I never said that it’s impossible for an adult to learn a foreign language, just not as fast or effective. That man’s blog seems interesting...but I’m quite skeptical that he becomes “fluent” in a language in 2-3 months. I’d be interested to see how fluent he actually is (nevermind the similarities between several of those languages, which aids in acquisition...I’ve experienced that first hand). Then again, maybe he’s an unusual case.
There is substantial literature that suggests that language acquisition is more difficult, slower, and ultimately less successful in adults than in younger people. I believe it’s often mentioned that it’s at about 12-14 yrs old that the neural plasticity for language acquisition fades.
I think the confusion here is about what exactly is meant by “learning” a language.
If the goal is to quickly build some rudimentary skill for finding one’s way around in a foreign language (which basically boils down to memorizing a lot of words and stock phrases, along with a few very basic syntactic patterns), an intelligent adult will likely be able to achieve it faster because of better work ethic and superior general experience in tackling intellectual problems.
On the other hand, if the goal is to become indistinguishable from a native speaker, then the kid clearly has an advantage no matter how long it takes, because the task is impossible for the overwhelming majority of adults (which for this purpose means anyone over 12 or so). You may become a fluent speaker and perhaps even a good writer, but you’re stuck with a foreign accent, and even if you manage to get rid of it with special training, you’ll still make occasional subtle but noticeable syntactic and semantic errors.
If the goal is something in-between, the winner will depend on the exact benchmarks of success.
For the record he says 3 months to fluency is his personal goal, not what he guarantees/claims is always possible.
There are videos of him speaking on his various blogs, but since I don’t speak any non-English languages I can’t judge his fluency, but I expect he is conversationally competent and not indistinguishable from a native, and yes he has to work hard at it so it’s not the same kind of easy learning as children have, which seems to be what your links support, so no argument from me there.
However, he still seems to learn a useful conversational ability in a language in months whereas children take years to do that, so I still think your statement “but an adult will never learn second languages faster than a child” is a strange claim, unless you specifically mean “like a native”, which seems a much stricter test than necessary.
From your links:
Probably yes: although any adult can learn a second language, not all will do so with equal results (unlike the case with child language acquisition) (first link)
One doesn’t think about how every person has, or rather had at one time, an innate ability to learn a language to total fluency (second link)
Yet the results of child language learning are not equal or always total fluency—plenty of adults barely seem to know what they are saying, cannot express themselves clearly, do not finish sentences ‘properly’, don’t notice the difference between similar words and sentences with different meanings, and people cannot orate without learning to be orators, cannot write without learning to write (I mean author well written texts instead of drivel), cannot tell stories captivatingly without practise, cannot follow official formal documents, and other linguistic things which you might lump in with fluency or might not, leading to potentially very different expectations of a fluent person.
There is substantial literature that suggests that language acquisition is more difficult, slower, and ultimately less successful in adults than in younger people. I believe it’s often mentioned that it’s at about 12-14 yrs old that the neural plasticity for language acquisition fades. http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test4materials/secondlangacquisition.htm http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f03/web2/mtucker.html
I never said that it’s impossible for an adult to learn a foreign language, just not as fast or effective. That man’s blog seems interesting...but I’m quite skeptical that he becomes “fluent” in a language in 2-3 months. I’d be interested to see how fluent he actually is (nevermind the similarities between several of those languages, which aids in acquisition...I’ve experienced that first hand). Then again, maybe he’s an unusual case.
simplyeric:
I think the confusion here is about what exactly is meant by “learning” a language.
If the goal is to quickly build some rudimentary skill for finding one’s way around in a foreign language (which basically boils down to memorizing a lot of words and stock phrases, along with a few very basic syntactic patterns), an intelligent adult will likely be able to achieve it faster because of better work ethic and superior general experience in tackling intellectual problems.
On the other hand, if the goal is to become indistinguishable from a native speaker, then the kid clearly has an advantage no matter how long it takes, because the task is impossible for the overwhelming majority of adults (which for this purpose means anyone over 12 or so). You may become a fluent speaker and perhaps even a good writer, but you’re stuck with a foreign accent, and even if you manage to get rid of it with special training, you’ll still make occasional subtle but noticeable syntactic and semantic errors.
If the goal is something in-between, the winner will depend on the exact benchmarks of success.
For the record he says 3 months to fluency is his personal goal, not what he guarantees/claims is always possible.
There are videos of him speaking on his various blogs, but since I don’t speak any non-English languages I can’t judge his fluency, but I expect he is conversationally competent and not indistinguishable from a native, and yes he has to work hard at it so it’s not the same kind of easy learning as children have, which seems to be what your links support, so no argument from me there.
However, he still seems to learn a useful conversational ability in a language in months whereas children take years to do that, so I still think your statement “but an adult will never learn second languages faster than a child” is a strange claim, unless you specifically mean “like a native”, which seems a much stricter test than necessary.
From your links:
Yet the results of child language learning are not equal or always total fluency—plenty of adults barely seem to know what they are saying, cannot express themselves clearly, do not finish sentences ‘properly’, don’t notice the difference between similar words and sentences with different meanings, and people cannot orate without learning to be orators, cannot write without learning to write (I mean author well written texts instead of drivel), cannot tell stories captivatingly without practise, cannot follow official formal documents, and other linguistic things which you might lump in with fluency or might not, leading to potentially very different expectations of a fluent person.
The second link makes several comments including adult lack of opportunity (limited classroom time) which is interestingly mentioned here: http://www.fluentin3months.com/hours-not-years/
Mario Pei, who knew an astonishing number of languages (to what degree I don’t know), quipped that the first ten are the hardest.