. However, it is impossible to test (and therefore unfalsifiable), as you cannot put an adult in the same situation and test to see if they learn as fast.

Children learn a lot in a short amount of time because there is so much more for them TO learn. As an adult, you're not exposed to even close to the level of new information as you are as a child. Can you say that an adult COULD NOT learn at the same rate if they suddenly had their brain wiped of everything they knew? It's not possible to test.

Adults don't learn as much as children because they aren't exposed to as many new things as children.

 

[Elizabeth]

You're making generalizations about adults here. I do not believe that it is a generality that adults find grammar more difficult than children or even that more children find grammar easier than adults.

I believe that anomouse has postulated some very good points here: it's very easy for children to speak age-appropriately very quickly, but an adult who did the same in less time would not be given the credit he was due because of the fact he was an adult.

Adults do in fact have the ability to learn language intuitively. Children are often given more credit than they're do in this area, I feel.

You are correct, of course, that there are adults who may be able to express themselves with complex sentence constructions complete with conjunctions, passives, and relative clauses after a few years of study. Still heavily punctuated however, with awkward pauses, omissions, disfluencies, unnatural syntax, limited, textbookish vocabulary etc.

The dialogue at the end of this page is a conversation that is very similar to one my 4 year old Spanish/English speaking neighbor initiates and carries out with me on a regular basis. In perfectly natural, rapid fire English with the exception of one or two over-regularization errors involving past tense usage ("Where did you went ?" for instance).

It's inconceivable that an older child or adult demonstrating the ability to participate in a conversation at a near-native level after 2 or 3 years of immersion-only, without the benefit of formal study materials, in a foreign language environment would be criticized for the shortness of their utterances or lack of passive constructions. Just the opposite. Their progress would most likely be heralded as nothing short of miraculous.

So again, show me an average adult, ANY adult, unless they're an equivalent to a "play by ear" musician, that can produce intuitively after 2 or 3 years and I'll start to consider your "feelings" about language development seriously.


Native Spanish speaker to me :

Where were you/Where did you went ? Will you come out and race/play tag/jump rope...please, please, please ! Just this once. Please ! Why is this cat black ? I don't like black cats. They're scary. Can cats talk ? My sister wants a cat but my dad doesn't like them. Here'a a popsicle (reaching into his pocket). Then picking up a fake gun : "I'm going to shoot you ! I'm going to shoot you ! Watch out !"

 

[Kirakira1232]

Children learn a lot in a short amount of time because there is so much more for them TO learn. As an adult, you're not exposed to even close to the level of new information as you are as a child. Can you say that an adult COULD NOT learn at the same rate if they suddenly had their brain wiped of everything they knew? It's not possible to test.

Adults don't learn as much as children because they aren't exposed to as many new things as children.

Adults dont learn as much as children not because of experience but because their ability to retain and recall information decreases as they become older making it more difficult not impossible for adults to learn new things. Of course I am talking about the "average" adult, not the "gifted" mensa student. Adult minds are not as malleable or as influential as children. Why do people place such importance on teaching reading and writing when your a child? Because it becomes so much harder to teach when you are an adult.

Trying to teach my parents (who are around 50-52) about computers took many many months to do a simple thing like check, write and send emails. It took a lot of repitition, I had to write it down step by step even after demonstrating every day how switch the computer on, login to the net and check the email. Even now they still find it baffling. They are not "slow" and both of them have been educated for at least 12 years. They just cannot remember unless I hold their hand through it each time. Both of them have spent 28 years in Australia learning english mainly by immersion and while their english is understandable and fluent it is still not grammatically at the same level as someone who has learned english since they were a child. Yes I do take into account that children have far more education in english than my parents. The point is you cannot expect an adult to have native fluency level in a language just by being "immersed" in it for a couple of years. It would be nothing short of miraculous.

Also about "age-appropiateness" yes you would expect a 5 year old to talk about 5 year old things. That is only a limitation in terms of vocabulary. Elizabeth has demonstrated how well a 5 or 6 year old can express themselves even though their subject is limited to "5 or 6 year old" things.

For me to express something in Japanese even if it is just a basic need, it takes thought, not just to formulate vocab but to construct the sentence in my head and then deliver it. 5 year olds and 6 year olds dont think about "Subject object verb" or "transitive" or "intransitive" verbs. When I speak in Khmer and English I dont think about how verbs are conjugated or why I use "the" or "of" or "a". In both languages its automatic and I dont need to think to express a simple need even when I was a child.

Of course there are some adults that are particularly gifted and can learn "by ear" but that is not universal. You cant expect an average adult within a couple of years to speak Japanese at native fluency with perfect intonation just by being in the middle of Japan.

 

[Elizabeth]

Also, the critical-age hypothesis does not say anything about rate of learning or ability to learn a second language. Only that language skills must be learned by a certain age or they will never develop. This likely has more to do with the fact that the brain's ability to deal with completely foreign inputs decreases over time. However, this says nothing about the ability to learn a SECOND language, as it is still language - and language is an input that adults have learned.

