The Adult Advantage

We have been talking about the ‘wiring’ that children seem to have for learning language.However,there are many people who then go on to say ‘It doesn’t apply to adults because adults haven’t been able to keep the ability to learn language.’I don’t know about you,but I have seen many people in the world,and the only time they lose the ability to do something is when they either do something different for a while,or when they do nothing and get rusty. It’s like a muscle.If you use it,it will be there.If you don’t use it,you will lose it.And if you want to find it back,it will no longer as difficult as we got it first.We still have something fundamental that has been hiding somewhere,when we start it again,it will help us attain the ability much easier than before.I have seen a movie in which a person drifted to a wild island and there was no one on the island he can talk to.About 20 years later,he could not say a word,and his throat even couldn’t pronounce a sound like a word.His function of talking seemed to be deteriorated to a baby.Maybe our ability to learn language since we have not used it for a long time,it’s in a state of sleeping.Now,all we need to do is to wake it up.

As an adult,whether or not can we make use of the ability to learn language quickly and easily just like a child do,or even more quickly and easily than children do?If you know something about ‘the adult advantage’,you may believe that this is incredibly true.The idea that children have a better brain than adults for learning foreign languages is mythical.

Two studies that are made by a professor at the University of Canterbury showed us that the progress of both adults and children in learning a second language was measured against the amount of time they were exposed to the language.The results were fascinating.Essentially,hour for hour, adults learn a foreign language more quickly than children do.If a child from America has 20 hours of exposure to, say,French and her father also has 20 hours of exposure to French,the father will know more by the end of the 2o hours.The implication was that adults learn foreign languages faster than children.

How can this be?What about all the stories of expatriate parents struggling when the kids seem to be learning the new language effortlessly?When you think about what happens when people go to another country,it’s easy to understand.Just imagine that you are moving overseas to live.You arrive at your new home,and you have to get yourself set up.You probably have to start working within the same week,and before your feet are even on the ground all hell breaks loose.You have plumbing problems in the new apartment.At the same time, your boss has a crisis on his hands, so you have to work 12 hours per day just to keep up.There are family issues that you have to deal with.And,because you don’t speak the language of the new country you are relying on people around you to communicate with you in your mother tongue.So,you are in the situation with no time to focus, no energy to learn and no exposure to the language.This is compounded by the fact that, because of all the crises, you develop coping strategies to get around without even needing to learn the new language.After one month you may as well not have left home.Now,while you’re struggling to get the job and the family and everything else under control, your kids are having fun.They are busy meeting other kids.Playing ball.Going places.Exploring.They are doing physical things with other kids, which helps them with language acquisition.For instance, they have specific things that they can refer to.Bicycle.Ball.Bag.And the language-learning process has begun.It is all based on the real object to refer to and to name.When they are learning with their friends, your children are using their bodies, which significantly accelerates their rate of learning.Because many of their senses are engaged, their learning happens on many levels.They are also interacting with the real world of real people, in the context of the language they are mastering.So they are experiencing different emotions connected to the new language they are learning.They are doing things to the world and getting results.They open their mouths, talk,and something in the world changes as a result.This is rewarding, so they feel powerful and successful.And,possibly most importantly,they have motivation.It is incredibly important for children to have friends.To make and keep friends,they have to be able to communicate.Learning the new language is a major, life-building priority for a child in a new land.The adults,on the other land, often think that learning the new language is a ‘nice to do’.So it never really gets done.The kids learn.The parents don’t.And the myth expands—‘Oh,I can’t learn a foreign language, because kids can and adults can’t.But,when you have motivated adults and children exposed to the language and you measure the progress, making sure that progress is compared for an equivalent number of hours, it is the adults who learn faster.

Why can this happen?This makes perfect sense.In most cases,young people don’t know as much about the world as adults do.So,when learning new words, very often they are also mastering new concepts.Adults know many more of the concepts in the world, and all they have to do is master some new labels for those similar/same concepts.And so they learn faster.This is one absolutely major, fundamental difference that you can realise gives you,as an adult,a leg up,a head start,an ability to leap frog into fluency.It’s really useful to remember that children come into the world with no understanding of any one language, and no understanding of many concepts in the world.They don’t yet know that some words indicate action of some sort, and others indicate ’things’.Even more so,they can’t even begin to comprehend that there are words they can use to name the different feelings they have.The idea that you can change the form or order or mix of words to express different types of meaning—such as past,present and future—is unknown to them.As an adult, you know all these things.You may not yet know the specifics of how to use them in your new language, but you absolutely do know that there has to be some way of doing it, and there must be some pattern that will help you communicate things you want to communicate.

You have other advantages,too.You know how to write, and you can use this skill to help you organise and memorise materials about the language you are learning.You also have specific tricks that you have learned over the years.For instance,I have tricks that help me to remember different sorts of things and catch the key of a conversation.I can use these skills to support my language learning as well.Most importantly, you have ways of organizing material, and you have ways of both thinking and talking about the structure of language.This means that you are in a position to apply language rules to accelerate your acquisition of any language.

So,not only can you use your inheritance as a language learner, you have the added advantage of all the memory tools and tricks that are available to adults and which young children are still unaware of.

A great place to start.