The whole "age" thing

[tooironic]

I'm curious as to what people think about that notion that if you don't learn, or are exposed to, more than one language before you become an adult, then you will never attain true fluency in a second language once you do become an adult.

I, myself, don't particularly agree with this statement, but I must say even in my childhood years when I started learning Chinese at school, there was always this ingrained idea in my head that if I wasn't fluent by the time I turned 18 it would all be a waste! As I am nearly 21 now, and still stuck at that intermediate/advanced level (depending on the topic at hand ) there's this fear that fluency is just so far away!

Anyway, my personal neuroses aside, what is your opinion on age and its effect on language learning? Does it get harder, the older you get? Or does age, in fact, have a positive effect, in that it gives you the maturity, determination, and wider range of skills that might actually facilitate more advanced language learning?

[kdavid]

I may be mistaken, but I don't think that the common understanding is that the older you are the more impossible it is to achieve fluency, but the more likely it is that you'll never develop a native accent.

Linguistic theories I've read state that once a child is past the age of 2 or 3, the part of their brain that tells them what is an acceptable and unacceptable sound, as well as the ability for them to learn to produce new sounds learned in a foreign language, shuts off. If, however, exposed young enough, perhaps pre-adolescence, this can be unlearned.

I tend to disagree with the "you'll never sound like a native if you're not raised bilingual." I think this is an easy cop-out for those who "can't" achieve native fluency. In my short 3 years of teaching I've run into a number of adults and teenagers who started learning "late" and yet have perfect American/British accents.

I think the chances that one will become fluent in a second language lessen the older we get. However, this doesn't apply just to languages, but to learning in general.

I'm pretty sure there are studies out there that state the later in life we (re)take up studying, the smaller the chances are of us continuing on to some proficient degree. However, those who "never stop studying" are more likely to keep that portion of their brain open throughout life, and thus learn new information more effectively.

[tooironic]

Interesting post there. I'm a man obsessed when it comes to Chinese, and I have to have faith that this obsession will lead to fluency somewhere down the track. Cheers

[adrianlondon]

I think the concept of being totally fluent, or "speaking like a native" is over-rated. I like to hear foreigners speak English with an accent and occasional odd (ie from their native language) grammar.

[tooironic]

Why do you think it's overrated? If you had the choice to be fluent in Chinese, or functionally fluent with an English-speaking accent, which would you choose?

I mean who knows how close any of us can come... the main thing, I think, is having that goal to push you forward. You know saying, "Shoot for the Moon: Even If You Miss You Will Land Among the Stars".

[anonymoose]

I think age definitely has a large influence, not from the physiological point of view, but because of different circumstances when one is older. Think about how a child learns. Adults continuously talk to babies and little children, usually deliberately clearly and slowly, and repeat the same thing many times over. When a child makes a mistake in pronunciation or grammar, the parent will usually correct them. The child is exposed to the language every waking moment and in genuine real-life situations. All thinking that the child does is in the language they have learnt.

Now compare this with the situation when learning as an adult, or at least an older child. Noone is going to be patient enough to talk at you for hours in a language you don't understand. They are less likely to be as patient in terms of talking slowly, clearly and simply, and repeating several times. If you make a mistake in grammar or your pronunciation is slightly off, you are much less likely to be corrected. You are unlikely to be exposed exclusively to the language you are learning. It is likely that much of your interaction will take place in your native language, and your thinking is likely also to be in your native language, at least part of the time, depending on the level of the language being learnt.

So with all these odds stacked against the older learner, I don't think it's at all surprising that acquiring a native level is nearly impossible, regardless of whether age has a biological influence on learning ability.

[Shadowdh]

I dont think its age at all but mind... that is we have the innate and rather easy ability to complicate so much and believe that so much is hard or out of our reach that we force ourselves down the "too hard" path... I always get asked if I think Chinese is a hard language to learn... both by English and Chinese speakers and my response is always the same, a little but its usually about how much time I practice... if I practice alot then its not hard and I learn, if I dont then it is and I dont...

Adrian then the UK is just full of English speaking people with an "accent" and not all of them foreigners... unless you count those from outside London to be "foreign"... :mrgreen:

[yonglin]

I think I agree wtih anonymoose.

In fact, I think the reason why some adults never learn to speak with a perfect accent is because once we get fluent enough to make ourselves understood (have obtained that "cute-and-not-too-interfering-with-understanding accent" and only make the occassional grammar mistake), no one will correct us anymore. By that time, your pronunciation would already have got quite "fossilized" and it's very difficult to spot that you're making a mistake yourself.

For instance, having lived 1.5 years in different English-speaking countries, I'd still mix up my initial y-/j- and s-/z-. In Swedish (my native language), we just make no distinction between these sounds, so I just didn't realize that it sounded weird to a native speaker's ear. I didn't stop until my boyfriend starting poking fun at me every time I said them wrongly.

