Why you shouldn’t let age be an obstacle to learning a new language.

Myth: Learning a language: The older you get, the harder it gets!

“Children are sponges,” “I’m too old to start learning a new language,” “It would’ve been easier to learn before.”

Does this sound familiar to you?

Fact: Under the same learning conditions and equal exposure to a language, adolescents and adults will reach fluency in a second language faster than children.

But there are countless examples of families who immigrate that prove the contrary! Examples of children who flourish in their new language and outshine their parents entirely. Examples of children who need to translate for their parents…

Yes, this is often the case. 

However, the environment children learn in is often very different from that of their parents.

Language learning environment

We tend to overlook that a child attending a school in a new country’s exposed to their new language throughout the week, in and outside class time.

As an adult learner, allocating 40 hours to learn or perfect a second language can be complicated, let alone 100 or 200 hours.

Consider an anglophone family who moves to a francophone country. 

Their 10-year-old attends the local school.

Within a week, their child experiences 30 or 40 hours of French in class alone. Outside class, they make friends with francophone children and continue absorbing the language. In three months, they’ll be exposed to over 600 hours of French.

Now, consider the parents. 

They work full-time, and allocating time to study French is difficult. They sign up for 40 hours of French classes and study for three hours a week. They’ll finish 40 hours in three months and a bit.

While they’re committed to learning French, their initial lack of the language makes finding friends they can speak to easier. Naturally, it’s much easier to make friends who speak English. After three months, their immediate social circle’s anglophone.

Let’s compare the 10-year-old to their parents: 

In three months, the child’s been fully immersed in a French-speaking environment. They’ve been exposed to approximately 600 hours of French, from a pedagogical and social perspective.

In contrast, the parents have been exposed to 40 hours of French through their classes and another hour or so when shopping or going out to eat.

Under these conditions, a 10-year-old will undoubtedly progress faster than their parents.

Here, age isn’t the problematic factor but rather the learning environment.

Nuances – Neuroplasticity

But conclusive studies and data have demonstrated that toddlers and young children have greater cerebral plasticity than adults and, therefore, a better ability to learn languages.

Is this true? Everything points towards a resounding yes. 

So, this confirms the myth? 

No!

The answer’s a lot more nuanced. 

Humans have an innate ability to acquire languages. This ability, heightened for children, progressively slows down from birth to age 12, then levels off.

However, the language toddlers and children learn differs from that of older learners.

Some key differences:

The meaning of language – Children versus adults

From their later residency in the womb to around two, children acquire and reproduce the sounds of their native language. Towards age two, they produce these sounds as recognizable words and later organize them in recognizable sentences.

The quantity of information absorbed, processed, and reproduced is phenomenal. Not only are infants internalizing all this information, but they’re also learning meaning and concepts.

Cerebral plasticity at this stage of development’s far superior to that of adults. However, the quantity of information processed completely eclipses the data adults absorb when they learn a new language.

While adolescents and adults learning a second language need to acquire new vocabulary, they don’t need to learn their concepts.

Comparison:

Take a 30-year-old learning French. During their first classes, they learn possessive pronouns and names of family members such as aunt and uncle.

They learn the French word for uncle, “oncle“. Once they are told that “uncle = onlce“. The following step is to remember the word and place it in sentences.

In contrast:

To a child, the word “uncle” doesn’t mean much. A child may very well remember the word and use it when speaking. However, they often don’t understand its meaning; that uncle = the brother of one of their parents. If their parents’ best friend’s referred to as “uncle,” the child may define “uncle” as someone close to their parents.

Language acquisition for children involves acquiring simple concepts adults often take for granted.

Learning the word uncle requires a child to:

• Understand what a parent is,
• What family members are,
• Understand that family members are organized into categories that are also organized into subcategories based on gender,
• Understand that their uncle is = to one of their parents’ brothers.
• …

As adults, we tend to overlook this as evident. 

*Children don’t process the information in a logical order as we’ve listed it, and neither do most adults. However, adults do understand the word in these terms.

The initial acquisition of these concepts, sounds, sentence structures, and other internal language rules, often taken for granted by adults, account, in part, for heightened cerebral plasticity in younger children.

While children have an increased ability to acquire languages, this language differs from adult learners. They receive much more information, language rules, initial vocabulary, and the meaning behind words… Information, transversal to languages, that adults have already developed.

Adolescents and adults excel at anxiety

As puberty starts to make its appearance, a significant factor obstructing language learning begins to take its way to center stage. We start caring what everyone thinks about us, believe everyone judges us, and fear making mistakes in front of others.

A critical condition of learning languages is to do so in a low-stress environment. A person in a low-stress environment’s likelier to learn a new language than one in a high-stress environment.

Children don’t feel inhibited because they don’t speak the langue well. They happily chat with other children or adults and make mistakes when speaking. They don’t judge themselves, adults don’t, and, importantly, no one corrects them.

No one corrects them, and they develop to speak perfectly… Think about this.

While we can’t change our aversion to judgment, language teaching and learning can be adapted to favor a low-stress learning environment.

Stop overcorrecting!

