A student enters the University of Mainz, Germany, with no prior knowledge of two foreign languages. Six years later, he emerges, a fully qualified UN-level interpreter or translator.
The program doesn’t allow children.
The Defense Language Institute and the Monterey Institute specialize in teaching category three languages, the most difficult, to complete beginner adults, raising them to fluency in one year.
Once again, children are not permitted in the courses.
A survey of people working as professional interpreters would show that 80% of them graduated from less than five universities in the world.
None of them were children.
For years I have been waging a lonely war against the belief that children learn foreign languages faster than adults. This is a commonly held belief, but in discussing it with language teachers none of them seem to be able to produce logical answers beyond the fact that “Everyone knows it’s true.”
My first argument is always this: “Do you believe that children learn physics faster than adults?”
The answer is usually a joke, such as, “A child would definitely learn faster than me.” Or, a truthful answer, “No, obviously children don’t learn physics faster than adults.”
My next question is: If children don’t learn physics faster than adults, then why do you believe they learn languages faster?
Here are some of the recent answers I received from teachers in Saigon.
1. Children learn languages faster because they are so immersed in the language.
A: My counter question to this is, “Why do you believe children are any more immersed than adults?” The person who said this is an English teacher at a language school where adults and children both attend the same number of classes per week, for the same number of hours. There is no immersion in this program. But, if it is true that children are magically more immersed in foreign languages than adults, then this is not a fair comparison. We would have to monitor a child and an adult or a group of children and a group of adults who are equally immersed to determine which group learns a language faster.
Myth busted.
2. A Canadian teacher gave an example: My father had been trying to learn French on his own for years, studying with books and tapes, but he never became fluent. When the children in the family attended French classes at school, they became fluent in just a year or two.
A: My counter point: A fair comparison would be to monitor an adult and a child both attending school in Canada, and seeing which one learned faster. The other fair comparison would be to give books and tapes to a child and books and tapes to an adult and tell them to learn on their own. Without any doubt, the adult would learn faster, studying on his own than would a child.
Myth busted.
3. Another Canadian teacher said: “Children don’t learn grammar faster but they learn vocabulary faster.”
A: My counter point: In the native tongue, medical school is one of the most vocabulary intensive courses of study that one could pursue. Obviously, we only allow adults to attend medical school. If we limit our discussion strictly to vocabulary, the course Anatomy and Physiology is one of the weeding out courses for pre-med and pre-RN studies. If children learn vocabulary faster then native speaker children should do better at this course than adults. Clearly, however, this is not the case.
Myth busted.
4. A British teacher said: “I learned English as a child. And I learned it well, in only three years. I have been living in Vietnam for four years, but I don’t speak Vietnamese well.”
A: My counter point: Once again, he is not comparing like things. When he learned English, his mother tongue, he had people talking to him, non-stop every waking minute, teaching him words, grammar, phrases, and usage. He also observed people using English and learned by listening. Then, at age six he began attending school eight hours per day.
Since arriving in Vietnam this teacher completed a single Vietnamese course which counted for a total of 160 hours. A native speaker child will get that much exposure every few weeks. Over a period of years, the native speaker child will have tens of thousands of hours of exposure.
In order to prove that children learn faster, this teacher would need to attend tens of thousands of hours of Vietnamese classes and fail to learn. Obviously a student with 160 hours of classes can’t compare to one with tens of thousands of hours.
Myth busted.
I am attending intensive, beginner level Vietnamese classes at a university in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. If a new foreign student walks in and claims to have absolutely no prior knowledge of Vietnamese, he is probably telling the truth. With English classes, unless you were born and raised in a cave on a remote island in Kamchatkastan, there is no way you have absolutely zero knowledge of English. Even children, particularly city children from wealthy families, have had some exposure to English prior to starting school.
This would suggest that a beginner English student would be starting at a higher level than a beginning Vietnamese student. And yet, at the end of only eight days of Vietnamese classes, my adult classmates and I already know the entire alphabet. And when I say know, we not only know the sound values of the letters, but we are expected to read texts, write sentences and do grammar substitutions and translations of simple texts.
It takes children a year of formal education to reach that level in their native tongue. Clearly they would need more than eight days to learn to perform similar tasks in a foreign language.
In adult English classes there is an assumption that students can already read the Latin alphabet. As a result, from the first lesson they are already expected to be able to read any English word they encounter, such as “encyclopedia.” They may not know what an encyclopedia is. But they would be expected to read the word aloud. The same is true of my Vietnamese class. Our vocabulary is still quite small, but we would be expected to read any word we encountered.
