I recently spoke with a man who is a linguistics professor. He told me that studies show that adults learn 2nd languages better than young children do. I asked if that means that he believes that I have a better chance in speaking like a native in another language than a 5 year old does, and he answered, "Yes, you could develop native-like fluency faster than a 5 year old could, with the one exception that the 5 year old would have a more authentic accent than you would."
Is this true? Experts - JuanRuiz, Maiku, others? Have studies really shown that adults learn 2nd languages better than children? ********************************************************** 02-07-03, 03:48 AM hassia learning a language as an adult takes a very long time. it is true that a 5 year old child will have an authentic accent, but the vocabulary he is learning is much different than what an adult will be learning. obviously. the child will develop fluency in a foreign language much faster than an adult because there is much less 1st language interference. if the child were to completely be immerged into this foreign language with no more access to his native language, he will soon forget his native and the foreign language will become his native. an adult will most likely never forget his native language. so, to answer your question: no, i personally find that this guy is reading the wrong sources.
02-07-03, 07:55 AM FredPuli He might be misunderstood. As a bald statement it is not correct.There is some debate at what age formal teaching of languages is no more effective for the child than for the adult. Anyone who is immersed in a language 24/7, as immigrants sometimes are, learns it at any age even without training and this fact clouds the enquiry. My own daughter attended Hill House International School in London. It attracts a largely foreign (diplomatic/business) clientele of children aged 4 to 11. So, in her class of 11 children she was the only one who had native English speaking parents. Several of these children had already got two languages at home e.g one had a Danish mother and a French father. Such children had no difficulty distinguishing their two domestic languages , though naturally the mother's was the initial influence.Together the parents spoke whichever seemed easier.However such a child might be learning the father's language much as it does the mother's initially, as a baby does. The school conducted lessons in English only; there was such variety that that was the only option. So at school there was immersion;among themselves even the children often only had one common language, English. Even allowing for that, there was no doubt whatever that a child starting at up to six or even seven learned much more quickly and more accurately than children starting older. Within a short while they were indistinguishable from natives. At that age grammar is no more a problem than it is for natives ; something either seems right or it doesn't ! Children learning from ,say, nine had more difficulty. Talking to the parents revealed agreement that they thought that it was also easier to learn a language before the teenage years ( they had lots of experience personally ). All learning skills decline with years , of course ; that alone might explain the difficulty of we middle aged learners ! As expressed in the post the professor's view is wrong.
02-07-03, 09:14 AM Elexina It depends on the learning environment. An adult taking a language class might learn more easily because he is taking the classes of his own volition, rather than being forced to in school, and he has a better grasp of language as a whole than a child does. However, with the appropriate teacher and attitude, I think a child can learn a language just as well.
I know a family in France with a French mother and English father. The five children grew up with both languages and speak both equally and fluently. It is quite impressive. Of course, they were immersed in the language from birth. And every so often they'll be speaking both at the same time, which is pretty amusing. Using myself as an example, I lived in France when I was eleven and I'll tell you, I picked it up pretty quickly! Not that I had a choice as I went to a French school...
02-07-03, 01:05 PM Sarai Everything you all are saying is exactly what I thought - but this professor kept insisting that the common view is a myth, and that children do not learn a second language better than adults (please note that learning a second language is different than aquiring two first languages - a child born to a bilingual family acquires two first languages, while a child who starts learning a new language at 5 is learning a second language).
Anyway, I tend to think you all are right, but this professor really has me wondering. Does anyone know where I can find studies demonstrating that children learn 2nd languages better than adults do?
02-07-03, 01:10 PM Georgia85 I don't have a source for you but all I know is that up until the age of 8 I travelled overseas and had to learn many foreign languages. My mother told me later that she was amazed at how easily I learned all the languages. But keep in mind, a 7 year old communicates on a much lower level than an adult. So, what I learned as a child would not even compare to what I would learn as an adult.
02-07-03, 01:32 PM methos No sources... but these are my thoughts based only on guesses and anecdotal evidence.
