Why You're Not Too Old to Learn a New Language (Part 2)
How long does it actually take to learn a language? Longer than you may think.
Compare and despair. This aphorism contains a lot of truth about language learning. If you compare yourself to other language learners, you might feel unmotivated, and you might eventually despair.
But when it comes to language, it’s kind of hard not to compare. People blatantly discuss how quickly they learned a language. Or even worse, will correct your language and make comments about it.
In one of the greatest social mysteries, it’s somehow socially acceptable to judge people’s language to their face.
But here’s a secret: People operate with so many unquestioned beliefs about language.
Last week, we discussed a common belief: that age is the determining factor when it comes to language learning. This week, our question is: on average, how long does it take adults to learn another language?
Before we jump into it: What are your predictions?1
*For the first one, please note that I’m not implying that the child has only learned the language when they start scoring similarly to monolingual speakers on tests. I’m also not implying that reaching the level of monolingual speakers is the most desirable level to reach. The phrasing is just used to match the language of the study we’re looking at this week.
A Note About Speed and Language Learning
Whether you’re a child who has moved to another country, or an adult enrolled in an intensive language course, learning a language takes time.
How much time it takes is somewhat hard to measure, mainly because it’s a rather murky and relative idea to say you speak a language. For some people, saying they speak a language means they could have a basic conversation (with imperfect grammar and large gaps in their vocabulary). For other people, saying they speak a language means they’ve reached an advanced level and can confidently speak about a range of topics.
Given this broad meaning, people can claim that they learned a language in six weeks or even six months, and what they mean by learning a language can be very different from what you consider learning a language.
The Comparison
Last week, we discussed how age mainly affected one group: children who move to another country at a young age. And we talked about how the younger they move, the more likely they are to reach monolingual levels. The optimal age is before the age of six. The advantage generally exists for children who move to another country before the age of 12. But between the ages of six and 12, the advantage declines steadily.
We’re going to compare this group to a comparable adult group: adults who move to another country and are immersed in the language.
This way, we can see how long it takes each of these groups to learn the language of the country they’ve moved to.
The Children
The children who move to another country at a young age do seem to have an advantage over their parents. Age is a factor. But there’s also many other reasons why they learn the language so well. When kids move to another country, they usually enroll in school. At school, they’re surrounded by the target language and are heavily incentivized to learn it. Hopefully there’s even academic support to help them learn the new language.
Eventually, they hopefully make friends who likely speak the new language. And they start playing games and using online platforms that they need the new language to access.
Basically, these kids are technically in the same immersive environment as their parents, but because of their age, they are incentivized to learn the language to get good grades in school, make friends, etc.
All of this being said, on average, guess how long it takes these children to catch up to monolingual peers? Paradis and Jia (2016) suggest that it takes, on average, 4 to 6 years, depending on several factors, like which language is spoken at home. In other words, age helps them reach the same level of grammar (and sometimes pronunciation depending on how young they are) as monolinguals after years of exposure. But the journey to get to that point is not as quick and speedy as you might expect.
The Adults
For adults, their lives in a new country depends on many factors. My grandparents’ journey of moving from Colombia to Miami (a city with a high number of other Spanish speakers), for example, looks different from other immigrants’ journeys.
My grandmother lived in the United States for more of her life than she lived in Colombia. But she ended up living her life mainly in Spanish, only learning to speak conversational English. Why? Because she could. She was able to stay home and raise the children in Spanish. All of her friends were Spanish speakers. And if you go anywhere in Miami (from the doctor to the bank), they usually speak Spanish.
My grandfather, though, did learn advanced English. Why? Because he had to. He worked in English.
So, talking about adults in general, doesn’t give us the best comparison to these children who get academic support throughout their immersion. One group we can use for comparison are missionaries.
Missionaries
There’s different types of missionaries around the world. Larson-Hall and Dewey (2012) focused their research on Mormon missionaries for a few reasons. For one, it’s often a requirement in their community to go on a 18-month missions for women and 24-month missions for men in their early twenties.
In particular, Larson-Hall and Dewey (2012) focused on missionaries in Japan.
These missionaries were fully immersed in the language and received support to learn the language. According to the study, these missionaries spent at least 40 hours a week interacting with the language of the country (either listening or producing it). So, on average, they spent 3,120 (women) - 4,160 hours (men) learning Japanese over the time of their mission.
The results found that it took missionaries about a year of intense study and exposure to reach Intermediate High or Advanced levels2 in Japanese.
Dewey and Clifford (2012) studied missionaries who learned Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Mandarin or Japanese. They also found that after the missions, only 7 percent of missionaries did not reach Advanced Mid or Advanced High levels, most of which were in the group that learned Russian, Mandarin, or Japanese, which are languages that are more difficult to learn for English speakers.
What Can We Learn From These Studies?
Like we discussed last week, the ultimate attainment for the two groups we discussed today is likely different. The children are more likely to reach a level in which they use grammar and pronunciation patterns similar to monolingual speakers. The missionaries are less likely to reach that level. But these adult missionaries are able to reach advanced levels in two years or less…that’s really impressive! And when you take language as an opportunity to connect with others and share your message, then it’s beautiful that you can do this to such a high level at any age.
The main takeaway, for me, is that adults can clearly, absolutely learn languages. And that for both children and adults it takes years to learn a language.
The missionaries were given training and full exposure, but adults in other countries can learn languages to a high level, as well (a topic we can discuss in a future newsletter).
Whatever your situation, I hope this information helps you see that you’re not too old to learn a language. It takes time and dedicated practice, but you can absolutely learn to express yourself and connect with others in new languages, regardless of age.
Thank you + discussion
Thanks for reading this newsletter! I’d love to know if you ever felt like you were too old to learn another language, or whether you ever felt like you weren’t learning a new language fast enough?
Works Cited
Brown, S., & Larson-Hall, J. (2012). Second language acquisition myths: Applying second language research to classroom teaching. University of Michigan Press ELT.
Paradis J, Jia R. Bilingual children's long-term outcomes in English as a second language: language environment factors shape individual differences in catching up with monolinguals. Dev Sci. 2017 Jan;20(1). doi: 10.1111/desc.12433. Epub 2016 Jun 19. PMID: 27320539.
These are both averages. The second poll is about English-speaking missionaries who move to Japan. The answers are based on the two works cited at the bottom of the newsletter.
They define Advanced High as “ability to connect speech into paragraph-like narratives and explanations and to speak with a wide vocabulary on many concrete topics. The learned speak fluently, and their grammar is consistently accurate. This level excludes the ability to discuss abstract concepts or hypothesize about topics,” (Brown & Larson-Hall, p. 8.)