In the children’s classes, on the other hand, their reading is limited to small three and four letter words and only words they have encountered before.
Actually, there is evidence that, for beginning foreign language learning, adults do learn faster than children. However, children eventually catch up and surpass adults in ultimate attainment, especially in specific areas of the foreign language – namely pronunciation and aspects of grammar. The older a person is when beginning language study (either in a formal classroom or in an immersion situation, such as immigrating to a new country), the less likely that person will be to ultimately achieve “native-like” or “near native-like” proficiency in the new language.
TL;DR –
That’s not ability, that’s will.
Yes, research has shown that older children and adults will learn a foreign language faster than young children, just as they learn math or physics or… faster. However, I’m not quite sure about what Mr. Graceffo’s point is: It’s never too late to learn another language? I wholeheartedly agree! Or is it that we shouldn’t be teaching foreign languages to children, something that, by the way, almost every country other than the US does? In that case, I disagree. You see, the adult students who pick up a language in a short time in say, Monterey or Mainz, are already proficient in several other languages. So while they may indeed study a completely new language, they are not starting from scratch. Just like Mr. Graceffo’s Chinese study has helped him with his Vietnamese study, they have already learned HOW to learn another language,
How on earth could one possibly arrive at the conclusion Antonio is saying we shouldn’t be teaching foreign languages to children?
Actually there is no reason to assume that people entering Monterey institute are already proficient in several other languages. in the case of DLI Defense language Institute, for example, the average entrant is about 19 years old and is generally required to have no prior knowledge of the language he or she is about to study. In mainz, you could definitely enter without prior knowledge of the language combo you will study, but yes, you must have had English, German and usually French to begin. but this is the point, adults already have their native language or other L2s which help them learn a new L2, which proves the point, adults learn faster. the one area where children have a huge advantage is in acquiring a second L1, say in the case of immigration. But i am only talking about learning, not acquiring language.
I believe your arguments do not prove your point. First of all there is a difference between acquisition (the most valuable way of integrating knowledge), learning and memorising. The difference between small children and adults is that small children acquire the language, just as they acquire everything else they get to know, while adults only learn it or what’s even worse they memorise things they read in class, rules and so on. Only acquisition ensures full proficiency in a language. Just because not everybody knows it, it does not mean that there haven’t been extensive studies and important findings on the way our brain learns (in a valuable and long lasting way) according to our age. I don’t remember the exact percentages,but I know that after our first year of life our ability to learn (i.e. to acquire) drops down drastically. Our ability to produce and hear new phonemes (sounds) that were not introduced to us during our first year of life is extremely low. It is true that some tend to be more receptive than the others because our brains do not all work the same, but the way that an adult and even an adolescent learns is very different from that of a small child. The fact that a child does not learn physics faster than an adult does not prove anything: this has nothing to do with the ability to learn but with the ability to understand abstract and highly specialised concepts and conventions. Such ability is characteristic to adults, but not to children. In fact, this very specialisation of the brain is what makes it more difficult for adults to acquire knowledge and abilities in a natural way. Small children are like sponges for new information, precisely because their brain is not yet that specialised and full of other information. But all this (as well as the theories that you are trying to contradict) refers to small children, i.e. especially children who did not start formal education yet. Formal education is one of the main factors that change our way of learning and the way our brain functions. Maybe this is where your error came from, that you tend to compare school children to adults. School children might still learn faster than some adults, but mostly in a native speaking environment not in a formal education environment. You should always make a distinction between these things. There would be many other things to say, but you should study the matter more in depth before pretending that you “busted” any “myth”. Because so far you simply didn’t.
I don’t mean to be impolite, but I have to be frank and say that the argument that a human’s ability to learn drops down drastically after the first year of life is obvious nonsense. Did you learn more in a year of college or your first year as a baby? Also, you first say there’s a distinction between acquiring and learning, and then treat them as synonymous. There certainly is a difference between learning and memorizing. But what distinction are you trying to make between learning and “acquiring”?
Where I think you’ve struck a right note is saying that small children are like sponges “because their brain is not yet that specialised and full of other information”. It’s not that children learn language faster or easier than adults — I certainly agree with Antonio this is nonsense — it’s that they are a clean slate and so earlier language learners will tend to have better pronunciation. They are more likely to speak like a native. They also haven’t had time to compound bad habits. Adult learners tend to reproduce foreign sounds with sounds they already know. So I can teach a 5 year old Taiwanese kid to pronounce “thank you” very easily, but an adult student will say “sank you” no matter how many times you correct him because Chinese doesn’t have “th” sound, and so he’s learned it as “s” and repeated it so many times that way that it’s just a bad habit he can’t break. Kids don’t have to “unlearn what they have learned” to paraphrase Yoda.
