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The evidence for that “is limited, and support stems largely from theoretical arguments and analogies to other critical periods in biology such as visual develo

by sjy 7y ago

The evidence for that “is limited, and support stems largely from theoretical arguments and analogies to other critical periods in biology such as visual development”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis

foldr 7y ago
You can't trust Wikipedia on linguistics.
yorwba 7y ago
I think it's not so much that second-language acquisition is harder than first-language acquisition, but that first-language acquisition is horribly slow. After five years of full-time study, do you want to reach the level of a five-year old or do you want to be able to handle any communication you could handle in your first language? Not to mention that you probably don't have the time to study a language full-time anymore. Babies spend a lot of time babbling, basically brute-forcing their way to a correct pronunciation. But what if you could make use of phonological research and resources like https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/ipa-charts/ https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/ipa-charts/ to help you get there faster? Parents spend a lot of time playing "look at the X" games to help them learn vocabulary from examples. But what if you just look up unknown words in a dictionary and use spaced repetition to efficiently retain them? Second-language learners have already bootstrapped their way to being able to communicate with other humans. So why not just make use of that, rather than repeating the same slow process of trial and error for another language?
- sjy 7y ago
  This is a good point. I did take a class on phonetics at uni, and it helps a lot with learning the basics of a new language. Maybe Duolingo should do a phonetics course which teaches IPA using examples from a range of different languages!
- foldr 7y ago
  >do you want to reach the level of a five-year old or do you want to be able to handle any communication you could handle in your first language In terms of grammar and vocabulary, five year olds have a much higher level than all but the best L2 speakers. I would regard the ability to speak as well as a 5 year old native speaker as an excellent outcome for five years of full time study of a language. Very few people achieve such a high level within that time.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    > In terms of grammar and vocabulary, five year olds have a much higher level than all but the best L2 speakers. I don't know about grammar, but I found a study [0] that estimates children in kindergarten (age 6) to have a mean vocabulary size of about 3000 root words. If you wanted to beat that in 5 years using spaced repetition, you'd only need to add less than 2 new flashcards per day. In my experience, 10+ new flashcards per day is doable. (When I was adding that many, I spent an hour a day on reviewing flashcards, which eventually made me scale back because I was only studying for fun in my free time.) If you know full-time language students who don't have as large a vocabulary, I wonder how full their time actually was. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232518465_Estimating_root_word_vocabulary_growth_in_normative_and_advantaged_populations_Evidence_for_a_common_sequence_of_vocabulary_acquisition https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232518465_Estimatin...
    - foldr 7y ago
      That's an estimate of expressive vocabulary (i.e. the range of words typically used). It's very obviously not the case that a typical five year old knows only 3000 words of English.
      - yorwba 7y ago
        The methods section of the study I linked begins as follows: Testing reported herein was conducted in Mayand June of 1999. Testing was done individually for children in kindergarten through Grade 2. The investigator introduced herself and said I’m going to ask you what some words mean. Later, I'll ask you to read the same words and some others. Some of these words are common and some aren’t. If you want to stop at any time, you can. I’m going to read you a sentence and then ask you what a word means in that sentence. You can use words, pointing, or acting to explain the meaning of that word. We then gave three examples, including, “ ‘I bought a new car.’ In this sentence, what does car mean?” We continued with “ ‘Johnny fell and broke his arm.’ What does arm mean?” If the child had difficulty with these examples, we would go over them and explain how to answer. (In the arm example, pointing to one’s arm would do.) A final example involved a hard word: “ ‘The material was translucent.’ In this sentence, what does translucent mean?” This example was given so that we could explain that there would be words children did not know, and that it was alright to say, “I don’t know.” (No children actually knew translucent.) This seems to me like a test of which words children know, not the range of words typically used. I can't find the term "expressive vocabulary" anywhere in the paper. Did you assume that's what they were estimating because the number seems low? Actually, 3000 words is quite a lot. The Simple English Wikipedia tries to use only the most common 1500 or so words, for example. Most concepts can probably be expressed in words a five-year old is familiar with. It's just that not everyone takes care to express themselves that clearly, so having a larger vocabulary is still beneficial.

