7 ms·

I have been teaching languages for years and the bottom line is the vast majority of adults don't put in the hours. 1 hour a day is seen as a really dedicated

I have been teaching languages for years and the bottom line is the vast majority of adults don't put in the hours. 1 hour a day is seen as a really dedicated adult language learner. If you only did activities that involve languages for 1 hour a day as a kid you would almost certainly flunk school and be way behind your peers. Adults can simply run away into their native language when things get too frustrating. Kids have no where to run to, there is no choice to not learn and no choice to give up.

acangiano 7y ago
I'm reminded of how mathematicians do their best work in their 20s. Many assume this is because of brain decline in later years. I bet it's mostly to do with responsibilities and life getting in the way.
- groestl 7y ago
  It's probably both. At the top of the Gauss curve, you can't afford a single thing to be off.
  - edanm 7y ago
    True, although I don't think most mathematicians are really at that level. I think the common perception of mathematics being a young person's game is not just based on the top-level people, but on everyone, and while all mathematicians are certainly smart (-er than average?), most are not at the "if one thing is off they won't be the next Newton" level.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Why would only mathematicians get so many life responsibilities in their late 20s, while most other profession don't? I would have guessed mathematicians were, on average, supernerds with less life responsibilities than average people.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - edanm 7y ago
    You're probably wrong about the last part (I doubt there's a statistically significant difference between mathematicians and other people in regards to life responsibilities, the big ones obviously being having children). About the first part, I don't think mathematicians specifically get so many life responsibilities - I think most people do most of their "learning" in their 20s, and most of the execution of that learning in their 30s and onwards. Research mathematicians are a bit different in that, like most academics, their serious intellectual work which pushes the frontier and gets them career credit is of the same kind of learning/intellectual work. E.g. compare to programmers- most will learn to program in their 20s, pick up a few languages/technologies, then spend a big chunk of their career with those.
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      The original assertion is that mathematicians do their best work in their 20s. Not learning. Most math discoveries we know were made by guys under 25! This makes mathematics an outlier scientific field, so if your explanation is "life responsibilities", you have to explain why mathematicians have more life responsibilities than others. So my money is on some brain development thing. Not that I have any better argument than "what else could it be?".
      - learc83 7y ago
        The actual age difference it's not all that large compared to other disciplines. > In a study of nearly 2,000 famous scientists throughout history, he found that mathematicians were the youngest when they made their first important contribution. The average age at which they accomplished something important enough to land in history books was 27.3. By contrast, biologists were 29.4 years old, physicists were 29.7, and chemists were 30.5. >mathematicians make their best research contributions (which he defined as the ones mentioned most often by historians and biographers in reference books) at what many might consider doddering old age: 38.8. That age is very similar to those he found in other sciences: 40.5 in biology, 38.2 in physics, and 38.0 in chemistry Math is also a bit unusual compared to most of other disciplines in that math dissertations are often written very quickly and you don't need months or years of studies/experiments to support a thesis. That could easily explain the 2 year gap between mathematicians and biologists noted above. http://www.massey.ac.nz/~rmclachl/overthehill.html http://www.massey.ac.nz/~rmclachl/overthehill.html
- hyperpallium 7y ago
  Erdős didn't let responsibilities get in the way. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s
  - pakitan 7y ago
    > Erdős never married and had no children
    - gerbilly 7y ago
      OP is probably thinking of Euler, who according to a contemporary often worked: "with a child on his knees, a cat on his back "
    - jgtrosh 7y ago
      Not taking responsibility is one way of not letting responsibilities get in the way
    - rat87 7y ago
      He couchsurfed his friends homes, collaborating on math papers with them.
  - retiredcoder 7y ago
    Erdös also did a lot of Amphetamines and claimed Math stopped when he took a break from it.
    - philwelch 7y ago
      It probably did. Just from a perspective of idle layman speculation, Erdős probably had a self-medicated, undiagnosed form of adult ADD. He routinely used amphetamines and methylphenidate (i.e. the two most widely-prescribed ADD drugs) and when he stopped using them for a month, he was incapable of focusing long enough to do his work. From the research I've done, he managed to maintain prescriptions to his stimulants based on a "depression" diagnosis, which is also consistent (adult ADD often manifests as depression).
  - 7y ago
preommr 7y ago
I would say the opposite can be equally true. If a child is learning a second/third language, they'll be way less interested than somebody that has to learn it to because they're doing it out of genuine interest or for a job.
em-bee 7y ago