This is not to say adults don’t have the ability to hear and produce new phenomes. Not at all. It’s just a matter of actually listening long enough before trying to reproduce that sound. Short of some kind of speech impediment, every person is just as capable of making the same sounds as every other person. The adult learner certainly can hear “th” and pronounce “th”. He just doesn’t, because it’s just a bad habit to pronounce it “s”, and he’s too lazy to want to make the effort to concentrate on pronouncing it correctly. He thinks “sank you” is good enough. But he’s certainly demonstrably capableof pronouncing it correctly.
It’s also easier to see progress with a child, which I think tends to add to the myth. Add a tablespoon of water to an empty glass and you see what you’ve accomplished. But add a cup of water to a bath and it will seem like you didn’t do much.
Actually, even though it may not seem so, all of us learn much more in our first year of life than in our first year of college. Higher education only brings further information on certain topics which if we do not repeat every day or use in a certain way we soon forget, but what we learn as babies is abilities that will accompany us for all our life, whatever we do, ever if at some point we started suffering from amnesia. This is because those things were acquired, not simply learned, and this is exactly what the difference is between learning and acquiring,a difference which is acknowledged and given great importance by many theories and foreign language learning. I did not use them as synonyms, but I replaced at times the term “acquisition” by the term “a kind of learning” because the term learning is the generally known and understood term for the activity of integrating knowledge. So one can simplify by thinking of acquisition as a very valuable kind of learning. With acquisition, we integrate knowledge without voluntarily trying to, while learning implies an act of volition. A small child will learn any language as a native language,not as a foreign language and this brings a great difference in terms of speed of acquiring proficiency. Of course, the child will only learn the words and phrases that s/he needs and is interested in learning, so s/he certainly won’t learn medical terms! Now that was ridiculous, of course the adult “wins” if you ask the child to learn a language with an adult’s means…However, I do believe that both children and adults learn much faster and much better in an environment where the foreign language is spoken naturally (i.e. when living in a foreign country) than when we spend hours and hours on books or in a language class.
Cora, babies can’t speak. So one can hardly argue that a baby in his/her first year learns a language faster than an adults can. Again, obvious nonsense.
You did use “learning” and “acquiring” synonymously: “…after our first year of life our ability to learn (i.e. to acquire)…” But never mind.
The logic that a child learns a language as a native language and not as a foreign language and therefore acquires proficiency faster than an adult is a non sequitur.
Also, to Cora’s point about developmental changes in the ability to discriminate non-native speech sounds, please see:
http://ilabs.washington.edu/kuhl/research.html#Native
This is basically arguing an infant learns a language through immersion, which is a no-brainer. Of course they do. But adults can also learn a language through immersion and can also “crack” the speech code. Just because many/most adults don’t actually learn a second language that way doesn’t mean they aren’t able to. An adults powers of deduction are certainly greater than an infant’s.
I’m writing a argumentive paper for my english class about why foreign language should be taught in elementary school. I think it is pretty given that it should be, but I have to answer the question of why. Why start at such a young age, what are the benefits and differences between a starting at a young age versues learning at a adult age. I am no liniuists specialist so i’m having trouble crafting my argument. Yall seem very knownledgable about this information. I was hoping someone had some advice for me, maybe could just tell me or point me into the right direction. I enjoyed reading the responses between everyone, very interesting.
If you could either just reply on here or shoot me a email. Thank you!
westk10@students.ecu.edu
If you start teaching a second language to children at a young age, they don’t have to “unlearn” what they’ve already learned of their own language. Adults tend to think of a second language in terms of their native language. They understand language according to the framework they’ve already had firmly embedded in their brains their entire lives, which can actually prove an obstacle to learning. Children don’t have that disadvantage. They don’t overthink it. They don’t translate it. They don’t think that “ni yao chi shenme” means “What do you want to eat”, but “ni yao chi shenme” means “ni yao chi shenme”. It’s also a bonus for pronunciation, because adults have the same problem with thinking of foreign phenomes in terms of the phenomes of their own language. My adult Taiwanese students have the most difficult time pronouncing final “L”s. They have no problem with initial “L”s, because many Chinese words begin with that sound, but I’ve never come across a word in Chinese that has a final consonant L sound, and I don’t think they exist. Which would explain why adult students have such a hard time doing it, even though their tongues are perfectly capable of making that sound. But kids haven’t already trained their tongues over a half a lifetime not to make “L” sound at the end of a syllable/word, so it becomes more natural for them. In my experience as a teacher, as a generalization and anecdotal evidence, the younger someone begins to learn a second language, the better and more native-like their pronunciation will be.