I think the key here may be the prof's comment on speed. Perhaps the child takes longer to understand all the rules of the new language, but ultimately incorporates it better than the adult. I know that my ex-girlfriend had a lot of trouble learning english when she left Ukraine at 8, but she now speaks very naturally with an almost undetectable accent. Her parents can communicate in english, but have more trouble with the subtleties, have strong accents, and are much more likely to misspeak.
It also may have to do with social pressures, so that what is biologically true according to the prof may not play out in life. Adults often come to a new country with spouses, friends, or relatives and continue to speak with them in their native language. Children are expected to learn and make friends in the new language, and are often forced to be the go-betweens for their parents in certain situations, so they may dimply be under more pressure to learn the new language.
I once had a conversation with her father about speaking in a non-native language. The parents tend to have more trouble communicating their emotions in the second language, while the children tend to not be able to communicate their emotions as well in their original language.
02-07-03, 01:47 PM Sarai
quote:Originally posted by Georgia85: I don't have a source for you but all I know is that up until the age of 8 I travelled overseas and had to learn many foreign languages. My mother told me later that she was amazed at how easily I learned all the languages.
I gave the prof. similar anecdotes, and he said this is precisely what spreads the myth. Because children are better at picking up accents than adults, people assume they understand the language well. Often, however, they have a harder time reaching high cognitive ability in the 2nd language than adults do. In fact, he said that because young children (who are not in a bilingual program in school) often simultaneously lose their first language while learning their 2nd, they fall far behind monolingual classmates, because they can't process higher order thinking activities in their 2nd language. Adults already have higher order thinking skills and can easily "transfer" these skills to a 2nd language. Children can't transfer such thinking from their 1st language, mostly because they haven't developed them yet, and partly because they lose their 1st language before developing their 2nd. He argued that adults learn 2nd languages better because we maintain our cognitive abilities, and are already literate in our 1st language, which makes literacy easier for us to attain in a 2nd language. Kids who aren't yet fully literate in a 1st language and who lose cognitive ability as they lose the 1st language have a very, very hard time becoming literate and processing higher order thinking in the 2nd language.
In the end, this was his argument for bilingual education. I'm in favor of bilingual education, but his reasoning, if true, is such a strong argument for bilingual education that it almost seems evil that we don't make more effort to impliment it well. If kids who are learning a 2nd langauge can't develop higher order thinking skills nearly as quickly as monolingual kids, then it is imperative that we continue teaching them in their first language so that they can develop literacy and cognitive skills while they learn the 2nd language.
That's why I'd like evidence demonstrating the contrary - to ease my troubled soul! Smile
02-07-03, 02:13 PM methos I don't know about all of the details of the prof's case, but it's definitely true that kids learning in a language that's foreign to them will have more trouble. As I understand it, the bilingual debate revolves around balancing the fact that kids will learn better in their native language with the fact that they need to learn to communicate well in their second language. There are, of course, the practical considerations of cost and availability of teachers speaking the language.
02-07-03, 04:08 PM juanruiz Kids have it over adults for second-language learning hands down, and the younger the better. How many times have you seen non-native parents dragging their kids to banks, pharmacies, and other places as translators? The thing is, the longer you use your native language, the harder it is to internalize another one; it is just too much a part of you. As for bilingual education, it fails because of the approach. You want little kids to speak a target language, get them out on a playground with kids their own age; in weeks they'll be fluent. Most bilingual programs get mired in using the child's native language for too long.
Now, if you are talking about adults understanding the concepts of a foreign language, its grammar, syntax, and the like, that I'll agree with. But that isn't speaking the language.
02-07-03, 08:35 PM FredPuli There is a serious debate about the most effective age to start language teaching. I see that the professor is not part of it. Seeking to prove a theory by saying 'often' this or that happens is not encouraging. That is, there is no solid rule; this or that often doesn't happen either. In my class in the 1950s from age 7 to 11 were 3 children all from different countries. They had started English between 4 and 7 years. All of them went on to take degrees at Cambridge University. None were taught bilingually. What I wonder, would the professor have said they had not understood in their second language ? Understanding and reasoning are innate and universal. For a young child the second language is just one of many things the brain is designed to absorb and what is expected in understanding lessons is not taxing. The child is done no favours by being spared the immersion young. What exactly is the need to bilingually teach a 5 year old ; what is there for the child to misunderstand and in what way is his cognition damaged ? The experience of hundreds of years of immigration shows how the youngest learn fastest.It may be politically convenient to call it a myth but it singularly fails to explain the typical examples given by Juanruiz or from the international school ( in my earlier post).
