3 ms·
It’s not easier to learn a language as a child; that’s a now debunked myth. Children just don’t have any other distractions , internal or external, and literall
by garmaine 8y ago
It’s not easier to learn a language as a child; that’s a now debunked myth. Children just don’t have any other distractions , internal or external, and literally nothing else to do.
I suggest that anyone who thinks a child has an easy time learning a language should try to explain a foreign concept (which all language is, initially) to a 4 year old.
- qntty 8y agoDebunked by who?
- garmaine 8y agoNumerous peer-reviewed studies showing that if you add up all the hours kids spend learning their mother tongue, and then compare with adults that have made a similar investment in a second language, the adults achieve an equal or higher level of mastery. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1128751 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1128751 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9280.01415 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9280.01415 Basically there's a relationship between time invested and skill that's nearly the same no matter how old you are (and perhaps even in the adult's favor). But what DOES differ significantly is that adults typically don't spend 8-16 hours every day immersed in their target language.
- garmaine 8y agoReply to self since this is now too old, but these studies are anecdotally confirmed by online polyglots who are able to very efficiently learn languages to mastery by constructing 24/7 self-immersion environments. See www.ajatt.com, for example.