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Well, my first language is Italian. Once we arrived here in the states, I had 27 years. We lived in the North Ward of Newark, NJ after living in Casalvieri, Italy. My brother Fausto was 18, nine years my junior. I am now 55, and Fausto is 46. Guess what, Fausto speaks, reads and writes English, but he has a heavy accent and his writing is similar to his speech in that it is choppy. On the other hand, even though I am 28 years Fausto’s senior, I have no accent, and you are reading my writing. Obviously there are many more factors that go into learning 2nd and 3rd languages such that it becomes almost impossible for generalizations to hold true for a given case. As my case shows, one’s learning is only limited by one’s own initiative. If I can learn Italian, then English, followed by French, Spanish, and Polish, then ANYONE can learn.
There is no way to compare learning physics and a language ! This is totally absurd. Physics requires previous knowledge of math concepts thus a long way before you can teach a kid some fundamentals of physics. Language requires nothing before. The major advantage for kids compared to adults is that they don’t need reference systems, they just learn whatever they ear and use it the way the other uses. So a bilingual kid (like my son) has no problems in switching between two languages because he has built their foundations in parallel when he was growing up. Now he is learning another language and is much older. The process is totally different and he can’t master that other language even after 3 years of classes. A friend of mine moved to Japan, with their age 5 son. After 1 year my friend and his wife could barely put together simple sentence, their son instead was speaking perfectly with no accents (of course the language of a 5-years old kid). Now after many years in Japan, the kid has no problems with Japanese and hid original language (Italian), while my friends still cannot sustain a decent piece of conversation. I have many friend and some of them have degrees, masters and PhD in linguistic and they are all saying the exact opposite of this article. Kids can learn languages faster and better than adults.
Kids cannot learn languages faster and better than adults. Adults are in every way just as capable.
How is being able to learn what they hear and use it the way others use it an “advantage” for children learning a language? As if adults didn’t have that capability, and to a much greater extent!
As for your son not being able to master a third language, had he mastered English and the second language by the time he was three years old? I don’t think I had mastered English by that age. Arguably, I still haven’t.
As for your friend who moved to Japan, did the parents even *try* to learn the language? The son presumably was learning it in school?
Adults are certainly capable but they have already built up a reference system based on the native language that will be the major obstacle to learn the new language. It will take years and possibly leaving in the country where the language is spoken to get rid of that “reference system”. Accent reduction techniques are certainly possible also for adults, but it requires a big effort and it not always successful. For kids it’s a total different story. They learn faster, better and foreign accent most of the time is gone within months. The listen to the language. They don’t try to associate language with writing until later in school. My son was born in USA but we moved to Italy when he was 3 years old. We kept speaking english as much as possible, of course with our native italian accent. We moved back in USA at the time of his first year of middle school (6 grade), he immediately capitalized his english knowledge ! Within few months he was in all the honor programs and his accent is totally undistinguishable from other kids. At the first parent-teachers conference some of the teachers they were surprised to learn that he just came from ITaly. I don’t think this story is exceptional, I know many other kids from foreign parents who are living in USA from long time. They don’t have any accent and they switch easily among the languages they know. Parents, even people like us with a higher education, invariably carry an accent.
Kids do not learn languages faster than adults.
Pronunciation is a separate issue. You are right about the first language being an obstacle “reference system” for adults learning a second language, but this is just as true for kids learning a second language. This is why so many kids I taught in Taiwan spoke “Chinglish”, because they were relying on their native tongue as a reference system. You hit it when you said kids “listen to the language”. This is how they can learn proper pronunciation. But adults can listen to the language, too. Too often they don’t, causing them to speak with an accent, but this isn’t because they can’t. It has to do with how they went about learning the language.
It doesn’t sound like English was really a second language for your son. Sounds like it was a first language for him. After all, the crucial first three years of his life were spent in the US, presumably learning English all the while, and as you point out, you continued his exposure to English when in Italy.
You’re not alone! I absolutely believe adults learn languages quicker as well.
I tried to sum up my thoughts with this post: http://www.languagebydoing.com/learn-languages-easily-children-adults.
The approach to language learning I’m trying to promote leaves out the classroom structure, but you touch on some excellent points. Adults simply have better methods of learning that come from having references and experience.
i am a teacher in my country, i teach English to kids, i think teaching children in an early age is a hard job, but some children at age 13 or 14 and more than this age are better in learning, i think that is because they are better at understanding their goals, children before the age 10 are not that much eager to learn another language, their parents force them to learn a new language.