Why You're Not Too Old to Learn a New Language (Part 1)
*Warning* after reading this newsletter, you won't be able to use your age as a reason why you can't learn another language.
Upon finishing graduate school, the culmination of my six years of formal linguistics studies came to an end, and I began to think about the age-old question which got me into the subject to begin with: how exactly does someone learn a second language?
And the answer that I came up with, after six years of pouring through second language acquisition texts, is simultaneously stupefying and liberating: no one really knows1.
I was first stupefied my first semester of undergrad in a class on the history of language teaching methodologies. Long story short, every couple of decades a new theory of language acquisition would yield a new pedagogy for teaching languages. Then, after a few years, a new theory would discredit the previous one and take over the language-learning world. It got me thinking, “it must just be a matter of time until the current best pedagogy is relegated a pedagogy of the past.”
I then felt a sort-of liberation in the sense that I could look at Youtube videos which professed the secrets of language learning and know that they were at least short-sighted.
The truth is, language learning is complex and messy. What the field of second language acquisition knows for a fact is that there are several variables at play when it comes to language learning. Off the top of my head:
age when first exposed to language
how different the student’s first language is from the target language
how much input (listening and reading the language) the student receives
the quality and quantity of the input the student receives
student’s motivation levels
access to quality resources
the language used in the education system
aptitude for language learning
And so many more. All of these variables affect language learning, some more than others. But one seems to get more press time than the rest. It’s even at the top of the list because it came to my mind first. It’s age.
Age affects language learning, but not in the way that most people think. The question for this newsletter: how exactly does age affect language learning?
Babies are really good at learning languages (?)
If people know one linguist, it’s usually Noam Chomsky. One of Chomsky’s main fascinations with language was how quickly babies learned their first language. To him, children learned their first language in a way that was divorced from all other variables. It didn’t matter whether the child was intelligent, for example. Any baby surrounded by language learned language.
What’s more, children start speaking quickly. By the time they’re five years old, they’re having full-blown conversations. They’re using language in ways that they’re not just parroting their environment. No, they’re being creative with language.
Chomsky was fascinated by this speed of acquisition and centered his main theory—that there’s a language device in our bodies that help us acquire language—around it. Chomsky’s theory is about first language acquisition, and Chomsky didn’t delve too deep into second language acquisition. But other researchers, like Stephen Krashen, adopted elements of Chomsky’s work and translated it to second language acquisition.
For a long time, it was believed that babies were born with this device and that their access to this device declined with age. And outside of linguistics, in the mainstream, there was also this belief that babies learn languages with a fascinating speed.
Are babies really that good at learning languages?
But what if I told you that the speed isn’t that fascinating; that it’s a matter of perspective?
Hear me out:
A baby doesn’t have a full-time job, or any job for that matter. A baby doesn’t have any responsibilities. It spends most of its time surrounded by language and subconsciously taking mental statistics on what it hears. It’s in an immersion retreat.
All of that is true. And yet, it takes a baby, on average, twelve months to say one word. And then another twelve months to start stringing together two-word utterances that make sense.
That’s an absurdly long time.
If an adult went on an immersion retreat, void of responsibilities and took 24 months to utter a two-word sentence, everyone would be worried (to say the least).
In fact, if I recall correctly, I entered my French class on the second day being able to say, “bonjour, ça va?” to my classmates.
If I were competing against a two-day old baby, I’d be winning. By far.
Adults can learn a second language to a high level of proficiency in the same amount of time it takes a baby to learn its first twenty words, (Brown & Larson-Hall, p. 16).
Taking a different perspective, it seems like the expectations for children and adults learning a language are different.
But then, why do little kids learn languages so quickly?
Alas, I must admit there is some truth behind the age-old belief. In some ways, the odds are in your favor if you learn language younger in life.
Some research shows that there seems to be a correlation between age and the ultimate attainment of a language, the end-point one reaches in a language.
Put simply, the younger you are when you first learn a language, the higher the likelihood that you’ll end up sounding like monolingual speakers of the language, especially when it comes to some aspects, like pronunciation2.
This is more-so true with children who move to another country than children who are enrolled in second language classes at school3. In fact, it’s one of the reasons why young children who move to another country learn the new language faster than their parents.
If these children move before the age of 5 or 6, they are highly likely to acquire the language to the level of their monolingual peers. After around the age of 6, there’s still the trend that the younger the child is the more likely they are to reach high levels of the language, but it appears to be more variable (some children reach that high level, others don’t).
While that may be true, something I seldom hear people discuss when they talk about these children is how they often end up speaking the new language better than their home language. There’s some research which shows that the younger you are when you move to another country and are exposed to a new language, the faster you learn the new language and the faster you lose your home language (if it’s not supported by bilingual education)4.
Yes, parents often take longer to learn the new language. But they always speak the home language better than the children.
Why adults are better language learners than children
In the classroom, adults show several advantages over children. For one, adults can learn metalinguistically, in a way that children cannot. For example, you can explain grammar to an adult and talk about nouns and verbs and word order in a way which would not hold children’s attention.
While I often hear this being twisted in the way that, “kids just pick up languages,” that’s not true. Adults are learning these grammar rules and metalinguistic skills because it has been shown to help second language learners acquire a language faster.
The truth is that there are millions of adults fluent in a second language that they learned later on in life. Adults have numerous advantages over children when it comes to language learning. And most importantly, whether we’re talking children or adults, it takes thousands of hours to learn a language (at an intermediate or advanced level).
No one—regardless of age—learns languages in a week, a month, or even a year. So, no, you’re not too old to learn a language. You may just need more time, or to reflect on your expectations.
P.S. Sure, the kids who move to another country before the age of six are more likely to reach monolingual levels than adults who move to another country. If that makes you feel unmotivated, it’s important to question why reaching monolingual levels is appealing to you. You’re bilingual—like the majority of English speakers in the world. And being bilingual is a strength, for so many reasons, like being able to communicate with more people and ideas.
Works Cited
Brown, S., & Larson-Hall, J. (2012). Second language acquisition myths: Applying second language research to classroom teaching. University of Michigan Press ELT.
This is a little dramatic. We know a lot about second language acquisition. My main point is that there isn’t consensus in the research about a single best way to learn a second language.
This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to reach monolingual levels, but it becomes less likely later on in life, especially for pronunciation.
This is super important. Contrary to popular belief, children enrolled in second language classes in a country in which that second language is not spoken do not appear to have an advantage over adults in the same situation.
Montrul, 2013, p. 210