Human brains have an inbuilt ability to learn language, at least the first language. People around the world all speak at least one language. In some countries, people speak two, three or even more languages. Becoming multiple languages speaker to these people seems to be easy. Because in these countries, more than one language is commonly used at the same time, people in these countries when are grown from babies to adults are exposed to multiple languages at the same time, so they mastered multiple languages naturally.

       It seems there is no way to prevent people from learning their first language. The question is whether or not it can be easy for adults to learn a second language? Children or adults learn a second language faster? Human brains are like language listening and processing machines. When you are exposed to a language, whether you are a child or an adult, your brain will pick up the language even at the unconscious level. Even you are an adult, this ability still exists, but it may get a bit rusty. You should do some cleaning, do some exercises to rewire this ability.

      One of the author’s professors had done an experiment to research whether children or adults would learn a second language faster. This experiment estimated the rate of language learning by limiting the amount of time for the experiment participants to be exposed to the second language. Suppose chose one child and one adult who are all American and unaware of French. Then let this pair of experiment participants to learn French started from the same time and ended at the same time. Then made them take an exam to see how much they had learned. The result was that the adult learned more.

    This experiment result made perfect sense. Compared to children, adults know much more about the world. They have a lot of concepts about the world. They aware of the relationships between objects in the world. The author gave two examples. Example one: suppose there is a door closed and embedded to a wall with no obvious handles. It might seem to be only two different impenetrable barriers if you never saw a door before. But because you have the concept of  the thing that is labeled by “door” in English ,you will look for something working as a handle on the door, because you know doors come with handles. Example two: at some airports, the tap in the bathroom is not obvious to turn on and turn off. But it will not beat you. You will be trying, pushing it; putting your hands under it; stepping on the little pedal on the floor under the basin.  Finally you will get the way how to turn it on and off. Because you know the concept of the thing that is called “tap” in English.

       Adults not only know more than children do, they have developed a lot of skills and tricks, such as writing, summing up, etc over the years. These skills and tricks can help them to organize and memorize materials, then can accelerate their language learning rate. They know that language has structures, changing the form of a word can express different meanings. They know how to apply the language rules. Children are almost blank about all these things.

       Adults have advantages over children when learning a second language. But why when so many families with children and adults go abroad to live, the children seem to pick up the new language effortlessly while the adults are still struggling with the simplest phrases as if they have not left home? The reason is that adults need to deal with everything including work and life. They even need to work within the same week as when they arrived in the new land. They might have to work 12 hours a day if their boss had crises on hand. Therefore they do not have the time to focus on, the energy to learn the new language. They even were not exposed to the new language because someone translated for them or they have developed coping strategies without needing to learn the new language. In the meanwhile, their children are making and keeping new friends, they have to communicate in the new language. Learning the new language is a life-building priority for them. They have motivation and they are having fun. So they can leap frog to fluency.

       So although compared to children, adults have advantages for learning a second language, they need do things to make use of these advantages. Firstly, they need strong motivation. Second, they need to spend time being exposed to and learning the new language. They need to apply themselves. Summing up, these things are critical:motivation, time and focus.