IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE!

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young,” said Henry Ford. It means that no matter at what age you start the point is that you keep learning, as we never stop learning, so you can reach your goals; if that is what you want and if you are willing to do so. For many years there has been a belief that claims that young children learn languages quickly and easily while adults are ineffective in comparison. While this may be partially true, it is not completely true since age is just one factor, a very important one by the way, but it is still only one of the many factors that exist when learning a language. Furthermore, when learning a second or new language adults are not totally excluded as this classic myth or belief may have intended to show. Thus, adults have demonstrated to be better students when learning a second language than children for these main reasons among many others.

Many people believe that when learning a new language, the “younger the better”, however, there is another opposite view to this that says “the older the better”. It seems that older language learners are more successful and efficient than young learners since there are some studies that support this view. For example, Ekstrand found that L2 learning ability ‘improves with age’ (Ekstrand 1976, p. 130). Making it easier to process explicitly all the linguistic rules that come with a language. In another study done on young children and older children learning French reveals that the older children did better in terms of vocabulary, grammar, working memory, and literacy. (Myles, F, & Mitchell, R, 2012). Thus, most of the researches have shown that adults are better learners than children in aspects related to cognitive academic language proficiency, related to reading, vocabulary, syntax, and morphology aspects.

Think about adults and young children when learning a second language again; if you are asked… “Who do you think that learns faster a language?” the answer would probably be young children. However, there are various studies that prove the opposite. For example, a long-term study of Catalan-Spanish bilingual students of English done by researchers in Israel found that the students who started learning the language later in life learned the new language faster than the younger children. In another study called “Age in Second Language Acquisition” by Harley, B. stated that the faster acquisition rate was higher among the late starters (1986, p. 112). This is due to the cognitive maturity that comes with age, so they can process more advanced problems, solving strategies, and linguistic experience, using this knowledge in the process of new information. Thus, it is correct to say that adults learn a language quicker than children, but not only that, adults will learn to speak it at a much higher level, too.

Last but not least, when learning a second language; it is very important to take into consideration the effective point of view. Children have limited attention spans, unless the activities are extremely engaging; they can easily get bored, losing interest after ten minutes or so. Unlike adults that are often more prepared to struggle despite boredom, since they have the patience and longer-term attention spans to stick with when learning a new language. Besides, unlike children, adults have a clear understanding of why they are learning and what they want to get out of it since most adults are learning a new or second language voluntarily, and they have chosen the course themselves; hence, have a clear purpose in learning such as university, work, travel, etc. So they are likely to feel more committed and motivated. Classes with adult people tend, on the whole, to be more disciplined and cooperative because they are self-aware of the circumstances as they also understand the importance of self-improvement and self-motivation when learning.

Many opponents of these reasons may say that one of the most important points when learning a language was not taken into consideration; which is the fact that children achieve native-like fluency, and can acquire a new language easier, while adults are ineffective in comparison. There are two theories that come in hand that claim this; the cognitive theory that says that early exposure to a second language results in the acquisition of this in an easy and “painless” way since this theory takes into consideration the innate and linguistic predispositions to learn a language.

Then, comes the boss hypothesis; the Critical Period Hypothesis that was first proposed by the neurologist Wilder Penfield and Lamar Roberts in their book “Speech and Brain Mechanisms” in 1959. However, this theory was popularized by Eric Lenneberg with Biological Foundations of Language in 1967. The critical period hypothesis says that the crucial time in which the child can acquire a first and a second language is the first years of life of a child; if presented with adequate stimuli, and that language acquisition relies on neuroplasticity. In other words, they think that learning a language becomes difficult later in life since in early years it is successful, quicker, and qualitatively similar to the first language, but only if it occurs before the age of puberty.

However, a new study was done by MIT Scientist titled “A Critical Period for Second Language Acquisition”; this study states that adults can learn a language reaching a native-like fluency just like children. The findings have shown that adults of any age can obtain incredible mastery in a new language nearly as good as children can, and the findings have also shown an amazing insight into language learning in general. Apart from that, when learning a second language, reaching a native-like fluency is not the most important goal when learning a language, the most important goal about learning a language is being able to communicate with more people, since when you learn a new language you have to learn not only the language but also the culture.

Many studies have shown that it is true that due to their plasticity children acquire a language without much effort. However, they have to be exposed to the new language most of the time; and it has to be the correct stimuli; otherwise, it is not going to work. While adults have shown to be good at “explicit language” that means studying a language with a teacher explaining the rules and the different linguistic skills in a classroom. “Young children are very bad at explicit learning because they don’t have the cognitive control and the attention and memory capabilities,” says Antonella Sorace, a professor of developmental linguistics and director of the Bilingualism Matters Centre at the University of Edinburgh. “Adults are much better at that. So that can be something that improves with age. Furthermore, Children tend to speak using simple sentences and only very basic vocabulary since children do not yet have a need for complex language.

In conclusion, there are many well-documented studies that prove that adults are efficient language learners, as it has been shown that adults due to their cognitive maturity process, analyze and memorize the information better, can learn a new language faster, have a longer-term attention span and the patience to stick when learning a language, most of the time are self-motivated as they have their goals well settled, and unlike children, adults have the necessity to utter more complex and elaborated sentences when communicating. Nevertheless, it is important to emphasize that adults and children learn a new or a second language in different ways, children require different methods and techniques as adults do. Hence, it is not fair to generalize each student into a category since everyone is unique and, therefore, will obtain different results as well. As Dornyei states, “in any given situation, there is invariably a multitude of factors involved, and age is often only one of them and not necessarily the most important one. There are also documented examples of unsuccessful child language learning, as well as of successful adult language learning” (2009).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harley, B. (1986). Age in Second Language Acquisition. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Harley, B. &D.Hart.(1997). Language aptitude and second language proficiency in classroom learners of different starting ages. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19(3), 379-400.