Moreover, I've seen 17-18 year olds learning Swedish to a without-accent standard in about 10 months time during their high school exchange years. This is probably related to the fact that they're "babied" quite extensively by their classmates and host families.

[tooironic]

Interesting points, yonglin, but don't you think the learner him/herself bears some responsibility in their own language learning? What I mean is, some people might get to that stage where their skills are at a fairly "decent" level, and due to lack of motivation or just sheer laziness, they make no conscious decisions to improve it beyond that level. In other words, just because native speakers might have stopped correcting someone's second language, doesn't mean that person stops criticising themselves in order to improve. I have a few European friends for example whose English is extremely fluent (so much so that I'm jealous), yet they constantly ask me language questions and are always making sure they're learning something pretty much every day. These kind of people I really admire, and try to model myself after them by always viewing my Chinese humbly and always, always seeking to learn more about anything language-related.

[yonglin]

Actually, I think that you completely missed my point. There are some things you can do on your own as a learner: learn more vocabulary, improve your grammar through studying, etc. Correcting structural pronunciation mistakes, however, is something that is very hard to do on your own, because you are simply not aware of the mistakes your own mistakes: you got so used to hearing them (since you always say them) that they sound completely normal to you. This does not mean that you are lazy or don't care about your language learning.

Three scenarios:

1. Your friend asks you what a word you're saying means (she's not encountered it before). This is normal.

2. Your friend asks you about some word she's read somewhere (what it means, how it's pronounced, etc.). This is normal.

3. Your friend says a perfectly understandable and grammatically correct sentence and asks you to say which words she didn't pronounce perfectly. This is weird, and you'd soon start to think she was annoying if she continued. Maybe she'll only say something obviously strange every 50th or every 100th sentence, so then you'd have to tell her 99/100times that it's fine. Since everyone always understands what she says, and no one ever comments on her occassionally weird pronuncation, putting her "in charge of her language learning" would mean that she has to ask for every sentence. This would not only be inefficient and a waste of time, but also extremely annoying for everyone around her.

For instance, I have a TA who consistently pronounces "interpret" as "inter'pret" rather than "in'terpret". This sounds weird, obviously, but everyone understands what he says anyway and no one ever commented. Now, you could say that if he was just a bit more conscientious and listened more to native speakers, he would get that he was saying it wrong. But maybe to him, the two words sound the same (changing the stress between certain syllables in his language might be alright).

Another example: in Swedish, we make a very, very clear distinction between short and long vowels. Each vowels can be either long or short, and the difference between them is very important: to us, they're just different sounds. In English, on the other hard, it doesn't matter whether you say the "a" in "park" as a long or short vowel - it might depend on your regional accent or your mood - they're the same to you. I don't know how many times I've told my boyfriend he's saying the Swedish vowels incorrectly, then slowly repeated the correct and incorrect version just for him to proclaim "they're the same". Since he's a very talented language learner, I'm taking this to mean that it is actually genuinely difficult for him to make out these differences.

[tooironic]

Oh, I see. Yes I definitely know what you talking about there. But surely you mean in'ter'pret, with the emphasis on 'ter'?

[renzhe]

I have to admit that I've noticed that people who grow up bilingual tend to pick up languages rather easily. I also believe that young children have a certain (as overrated as it may be) advantage to learning things over people who are old.

But I don't think that there is a time limit, and I think that the importance of this is overrated. Like anonymoose said, children have the freedom to learn 100% of the time. Comparing this to an adult who can dedicate 1 hour a day to studying is simply not a fair comparison.

Another factor is making mistakes, something adults are mortally afraid of.

Personally, I think that learning languages is a skill that can be developed. There are a bunch of processes that take place when learning a language and people who grew up with several languages have internalised many of them. People who grew up to be monolingual often lack some of them, and need to develop them.

It is often said that musicians have fewer problems with tonal languages than "regular" people. They have the skill to hear the melody that they've developed separately (through music training). Engineers may have fewer problems with complex grammar rules (at least this is my experience -- give me a huge table with grammar rules and I'll figure it out. Many people shiver at the idea).

That's my explanation of why bilingual kids learn languages easily and some older people don't. I think it's a matter of skills (hearing, pronunciation, ability to abstract from a language, etc...) that bilingual kids develop early, and other people sometimes don't. Skills can be learned. Depending on the person, this may be easier or more difficult.

I can't summarise my ramblings, I hope someone made some sense out of them.

[yonglin]

But surely you mean in'ter'pret, with the emphasis on 'ter'?

Sorry, I don't understand your question. I mark stress with an apostrophe before the stressed syllable, like they do in all English dictionaries I've had in my life. I don't know what is unclear?

[imron]

It's because native english speakers never notice this sort of thing in their dictionaries, because they've never really had to concern themselves about learning where to place the stress.