02-08-03, 08:01 AM FredPuli Sarai, you wanted sources. If you go to the Educational Resources Information Center site you'll find this information and also get a clue as to what the Professor was on about.Much of it refers you to other texts or booklists but there is some accessible material. Happy hunting ! So try http://www.cal.org/ericcll/faqs/rgos/benes.html for a start. Away from the political/social issues in this, the UK government has announced a new strategy of teaching foreign languages in all primary schools from age 7. This has long been practice in mainland Europe, where it is often part of a national curriculum ( i.e compulsory and examined) in such schools.
02-08-03, 09:01 AM moe257 I always believed young children could learn a second language faster than and adult, but I guess I was wrong. My son is a linguistic and he struggled with his studies. He would sometimes say thing to my grandson (his nephew) in another language. My grandson always remembers the phrases he was taught which amazes us.
I read over the piece in the link you provided, and all I can say if that is supposed to pass as scholarship, the author will never get tenure. Everything he says about little children and second-language proficiency is true about their native language too. The incorrect gender of the German indefinite article is analogous to regularizing of English strong verbs: I eated cereal. I goed to Gramma's. Mommy readed a book to me. And what luck is a five year-old going to have in an IRS audit in English?
02-08-03, 02:32 PM FredPuli Sorry Moe,but that site reads as an attempt to reassure adults not a piece of scientific analysis. It's what I would expect a salesman of a language course to say to the adult who fears it is too late to learn. 'Ignore them it's a myth'. Notice the 'probably'; the clerk would 'probably' not correct (but he might). Wouldn't he ? I would, so that's that theory gone!He has no basis for the assertion. And yes, it is precisely because 5 year olds the world over have a limited vocabulary, limited experience and no use for the linguistic tools and thought processes of adults in adult society, that they learn so fast. They are 'in at the ground floor' They can socialise with very little language and once started they grow and their language , grammar and thinking grow with them , native and non-native. Somehow at 5, 6 or 7 years native speakers aren't that good in political debate or philosophy or in cocktail parties either !
02-08-03, 03:22 PM moe257 Well, I'm glad the article's is wrong! guess I was just looking for something to back-up what that professor told Sari. Based on what I see in my grandson, I would have to say younger children do learn language quicker that adults.
02-08-03, 07:09 PM Sarai
quote:Originally posted by juanruiz: moe,
I read over the piece in the link you provided, and all I can say if that is supposed to pass as scholarship, the author will never get tenure. Everything he says about little children and second-language proficiency is true about their native language too. The incorrect gender of the German indefinite article is analogous to regularizing of English strong verbs: I eated cereal. I goed to Gramma's. Mommy readed a book to me. And what luck is a five year-old going to have in an IRS audit in English?
Juanruiz, I think that's the point the author is trying to make. We are very tolerant of children's errors because native speaking children make similar errors. However, we are less tolerant of adults when they make similar errors. While a child who makes such mistakes will be seen as learning the langauge well, and adult who makes such mistakes will be seen as someone who hasn't mastered the language yet. See the difference?
02-08-03, 08:10 PM juanruiz As I understand it, the question of this thread is Who learns a foreign language with greater ease and proficiency, children or adults? I maintain children. Why? Because children have less recourse to their native language. When immersed in a foreign language environment, children internalize it with greater facility, while adults tend to attempt a one-to-one correspondence with their native language. Of course both will make "grammatical" errors. But adults will tend to say *Yo soy hambre. *Es muy frío (in reference to weather) translating literally from English. The article cited above is a poor attempt to justify the counter argument.