Most of the evidence for the critical-age hypothesis comes from cases of feral children and/or extreme child abuse where the child was not exposed to language. The problem with using this as evidence, however, is the same over generalization problem I mentioned above: there aren't that many of these children to study. Generalizing the idea that all children under such conditions would have the same outcome is fallacious.

Adults have better mental faculties than children and have more experience to relate new information to. This should not be underestimated when comparing it to a child's "sponge-like" abilities.

Lastly, the idea that children pick up stuff "like a sponge" is also a suspicious argument in general, as it seems to imply that children learn more faster, and that is somehow attributed to their ability to learn. However, it is impossible to test (and therefore unfalsifiable), as you cannot put an adult in the same situation and test to see if they learn as fast.

There are certainly adults living as residents in a foreign country, several on this very forum, that have not "picked up" the language to even the slightest degree naturally and without trying as would happen to every normal child.


The CPH has also been studied extensively attempting to correlate the age at which children acquire certain aspects of a second language with level of acquisition, although the research still leaves many unanswered questions.

Below is an excerpt from a book on the said topic you may find relevant.

Second Language Acquisition and the Critical Period Hypothesis


This is all somewhat confusing, and the only conclusion that a reader can come to at the end of the book is that there are no easy answers on the CPH. What is clear is that the old notion that the nature of L2 acquisition changes suddenly and dramatically at around the age of 12-13 because of changes in the brain is much too simplistic (as has been generally recognised for some time). If there is any truth in the CPH, then there may be different critical periods for different language skills, different types of change at different ages. If on the other hand there is no physical change in the brain which can be directly related to language learning, other powerful explanations are needed to account for the dramatic decline in ultimate achievement generally seen in later second language learners compared to young children -- and such explanations are no more than tentative guesses at present.

Children learn a lot in a short amount of time because there is so much more for them TO learn. As an adult, you're not exposed to even close to the level of new information as you are as a child. Can you say that an adult COULD NOT learn at the same rate if they suddenly had their brain wiped of everything they knew? It's not possible to test.

Check into cases of adults relearning to speak or process normal spoken sound after suffering damage to portions of the brain associated with language function.

 

[Nall-ohki]

There are certainly adults living as residents in a foreign country, several on this very forum, that have not "picked up" the language to even the slightest degree naturally and without trying as would happen to every normal child.

I think that's a little misleading. Are you suggesting that the child and adult put the same amount of effort into it? Such a thing is very hard to quantify.

A child who is put into the environment of a secondary language does basically nothing BUT learn the language and their environment. An adult is usually working, schooling, etc.

Check into cases of adults relearning to speak or process normal spoken sound after suffering damage to portions of the brain associated with language function.

I'm not sure that's exactly a fair comparison. Those who have had damage to the area of the brain related to language function... well.. have had damage to the area of the brain related to language function.

If on the other hand there is no physical change in the brain which can be directly related to language learning, other powerful explanations are needed to account for the dramatic decline in ultimate achievement generally seen in later second language learners compared to young children -- and such explanations are no more than tentative guesses at present.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[musing]
Ultimately, a lot of this seems to be coming down to a question of intuitive learning. Many adults are not intuitive learners, but almost all children are.
[/musing]

 

[Chidoriashi]

anomouse> since you were referring to me with the 2000 kanji thing. I feel I should clarify. I was not I trying to brag about acquiring most of my kanji in a short time compared to Japanese people. I was simply stating that I can understand why Japanese are surprised when a foreigner can read nearly as much kanji as a Japanese. To them, it is something that took a very long time, so it would be natural to think, most foreigners cannot read kanji (as annoying as that is for those who can however).

But as not be off topic I will support you in some sense that adults can maybe learn some aspects of language easier than kids. When it comes to something like literacy, a motivated adult has something that I think many children do not, and that is discipline. Thus, while I do think Japanese students are exposed to Kanji a little too slowly, i will say that a motivated foreign adult could acquire a reading level much higher than a child more quickly, however, whether that has to do with differences in child-adult abilities or simply discipline level differences it is hard to say.

I think that a child (4-8) learning English or Japanese would have a much more intuitive grasp of the language and would find the process of moving into more complex things much less painful than say a person in their twenties would, however. Not to mention being less likely to have an accent, make less of the common errors and have a much better overall listening comprehension. Those are just my feelings though. But overall I think children (especially young children 2-8) have the upper hand when it comes to ease of learning a second language simply because they are still acquiring their first language in that time. A person that learned a language as a child is much more likely to sound native than a person who learned as an adult.

Though I do believe most motivated adults can acquire a second language to a useful or even fluent capacity within 5 years. The person who learned as a child, will have done it more smoothly(less painfully), and will almost always sound more natural.