there is a big difference if you have the opportunity to learn through immersion or if all you have is language classes in school. until age 17 i had no more than 2-4 hours of second and third language classes. (english from first grade, french from 7th) even including homework that just barely approaches 1 hour a day of language learning. my own efforts resulted in grades ranging from B to D and my english skills after 10 years of that were less than mediocre. my english only improved through immersion for a year in the united stated during grade 11. after that one year i reached near fluency (except probably for a much smaller vocabulary) at age 21 i was able to learn dutch through 3 months of immersion alone (no classes). of course i have reached far from fluency, but i learned enough to be able to read and speak, to allow me to continue practicing and learning without classes. children only then have no choice to learn if they live in the country where the second language is spoken. in fact it may well be that the second language becomes their first and they learn their own parents language as a second language.
kd5bjo 7y ago
Kids are also graded on an easier curve than adults. Inevitably, skill is assessed in comparison to your peer group, so kids are doing well when compared to other kids their age. For any given activity, especially language, most adults participating in it have years of experience— an adult beginner will seem incompetent for a long time, despite being objectively better than a kid that has been learning for the same amount of time.
shmat 7y ago
I started learning French 20 months ago at age 63. I've gone from beginner to B2 (upper intermediate) level in that period. It takes a lot of time. I immerse myself as much as possible. Whenever I'm doing chores, cooking, walking I listen to French podcasts. I watch French YouTube channels. In the evening I watch French TV shows and documentaries. I talk to French people regularly on Skype. I read French novels and French newspapers. Essentially, I try to live as if I were in France. It's working. I have the huge advantage of being retired, so I have more time and I'm kind of obsessive about achieving goals. If you put in the time, you can become fluent in a foreign language at any age, especially with all the resources on the internet.
matwood 7y ago
> I have been teaching languages for years and the bottom line is the vast majority of adults don't put in the hours. This is with learning pretty much anything. Adults typically just have less time than their younger counter parts.
joefourier 7y ago
I can personally attest to how fast a child will learn a new language when he is given the same kind of language courses an adult is. When I was 6 years old I decided to take Chinese/Mandarin lessons for a few months. If I compare my progress then to my colleague in his 20s who is learning Chinese in the same way - one hour a day, 2 times a week with an instructor - he certainly is learning much faster than I did. After 6 months he has already surpassed my level and is have basic reading/writing skills, which I never achieved. I also had German courses from age 8-10 with a similar schedule. After that 2 year period I still could not have anything but the most elementary conversation in German, despite getting very high grades in that class. On the other hand, I decided to become fully fluent in English in my late teens, and after intense self-directed practice and a few years in an English-speaking environment, no one is able to tell that I am not a native speaker.
jwr 7y ago
> I have been teaching languages for years and the bottom line is the vast majority of adults don't put in the hours. There is another important aspect: learning your second or third foreign language (or subsequent ones) is easier than the first one. I think studies or comparisons which neglect to take that into account are flawed. Adults (at least outside the US) are likely to be learning their second foreign language, not their first, hence should do relatively well, in spite of a (possible) age handicap.
- retiredcoder 7y ago
  I think it really depends on the set of languages, e.g.: I can see that for an English native speaker learning French after Spanish can be easier but I can’t see that helping with Chinese. Well, at least didn’t help me much
retiredcoder 7y ago
To my own experience, I think the time an adult can physiologically commit to learning is reduced. For example, I noticed that in high school if I really liked a subject I would just sponge it all up, no need for spaced repetition and I could be focused for hours. In college, I started to feel the need for spaced repetitions but yet be focused for hours. Now, if I get to do something I really enjoy intellectually, I can get 30-45 minutes of focus. Then rest and spaced repetition. Last time I tried to push 3 hours of study, I not just forget most of the content but it affected my mood so badly. Somewhat, I see the same pattern with physical activities. I could run have hard workouts back to back in high school while now it is so easy to overtrain and rock my hormones that I need to be really careful.
philwelch 7y ago
Teenagers in particular tend to have an inbuilt compulsion to develop skills. Teenagers will spend hours upon hours of their spare time improving their skill level at sports (including skateboarding), musical instruments, video games--whatever grabs their fancy. Even if you lock them in a windowless room with 60 hours of homework, they'll still get really really good at doing those pencil-spinning tricks with their fingers. I think it's a natural part of the human psyche. If you read about the Mongols or the Comanche or some other horse-nomadic culture, the one thing you learn is that they are really really good at horse archery. As in: virtually every adult male Mongol or Comanche could accurately perform archery from horseback, at full gallop, while hanging from the horse sideways to shield their body and firing arrows from underneath the horse's chin. How is that possible? Well, if you grow up as a Mongol boy, once you reach the stage in life where a Western kid might get a skateboard or a guitar or whatever, you have horses and bows, and all the older kids can already do that stuff.