02-09-03, 10:36 AM FredPuli I discover that the UK government has now completely reversed its educational policy on this very question, Why ? Because they are sure that the research to the contrary is wrong. Children were being taught from 7 years in some schools and the results showed it a waste of time and money as the result was no better than teaching from 12 or 13 when it came to the national exam at 16. This ignores a fact. The 7 year old starters could actually converse in the language ! The exam, like all formal exams, was largely a test of written translation and of formal grammar and sentence structure which the serious student could learn from 13, by rote or reason, so producing similar results.So they could 'speak' French BUT taken away from the paper they could not 'think' in the language or converse with any confidence or creativity, when compared with the early starters.So starting at 7 produced fundamental advantages ( which could be embarrassing for them as they now have to find the extra teachers!)
02-09-03, 12:43 PM Ritzmar Unfortunately I have encountered this thread at the very moment that Mrs. Ritzmar calls me to tea! So I have had no time to read & analyse all the (no doubt excellent) foregoing contributions. However, here, in condensed form is my limited experience. I have a very good friend (Nigerian) whose father was African and mother was Austrian. He went to the best schools available. From earliest days he spoke three languages with highly-educated parents & peers. By the time he was seven he was fluent in all three, with a perfect 'upper class' accent in each one. I had another friend whose mother is German and father English, same story. I do not see how it is ever possible to catch up with a young child given these circumstances, and would infer from the small amount of instances upon which I can call that no adult will progress at the rate of a willing child coached by the very best tutors in linguistic skills.
02-09-03, 10:26 PM emkayess when do people learn a 2nd language best? If I may recount my own experience. I learned English in my 20s and I am doing quite well. But...40 years later I still get "static" from my earlier language. Capitalization and punctuation are just not working for me, not without deliberate concentration; there is very little "automaticity."(Case in point- period before end quotes.)At 5-6 years old I spoke an obscure dialect of German that hat been isolated in a piece of real estate that changed "nationality" frequently. I was transplanted to a small village where they spoke a quite different dialect and various refugee children from lots of different places also spoke their own dialect. And then it was time to start school where they teach High German. I remember only that I was translating for my grandmother and the neighbors. These women shared the written language; but did not use it to communicate. My teenage brothers had many more problems. They had done Elementary school in another language and I remember being "mortally embarrassed" when my brothers signed my autograph book a few years later it was "atrocious" in my eyes. My first grade teacher was also a refugee and spoke the written language all the time. I found this the best solution and adopted it. Which was not much appreciated by anyone in this rural area, but thinking back I must applaud my 6 year old self. Motivation makes a big difference in learning a language. My current next door neighbor is Hispanic. He has been in the U.S. for 30 some years since he was a teen. He was explaining to me that he still translates "manga verde" = "hose green" = green hose.(We're taking across the backyard fence.)According to him he has been working in places where it is not necessary to speak English and there is Spanish Radio and Spanish TV. No need to learn too much English. Oops. This got long. Thanks for listening.
02-11-03, 03:13 AM QwertyMac I learned English as a nine year old when my family moved to the U.S. We were here for six months and then went back to our native country. During my stay, I went to an all-English school. Not a single soul spoke Spanish (my native language).
It was years later, a couple of months shy of my 17th birthday that I moved to the U.S. permanently. Other than a couple of times that I came to the U.S. on vacation, I had been pretty much away from the English language. Yet when I moved to the U.S. I was able to integrate immediately, with no distinguishable accent. Today I move with ease between both languages.
In a way I consider myself as having two native languages, because I learned English the same way I learned Spanish, by hearing and association. In a way, to learn English was like being born again (no reference to religion intended). One of the interesting problems that I encountered after permanently relocating to the U.S., and during the next fifteen years, was that while I was able to switch back and forth from English to Spanish instantly, fluently, and without accent in either language, I was unable to translate except at the most basic level (table = mesa). So while I was able to understand a conversation involving higher concepts in either English or Spanish, I was completely unable to translate the same into the other language. It was as if I had learned one language with one side of the brain and the other with the other half, and both sides were not communicating. Eventually and with great effort, I learned translation to the point that I was able to do simultaneous tranlsation.