[gato]

The stress should be on the "ter".

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interpret

Main Entry:

in·ter·pret Listen to the pronunciation of interpret

Pronunciation:

in-ˈtər-prət, -pət

[monto]

Any language is combination of sound, habit and logics.

The more get aged, the more disadvantage in terms of sound and habit you get, but more advantage in logics.

I watched a TV programme a couple of weeks ago. It is a linguistic test done in UK. A group of very small british babies are exposed to a Hindi pronuciation of two diferent sounds of "Da" that sound the some to native British adults. The experiment shows that babies younger than 10 months can distinguish the diference. The conclusion of the test states that all human individuals come to this world with the abiltity to be a nitive speaker of any language in the world, but slowly loose it, and just become native only in their mother tongue.

Getting more aged, you not only loose some ability you have with birth, but also get your habit you already have enforced, making it more difficult to accept a new thing.

How ever, while we getting older, we have more knowledges and logical ability, we also know more skills to learn.

[kdavid]

Here's an article from today's New York Times about the recent increase in electronic products / toys that help stimulate those parts of our brains that we don't use so often once we hit a certain age.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/technology/03brain.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

[feebie]

I don't think it is impossible

However, children under 5 (i think) learn a language faster people in other age groups.

Some evidence suggests that the language areas of the brain are more 'plastic' before adolescence.

At uni I remember hearing about some studies. It was long time ago - but I will try and remember. umm Generally if someone moves to another country prior to their 13th birthday they pick up the local accent. After they retain the orignal countries accent. Actually my friend is from Poland. She moved to Australia when she was 14. She has a really strong Polish accent. Her sister was 10 and she has an Australian accent.

(no wonder my 声调 are so terrible!!!)

If someone acquires a brain injury that damages the language areas of the brain ---- people under 13 are more likely to recover closer to their original language ability compared to people over 13.

I can't remember any other evidence - there was some.

I don't think it is impossible. However, I think it takes a lot of time and effort.

I have started to watch Chinese TV and it is really helping. ha ha

[self-taught-mba]

I think a lot of people focus on the mind's ability at that age. But I also think a large part of it is the way that people interact with somebody at that age. When somebody talks to us in a patronizing way, what do you say? "Don't talk to me like I'm five years old". Now, when many of us came to China may be we wanted people to do that. Of course no one will treat us that way now (some might say so but I think that's a little bit of an exaggeration).

The amount of input and feedback per word learned that a 2-five year old gets is certainly much greater than what we get.

Similarly, look at the amount of social interaction that occurs in middle and high school. Un-cientifically, it looks like the students that I saw assimilate well had a large progressions in their language ability were as those that had it buried their heads in the books didn't. (Despite having the same age, cultural background, and socioeconomic status)

[foodtarget]

I'm taking a Child Psych class right now, and while that doesn't make me an expert, I've read a bit about child language acquisition theories, supported by numerous studies. First of all, those of you who think age has no effect on language learning, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Controlling for other factors, it usually gets harder to learn a new language with age.

A few people mentioned brain "plasticity" which is right. Before the age of 7(approx.), children are much more capable of forming new neural pathways, and are therefore like sponges when it comes to picking up language. After the age of 7 but before puberty, children are still highly adept at acquiring languages. It is during puberty that our brains "solidify" and we are suddenly less capable of learning a new language. This is not just limited to pronunciation, but all aspects of language including grammar. There was a study (Johnson & Newport, 1989) that tested the grammar of ESL immigrants to the US. Those who arrived by the age of 7 scored as high as native English speakers. After 7, the scores gradually decline.

Those who said that children learn language by having people talk slowly to them and correct their grammatical errors, this is partially wrong. Adults talking directly to babies often use "baby talk" which is slower and more sing-songy, but the majority of a child's language exposure (overhearing conversations between adults, TV, etc.) is normal speed and not repeated. And by the time a child is 4 or 5, they can usually speak with the same speed, basic grammar and basic vocabulary that adults use in daily conversation, so parents have probably stopped speaking "baby talk" by this time, if not much earlier. Also, children can pick up a language even if they are not exposed to it all the time. Studies of hearing children with deaf parents show that children can develop normal language ability with only 5-10 hours per week of interaction with another speaker. And last but not least, children seldom learn language by being corrected or directly taught by their parents. In fact, studies have shown that parents are much more likely to correct the truth value of sentences, and pay little attention to grammar. If a child says something untrue, but grammatically correct, the parents will correct them. If the child says something ungrammatical but true, the parents are likely to confirm/congratulate them.

So in conclusion, yes, age does have an effect on language. But keep in mind that all these studies just reflect general trends. There are some adults who can achieve very high proficiency in a foreign language and affect a rather native accent, while there are also teenagers who are simply abysmal at languages. Some people just have natural abilities. And of course, it matters how much time and effort you put into studying the language.