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Do children learn languages quicker? Obviously they learn their native language quick because of full immersion plus playing and talking is pretty much the onl

Do children learn languages quicker? Obviously they learn their native language quick because of full immersion plus playing and talking is pretty much the only thing they have to do. For other languages, if they spend say 3 hours a week learning another language they'd probably be at the same level as an adult spending the same amount of time. And things like curiosity, feeling of relevancy etc. are going to be a bigger factor in speed of learning I reckon.

ivanhoe 8y ago
My kids at certain age (between 2-4 yo) picked up a lot of Spanish by simply watching youtube videos for 1-2 hours a day (their fav. cartoon at the time Pocoyo was in Spanish). Compared to my learning efforts it was definitely going much easier for them, especially since it was completely unstructured learning for them, they had to figure out the meaning based just on the visual context. They've also learned a lot of Italian at the same time by simply listening to my wife's family talk between themselves (I listened them too, but my Italian still sucks). Problem is that they also forget most of it very quickly around 5 y/o (I guess it matches the period of infantile amnesia) unless they're exposed to the language regularly. So now they still understand Italian very good, but as they've lost interest in that cartoon they've quickly forgot most of their Spanish vocabulary.
- shmat 8y ago
  When I first started learning French, I watched videos intended for French kids and I picked up a lot quickly. The biggest problem for me was, unlike a kid, I couldn't stand to watch them for very long. As an adult, boredom set in pretty quickly and thus loss of focus. However, it was still very useful until I got to a level where I could understand more adult content. It was certainly more useful than most traditional language learning materials.

ivanhoe 8y ago

My kids at certain age (between 2-4 yo) picked up a lot of Spanish by simply watching youtube videos for 1-2 hours a day (their fav. cartoon at the time Pocoyo was in Spanish). Compared to my learning efforts it was definitely going much easier for them, especially since it was completely unstructured learning for them, they had to figure out the meaning based just on the visual context. They've also learned a lot of Italian at the same time by simply listening to my wife's family talk between themselves (I listened them too, but my Italian still sucks). Problem is that they also forget most of it very quickly around 5 y/o (I guess it matches the period of infantile amnesia) unless they're exposed to the language regularly. So now they still understand Italian very good, but as they've lost interest in that cartoon they've quickly forgot most of their Spanish vocabulary.

shmat 8y ago
When I first started learning French, I watched videos intended for French kids and I picked up a lot quickly. The biggest problem for me was, unlike a kid, I couldn't stand to watch them for very long. As an adult, boredom set in pretty quickly and thus loss of focus. However, it was still very useful until I got to a level where I could understand more adult content. It was certainly more useful than most traditional language learning materials.