acangiano 7y ago

I'm reminded of how mathematicians do their best work in their 20s. Many assume this is because of brain decline in later years. I bet it's mostly to do with responsibilities and life getting in the way.

groestl 7y ago
It's probably both. At the top of the Gauss curve, you can't afford a single thing to be off.
- edanm 7y ago
  True, although I don't think most mathematicians are really at that level. I think the common perception of mathematics being a young person's game is not just based on the top-level people, but on everyone, and while all mathematicians are certainly smart (-er than average?), most are not at the "if one thing is off they won't be the next Newton" level.
BurningFrog 7y ago
Why would only mathematicians get so many life responsibilities in their late 20s, while most other profession don't? I would have guessed mathematicians were, on average, supernerds with less life responsibilities than average people.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- edanm 7y ago
  You're probably wrong about the last part (I doubt there's a statistically significant difference between mathematicians and other people in regards to life responsibilities, the big ones obviously being having children). About the first part, I don't think mathematicians specifically get so many life responsibilities - I think most people do most of their "learning" in their 20s, and most of the execution of that learning in their 30s and onwards. Research mathematicians are a bit different in that, like most academics, their serious intellectual work which pushes the frontier and gets them career credit is of the same kind of learning/intellectual work. E.g. compare to programmers- most will learn to program in their 20s, pick up a few languages/technologies, then spend a big chunk of their career with those.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    The original assertion is that mathematicians do their best work in their 20s. Not learning. Most math discoveries we know were made by guys under 25! This makes mathematics an outlier scientific field, so if your explanation is "life responsibilities", you have to explain why mathematicians have more life responsibilities than others. So my money is on some brain development thing. Not that I have any better argument than "what else could it be?".
    - learc83 7y ago
      The actual age difference it's not all that large compared to other disciplines. > In a study of nearly 2,000 famous scientists throughout history, he found that mathematicians were the youngest when they made their first important contribution. The average age at which they accomplished something important enough to land in history books was 27.3. By contrast, biologists were 29.4 years old, physicists were 29.7, and chemists were 30.5. >mathematicians make their best research contributions (which he defined as the ones mentioned most often by historians and biographers in reference books) at what many might consider doddering old age: 38.8. That age is very similar to those he found in other sciences: 40.5 in biology, 38.2 in physics, and 38.0 in chemistry Math is also a bit unusual compared to most of other disciplines in that math dissertations are often written very quickly and you don't need months or years of studies/experiments to support a thesis. That could easily explain the 2 year gap between mathematicians and biologists noted above. http://www.massey.ac.nz/~rmclachl/overthehill.html http://www.massey.ac.nz/~rmclachl/overthehill.html
hyperpallium 7y ago
Erdős didn't let responsibilities get in the way. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s
- pakitan 7y ago
  > Erdős never married and had no children
  - gerbilly 7y ago
    OP is probably thinking of Euler, who according to a contemporary often worked: "with a child on his knees, a cat on his back "
  - jgtrosh 7y ago
    Not taking responsibility is one way of not letting responsibilities get in the way
  - rat87 7y ago
    He couchsurfed his friends homes, collaborating on math papers with them.
- retiredcoder 7y ago
  Erdös also did a lot of Amphetamines and claimed Math stopped when he took a break from it.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    It probably did. Just from a perspective of idle layman speculation, Erdős probably had a self-medicated, undiagnosed form of adult ADD. He routinely used amphetamines and methylphenidate (i.e. the two most widely-prescribed ADD drugs) and when he stopped using them for a month, he was incapable of focusing long enough to do his work. From the research I've done, he managed to maintain prescriptions to his stimulants based on a "depression" diagnosis, which is also consistent (adult ADD often manifests as depression).
- 7y ago

preommr 7y ago

I would say the opposite can be equally true. If a child is learning a second/third language, they'll be way less interested than somebody that has to learn it to because they're doing it out of genuine interest or for a job.

