One day, would it be possible to extend the critical learning period for learning languages and if so how would this most likely be done?

[Mr Rayon]

Why do children learn languages faster than adults? What's the biological difference to account for these phenomena observed in young children but not adults? For example, are there any specific types of brain cells that are present during the critical learning period for learning languages in young children that gradually disappear as one approaches teenagehood.

 

Unfortunately, I've missed the critical learning period for learning languages most efficiently. During that time I was only given the opportunity to learn one language and partially learn another. Now I feel retarded because many of my friends speak 3-4 languages however this was mainly because they were exposed to more languages during childhood and never really had to work hard to learn them. They probably put effort in one language to become fluent but I still feel bad. In the future, does anybody think that it will be possible to extend this learning period where your brain acts rather like a sponge to absorb all information and put everything together and get used to it? I feel really bad for only being able to speak 2 languages, I think if I were to have children I will give them more exposures to different cultures/languages so as to protect them from feeling the pain/jealousy that I have of more educationally advantanged students.

Edited October 13, 2010 by Voltman

[lemur]

I think it is a pseudoscientific idea that there is something physiologically unique about early childhood (language) learning. Children learn language fairly slowly if you look at how slowly their vocabularies improve and how slowly their grammar and composition skills develop. Adults can actually develop language skills, like other skills, more quickly that children can. The reason, I think, adults feel more blockage with regard to language acquisition is that they have developed more strongly defined sense of self, which is expressed in language-expressions they have already mastered. So their fluency in languages they've already learned translates into fluency of self-expression, making them feel comfortable and secure in "who they are."

 

If you would devote as much time and energy to learning and practicing a new language each week as you do to, say, media usage; you would be fluent within a few years if not sooner. The problem is that you would need to be able to practice interactively with others who are fluent in that language. It would also help if they were patient and willing to repeat things when you didn't understand and explain words and phrases when you had questions. Language-learning starts out slow because you have to develop a feel for actually deciphering words and remembering entire sentences in order to repeat and analyze them. Once you gain that basic familiarity/comfort with processing the audio-streams, however, you can start to respond to what you hear by repeating and re-arranging words and applying the grammar. Eventually you would start to gain a feel for how you sound with regards to your word and phrase choices because you would recognize the nuances of various phrases, expressions, and word connotations. That's something that children don't really get until adulthood anyway, so it's not like a 4 year old has an advantage on you with that level. It's just tough to get through all the mistakes and sounding-foolish to develop basic fluency that is hard because 1)it's stressful and 2) it requires a certain amount of distance from your established patterns of self-expression

[tomgwyther]

I would beg to differ on the idea a child is more adept at learning [a new language] than an adult as being pseudoscientific.

The brain of a young child is very much more plastic than that of an adult. A child's brain is in the process of forming newer and more permanent neural connections than an adults.

Children can learn the words, the accent, the grammar and the vernacular of a language within a few years in a way an adult cannot.

For example: a friend of mind was born in Italy and came to England when he was ten years old. He is now 35 years old. Although he has spent the majority of his life in England; learning English, he still speaks with an accent and with hints of Italian grammar.

The speech centres of the brain concerned with language - not simply words - are formed at a very early age.

In the cases of children who are locked in basements throughout their child hood (The case of Genie for example) they are able to learn new words for things, but the ability to learn and use language affectively is irreparably lost because the period in which we learn language happen at a young age.

As for extending the period in which we learn language, I can think of no way to do this. the best way is to immerse ones self in that language; use it everyday with other native speakers. So as you tend not to think in your own language and then translate it, more that you think in the second language as well.

 

The ability to learn a new language is not lost in adulthood, simply compromised. I for example can speak French, but a native French speaker can recognise that it's not my first language; I often get the syntax and grammar wrong, and I speak it with a strong English accent.

Also, I can sing Spanish song lyrics to a degree that a native Spanish speaker can't tell I'm English and thinks I've been speaking Spanish all my life. But I have little to no idea what I'm singing about, nor could I construct a sentence in Spanish let alone hold a conversation.

These two facets of language cross over whenever I visit America. Born, brought up and living in England, but on a steady diet of U.S television plus frequent trips to new York and California mean i can blend in un-noticed.

For one thing, working in Nevada last year, I found it much easier to get along if I spoke like a native then if I spoke in my normal accent which few people could fully understand. Then I could freak people out by reverting back to my thick, southern English accent. A bit like Hugh Laurie when he plays 'House' and then does and interview on Letterman.

Edited October 13, 2010 by tomgwyther