by sjy 7y ago

foldr 7y ago

You can't trust Wikipedia on linguistics.

yorwba 7y ago

I think it's not so much that second-language acquisition is harder than first-language acquisition, but that first-language acquisition is horribly slow. After five years of full-time study, do you want to reach the level of a five-year old or do you want to be able to handle any communication you could handle in your first language? Not to mention that you probably don't have the time to study a language full-time anymore. Babies spend a lot of time babbling, basically brute-forcing their way to a correct pronunciation. But what if you could make use of phonological research and resources like https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/ipa-charts/ https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/ipa-charts/ to help you get there faster? Parents spend a lot of time playing "look at the X" games to help them learn vocabulary from examples. But what if you just look up unknown words in a dictionary and use spaced repetition to efficiently retain them? Second-language learners have already bootstrapped their way to being able to communicate with other humans. So why not just make use of that, rather than repeating the same slow process of trial and error for another language?

sjy 7y ago
This is a good point. I did take a class on phonetics at uni, and it helps a lot with learning the basics of a new language. Maybe Duolingo should do a phonetics course which teaches IPA using examples from a range of different languages!
foldr 7y ago
>do you want to reach the level of a five-year old or do you want to be able to handle any communication you could handle in your first language In terms of grammar and vocabulary, five year olds have a much higher level than all but the best L2 speakers. I would regard the ability to speak as well as a 5 year old native speaker as an excellent outcome for five years of full time study of a language. Very few people achieve such a high level within that time.
- yorwba 7y ago
  > In terms of grammar and vocabulary, five year olds have a much higher level than all but the best L2 speakers. I don't know about grammar, but I found a study [0] that estimates children in kindergarten (age 6) to have a mean vocabulary size of about 3000 root words. If you wanted to beat that in 5 years using spaced repetition, you'd only need to add less than 2 new flashcards per day. In my experience, 10+ new flashcards per day is doable. (When I was adding that many, I spent an hour a day on reviewing flashcards, which eventually made me scale back because I was only studying for fun in my free time.) If you know full-time language students who don't have as large a vocabulary, I wonder how full their time actually was. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232518465_Estimating_root_word_vocabulary_growth_in_normative_and_advantaged_populations_Evidence_for_a_common_sequence_of_vocabulary_acquisition https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232518465_Estimatin...
  - foldr 7y ago
    That's an estimate of expressive vocabulary (i.e. the range of words typically used). It's very obviously not the case that a typical five year old knows only 3000 words of English.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      The methods section of the study I linked begins as follows: Testing reported herein was conducted in Mayand June of 1999. Testing was done individually for children in kindergarten through Grade 2. The investigator introduced herself and said I’m going to ask you what some words mean. Later, I'll ask you to read the same words and some others. Some of these words are common and some aren’t. If you want to stop at any time, you can. I’m going to read you a sentence and then ask you what a word means in that sentence. You can use words, pointing, or acting to explain the meaning of that word. We then gave three examples, including, “ ‘I bought a new car.’ In this sentence, what does car mean?” We continued with “ ‘Johnny fell and broke his arm.’ What does arm mean?” If the child had difficulty with these examples, we would go over them and explain how to answer. (In the arm example, pointing to one’s arm would do.) A final example involved a hard word: “ ‘The material was translucent.’ In this sentence, what does translucent mean?” This example was given so that we could explain that there would be words children did not know, and that it was alright to say, “I don’t know.” (No children actually knew translucent.) This seems to me like a test of which words children know, not the range of words typically used. I can't find the term "expressive vocabulary" anywhere in the paper. Did you assume that's what they were estimating because the number seems low? Actually, 3000 words is quite a lot. The Simple English Wikipedia tries to use only the most common 1500 or so words, for example. Most concepts can probably be expressed in words a five-year old is familiar with. It's just that not everyone takes care to express themselves that clearly, so having a larger vocabulary is still beneficial.