My Essay on The Third Ear Chapter 2

    In chapter 2, the author mainly argues two points. The first one, language learning is natural for humans. The second one, adults have advantages in learning a second language over children.

1. Language learning is natural for humans

      Phonetic perception is the sixth sense of humans. Let us look at babies first. Babies were brought to this world nakedly. All the world, including languages is totally blank to them. They hear the sounds surrounding them. Gradually, they pick up words from the sounds, one by one, then play them back. Pretty quickly, they are able to understand what is said to them, and not long afterwords, they can say something to express what they want quite well. Before long, babies would master their first language naturally. You should admit that humans, at least babies, are hard-wired to learn language. They have the inbuilt ability. When babies have grown to adults, does this kind of ability loose? The answer is that it never lost. When you hear sounds, you brain clines to perceive language words even no words were intended. For example, you may hear words from noises such as the sound of wind or the sound from a machine. You can hear people’s talking in the thunderstorm. You can hear speech in noisy traffics. When you attend a conference call in which usually more than two people speaking at the same time, you can get their points precisely. You can talk on the phone even though the phone messages are very distorted. Your brain has the ability to take information, then filter out the distortion and get the messages. When you are exposed to a foreign language, you may hear some words that sound like your mother tongue. Although most of them you still cannot hook on to, you may notice some words standing out and possible you remember them. You may pick up the second language at the unconscious level which the author called it ghost of an unknown language. You have the sense to identify the presence of a word, knowing one begins and another ends. Our humans are born with this ability which is still a little difficult for computer. So voice-recognition systems have gotten mass invested but not attained one hundred percent accuracy yet. All these illustrate that language learning is natural for humans. It is an inbuilt ability. It still exists in adults. As adults, this ability could get a little bit rusty. In this chapter, the author mentioned that he had helped one of his colleagues to turn on the language learning switch by having her do some exercises and giving some instructions for her to follow, then his colleague could sense a swift in her language learning ability. Then she could tune in to and speak Cantonese easily and quickly. The author did not give the details about the exercises and these instructions in this chapter. Maybe they are in the following chapters. To give a summary, because humans have so many abilities for learning language, so language learning is natural for humans.

2. Adult advantage in learning a second language

         Children or adults learn a second language more quickly? Although there is a widely accepted myth that only children can learn a second language easily and quickly, an experiment has proved that under the same conditions and at the same time, adults learn a second language faster than children. Adults have a lot of advantages. They know more about the world than children do. Adults know there must be some patterns in the new language to help them to communicate what they want to communicate. They know some words indicate actions, some words indicate things, some words can be used to express feelings. They know some words can be changed their form or order even be mixed to express different things. They know language has rules and they can apply these rules to accelerate their learning rate. They are able to write, which is very useful for language learning. They have developed some memory tools and tricks to help them sort and remember language materials. Adults have so many added advantages, why do they often learn a second slower than children? Because children also have many advantages. They are relaxed. They are having fun with language learning. They are good at using their body to learn language. They focus on physical things and the real world of real people. They have stronger motivation. They have more time and more energy. They do not mind embarrassment. So as an adult, although you have many advantages, to mastering a second language, you should learn from children. Don’t be afraid of embarrassment. Be bold. Be Confident. Be easy. Having fun. Then you will master a new language more effectively and easily than you might have believed possible.