When children are small, for the most part, people don’t correct their mistakes, and their language develops to be perfect. 

Why, then, do we change this for adults?

As adult learners, it’s often the norm to strive for perfection. Students are continually corrected and continually endeavor to be corrected. Other than being highly discouraging, this favors a high-stress learning environment.

Learning a new language in a high-stress environment isn’t unlike driving with your hand-break on. The more you go, the more likely you’re to break down and stop.

As students at school, we’re exposed to a particular teaching format. Through math, chemistry, or language classes. Math’s taught and learned by analyzing concepts and rules and internalizing data. These rules become the base for further learning. This format’s applied to other subjects such as chemistry and, often, second languages.  

What works for math doesn’t necessarily work for languages.

Linguists approach the academic study of langue by studying, among other, its rules. One set of rules is what’s termed grammar.

The mistake people make is believing that to acquire a new language, you need to study, as linguists do, the rules that make up the language. While some subjects require students to be precise and follow the rules, language learning differs.

Language learning’s made complicated for adult learners. Studying grammar makes it complex and discouraging for those not particularly interested in grammar. This is like learning to dance salsa by reading a book on rhythm.

But this child went to school and learned French in their grammar-focused French class!

Did they? Really? Why do we conveniently overlook that they also attended all their other classes in French? That all their new friends speak French?

Learning the language vs. learning to write

There are two distinct aspects to language: writing and speaking. To learn to write with inflections, that is, genders and conjugations where one pronunciation can give different spellings (aimer, aimé, aimée, aimez…), we need guidelines linguists call grammar. However, children learn to speak without rules.

Language learning was traditionally based on learning Latin and Greek. In either case, the learner wasn’t concerned with speaking but writing. This has given rise to the traditional idea that writing’s essential.

Why do we say “je veux du pain” and not “je veux pain”? The answer’s because. Do we write “bijous” or “bijoux”? The pronunciation’s the same. It’s only when we begin writing that we learn rules to help us.

Children learn their spoken language reasonably well by the age of three. Chinese, English, French, German… All perform equally well. Why, then, do we say that such and such a language’s difficult, German, for instance?

Very simply because teachers make language learning difficult.

How? By teaching grammar. If grammar’s so essential to learning to speak, why do we not teach a 3-year-old grammar?

Too often, the problem lies in how adults learn.

A huge difference between children and adults isn’t in acquiring the langue itself but rather in how the language’s taught! Poor teaching methods give poor results.

Many argue that the environmental conditions that permit children to learn faster can’t be adapted to adults.

I couldn’t disagree more!

The solution isn’t to take the environmental factors as an unchangeable fact but gradually and realistically create the space, in classrooms and in our daily environment, for a new language.

It isn’t uncommon for teachers to prepare course materials themselves. Often, this is based on feeling or keeping the students amused. While maintaining students amused is good, more’s needed.

The material itself needs to be founded on concise language objectives adapted to the student’s current level. The materials should be made to help them acquire the langue and reach linguistic and didactic independence, rather than teach students about the theory of the language.

We don’t need to adapt students to a method of teaching but rather adapt the method to the average student.

Manageable and realistic expectations

Adult learners need to set manageable and realistic expectations.

Strive for perfection. Sure! But be realistic about timing and methods. Don’t pull your hair out or despair because you can’t speak after a week. Understand that if you take a 40-hour class and still can’t speak a word by the end of 40 hours, the problem isn’t you, the student; it’s the method used to learn.

Zero to fluent in 40 hours is unrealistic. Zero to essential conversational fluency in 40 hours is more realistic.

Adults and adolescents can learn new languages equally or better than small children. This doesn’t change much as we grow older. What changes are learning attitudes and environments.

Often, we do as was done and don’t question the methods much. Generic teaching environments perpetuate myths that learning’s complicated.

The good news is that these are possible to overcome. Instead of taking known problems for granted, we must create teaching methods around them.

Why the myth?

Misinterpreted data, suboptimal learning conditions, and poor teaching methods perpetuate this myth. As standard teaching methods aren’t particularly efficient, the conclusion’s that it must be the learners and not the teaching.

What can we do differently?

The answer lies in changing adult learners’ mindsets, adapting teaching methods to teach authentic and valuable materials, adapting teaching materials to the average student, and focusing on helping students acquire their spoken language in a low-stress environment.

The author: Some shameless self-promotion 

My Linguistics specializes in creating language acquisition methods for teachers and students. Our Swiss-based language training center serves as a testing ground for our method. 

We’re passionate about helping people unlock the power of language and communication, and we’re committed to providing the resources and support needed to achieve fluency.

Contact us to learn more about our approach and language method.

My Linguistics method: https://mylinguistics.com/method

My Linguistics school: https://mylinguistics.com/

The article

Language learning’s surrounded by a sea of myths or “universal truths.” Often originating from misinterpreted facts, these myths become well-established popular facts.

Setting realistic expectations and navigating popular misconceptions is central to establishing firm foundations for learning new languages. This series addresses these myths, their origins, and whether there’s any truth to them in the hopes of encouraging people to learn a second (or third) language