I'm no linguist, but language, in my opinion, is not just the mechanics of different words for different things and concepts; it is also a way of thinking. Without language we can not conceptualize, so in my reasoning, with different languages we conceptualize differently. The Spanish I learned was governed by the Real Academia Española, rigid as a huge slab of granite; while the English I learned was the laid-back Southern California style, as flexible as play-dough.
To your question, children learn faster and better because they are better able to grasp the concept of the language, though they may not have a handle on the nuances of grammar or a great vocabulary until much later. Adults may learn all the grammatical rules and an extensive vocabulary, but it takes a leap of faith to grasp the concept.
02-11-03, 05:03 AM chanceygardner I think that children will learn the language better than adults, though of course, they will learn it as a native does. You cannot expect a 6 year old that has learnt English and German to be as good as a 20 year old who has learnt English and then German as a 2nd language in their teens. The 6 year old will be as good as an English or a German 6 year old (that is, still make grammatical mistakes and have limited vocabulary). When he gets to be 20, then he will be far superior to the 20 year old who learnt German in his teens.
02-11-03, 01:39 PM Sarai What interesting answers! ChanceyGardner, your reasoning makes a LOT of sense to me.
QwertyMac, your description of being unable to translate - - and your argument about language being related to thinking - is fascinating. Wouldn't this be interesting to study? A friend of mine is equally fluent in Spanish and English, and she also is unable to do translations. While I'm still English-dominant, I speak Spanish with a fair degree of fluency. I can translate better than my balanced-bilingual friend (which, based on your argument, could be a result of my weaker bilingual ability, or of the fact that I learned Spanish as an adult). Even for me, though, it's much easier to summarize what was said than to translate it. I wonder why that is, and why it is that balanced bilinguals like you and my friend, who learned both languages as children, find it even harder to translate than someone like me, who began learning a second language as an adult.
Anyway, sorry about the chit chat. I asked a friend who has studied bilingualism about it, and she gave me a book that address this topic, among others. I'm currently only about 4 chapters in, and haven't reached the part that deals with how children learn 2nd languages vs. how adults learn them. I'll let you know what I find out!
02-11-03, 02:14 PM QwertyMac Sarai,
"A friend of mine is equally fluent in Spanish and English, and she also is unable to do translations"
Here's another equally fascinating thing I've found about myself vis a vis translations. As I touched on in the previous post, I learned to do simultaneous translations about 15 years ago from a professional who learned Spanish as an adult. The interesting part is that when I'm in the translating mode, it's almost like being in a trance. I kow this sounds totally weird, but that's what it feels like. Once I get into this state, I am able to translate (as opposed to interpretation which is what you are able to do), but then, in the end, I don't know what the hell I translated!!
I used to think to myself, 'hey, I got the gist of the matter'; but I've begun to suspect that it's probably because when I volunteer to do simultaneous translations it's usually on themes that are important and the subject matter is somewhat familiar to me.
This is definitely a case for a shrink, maybe some sort of left/right side of the brain kind of thing. It would be interesting to know what you find out in your book, and by the way, ask your friend if she's ever experienced something like this. Keep me posted.
02-18-03, 11:52 PM Sarai I read the book my friend gave me (entitled _Mirror of Language: The Debate on Bilingualism_ by Kenji Hakuta). Well, I said I would write what I learned, so here goes!
It appears that adults do learn faster than children - initially. Granted, certain factors need to take place for an adult to learn. An adult needs to be in an environment with exposure to native speakers, have time to study and/or take classes, and have a desire to learn the language. Examples that some people offered of adults dragging their kids around to translate for them certainly does happen, partly because immigrant life for certain groups in the US is really tough, and adults don't have the time or energy to study, don't work or live among native speakers, and may intend to move back to their home country (or find they get by without learning English), so they never learn the language. For adults (and children) motivation, exposure to native-speakers and having the chance to speak with them, and time/energy to study is key.
However, in the right circumstances, which we certainly do see in many adult immigrants, adults can learn language faster.