em-bee 7y ago

there is a big difference if you have the opportunity to learn through immersion or if all you have is language classes in school. until age 17 i had no more than 2-4 hours of second and third language classes. (english from first grade, french from 7th) even including homework that just barely approaches 1 hour a day of language learning. my own efforts resulted in grades ranging from B to D and my english skills after 10 years of that were less than mediocre. my english only improved through immersion for a year in the united stated during grade 11. after that one year i reached near fluency (except probably for a much smaller vocabulary) at age 21 i was able to learn dutch through 3 months of immersion alone (no classes). of course i have reached far from fluency, but i learned enough to be able to read and speak, to allow me to continue practicing and learning without classes. children only then have no choice to learn if they live in the country where the second language is spoken. in fact it may well be that the second language becomes their first and they learn their own parents language as a second language.

kd5bjo 7y ago

Kids are also graded on an easier curve than adults. Inevitably, skill is assessed in comparison to your peer group, so kids are doing well when compared to other kids their age. For any given activity, especially language, most adults participating in it have years of experience— an adult beginner will seem incompetent for a long time, despite being objectively better than a kid that has been learning for the same amount of time.

shmat 7y ago

I started learning French 20 months ago at age 63. I've gone from beginner to B2 (upper intermediate) level in that period. It takes a lot of time. I immerse myself as much as possible. Whenever I'm doing chores, cooking, walking I listen to French podcasts. I watch French YouTube channels. In the evening I watch French TV shows and documentaries. I talk to French people regularly on Skype. I read French novels and French newspapers. Essentially, I try to live as if I were in France. It's working. I have the huge advantage of being retired, so I have more time and I'm kind of obsessive about achieving goals. If you put in the time, you can become fluent in a foreign language at any age, especially with all the resources on the internet.

matwood 7y ago

> I have been teaching languages for years and the bottom line is the vast majority of adults don't put in the hours. This is with learning pretty much anything. Adults typically just have less time than their younger counter parts.

joefourier 7y ago

I can personally attest to how fast a child will learn a new language when he is given the same kind of language courses an adult is. When I was 6 years old I decided to take Chinese/Mandarin lessons for a few months. If I compare my progress then to my colleague in his 20s who is learning Chinese in the same way - one hour a day, 2 times a week with an instructor - he certainly is learning much faster than I did. After 6 months he has already surpassed my level and is have basic reading/writing skills, which I never achieved. I also had German courses from age 8-10 with a similar schedule. After that 2 year period I still could not have anything but the most elementary conversation in German, despite getting very high grades in that class. On the other hand, I decided to become fully fluent in English in my late teens, and after intense self-directed practice and a few years in an English-speaking environment, no one is able to tell that I am not a native speaker.

jwr 7y ago

> I have been teaching languages for years and the bottom line is the vast majority of adults don't put in the hours. There is another important aspect: learning your second or third foreign language (or subsequent ones) is easier than the first one. I think studies or comparisons which neglect to take that into account are flawed. Adults (at least outside the US) are likely to be learning their second foreign language, not their first, hence should do relatively well, in spite of a (possible) age handicap.

retiredcoder 7y ago
I think it really depends on the set of languages, e.g.: I can see that for an English native speaker learning French after Spanish can be easier but I can’t see that helping with Chinese. Well, at least didn’t help me much

retiredcoder 7y ago

To my own experience, I think the time an adult can physiologically commit to learning is reduced. For example, I noticed that in high school if I really liked a subject I would just sponge it all up, no need for spaced repetition and I could be focused for hours. In college, I started to feel the need for spaced repetitions but yet be focused for hours. Now, if I get to do something I really enjoy intellectually, I can get 30-45 minutes of focus. Then rest and spaced repetition. Last time I tried to push 3 hours of study, I not just forget most of the content but it affected my mood so badly. Somewhat, I see the same pattern with physical activities. I could run have hard workouts back to back in high school while now it is so easy to overtrain and rock my hormones that I need to be really careful.

philwelch 7y ago

Teenagers in particular tend to have an inbuilt compulsion to develop skills. Teenagers will spend hours upon hours of their spare time improving their skill level at sports (including skateboarding), musical instruments, video games--whatever grabs their fancy. Even if you lock them in a windowless room with 60 hours of homework, they'll still get really really good at doing those pencil-spinning tricks with their fingers. I think it's a natural part of the human psyche. If you read about the Mongols or the Comanche or some other horse-nomadic culture, the one thing you learn is that they are really really good at horse archery. As in: virtually every adult male Mongol or Comanche could accurately perform archery from horseback, at full gallop, while hanging from the horse sideways to shield their body and firing arrows from underneath the horse's chin. How is that possible? Well, if you grow up as a Mongol boy, once you reach the stage in life where a Western kid might get a skateboard or a guitar or whatever, you have horses and bows, and all the older kids can already do that stuff.