Children, however, will develop a more native-like fluency after a longer period of time. The book states
quote: ultimate level studies suggest that those who learn a second languae in childhood (before puberty) are more successful than those who acquire it as adults. This is true not just for accent but for grammar as well.
The initial gains, studies, on the other hand, suggest an advanage for the older level. For example, [some high-falutin' linguists] looked at American children living in Holland and learning Dutch during their first two to three years of exposure. Subjects were tested on the same set of tasks, tapping pronunciation, auditory discimination, vocabulary, morphology... all showed quite consistent gains in these measures over time, but the 12 to 15 year old children performed better overall than the younger children on most of their measures. The one exception was n phonology, where there were no differences between the groups.
In other words, adults learn faster, but children usually learn "better" over a longer period of time. However, studies also show that the best adult learners of a second language do equally as well as children in the long run. So adults are not doomed. The book lists a number of individual and social realities that adults face and that children don't which might account for the difference. Cognitive differences may also play a part, but this hasn't been proven.
The most interesting thing that this book argues is not that adults learn second languages better (because really, they don't), but the arguments about transfer. It appears that language transfer is not nearly as powerful, or detrimental, as many of us think.
quote: The order of appearance of morphemes in second language does not come anywhere near resembling the order found in native learners of English. This finding does not mean that the processes of first/and second/language acquisition are different, however, since the two types of learners are different in respects other than their level of language development. It may be that general cognitive development influeces the order found in first'langauge children. For example, the past tense for may be aquired [later in first'language learners] because its master requires a developed concept of time.
A second finding is that the order of acquiring English morphemes tends to be remarkably similar across chilren with different language backgrounds
In other words, langauge interference is not super significant. The major theory that argued that interference is a major problem for second language learning came under serious fire, largely because "it failed to predict all errors that in fact ocurred and falsely predicted errors that simply did not occur." Another study of Spanish speakers learning English counted the number of errors that were clearly due to interference (such as "I have hungry") verses the number of errors they made that were also common to first-langauge learners, "only 5 percent of the errors were attributable to native-language transfer."
However, although it is pretty insigificant, native-language interference can actually be *helpful* to second language learners. For example, studies of English speakers learning french found that
quote: "from the very beginning, these children expressed a large variety of semantic relations such as manner, intensifiers, and conjunctions. There was not the kind of orderly progression.... found with first-language learns... Uguisu [a Japanese English-learning 5 year old] was similarly eaguer to express semantically complex ideas from the very beginning."
In other words, second-language learners are able to speak in more complex ways because of what they already know about language from their first language. Transfer is not seen as a barrier (interference) to language learning, then, but a boon. Add solid first language skills to the great situation of childhood, and you have a great combination for learning a second language. Take away the first language, and the child will have to work a little harder to learn the second.
That is my book report for Answerpool.com.
Wink
02-18-03, 11:57 PM Sarai Just FYI: All the typos and spelling errors in the quotations are mine, not Hakuta's - I was reading and typing too quickly. :09 AM QwertyMac Sarai,
"In other words, second-language learners are able to speak in more complex ways because of what they already know about language from their first language."
In the first six months of my first visit to the U.S., the first two were miserable. Afterwards though, almost as soon as I was able to utter my first words in English ("leavemealone!" to the class bully), I found that I was much better at spelling, and had a much better vocabulary than most native speakers. This was, in retrospect, due to my understanding of English words with Latin roots as well as understanding different pronunciations of vowel and vowel/consonant sounds. I didn't mention before that my paternal family's first language was not even Spanish, it was a Mayan language heavy on consonants. So there you have it, the Mayan enriched the learning of Spanish that in turn enriched the learning of English.
Very good book report Sarai, and very nice of you to take credit for the typos!
-QwertyMac
02-19-03, 10:57 PM Sarai I really recommend that book to you. My "book report" only covered about 2 of the chapters. The book has a lot that might interest you about first-language acquisition and the different types of bilingualism.
Saludos-
02-20-03, 11:27 PM QwertyMac Gracias, leere el libro en cuanto tenga oportunidad. Por el momento estoy ocupado con evitar la catastrofe mundial :-)
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