Just think how many times you’ve heard similar claims. This persistent myth is a breeding ground for the language business revolving around pre-school children (declaring ‘the earlier the better’), whose target group is frightened parents who eventually succumb willy-nilly to the pressure and systematically pay extra for English classes or an English kindergarten. The more ambitious ones play fairy tales in English and try to educate in a bilingual environment. Because they don’t want to miss the sensitive age at which a child can still learn language naturally. After that, it won’t work.
However, experimental research into language acquisition shows that adults are typically better learners than children (although children do have exceptional ability in one area, which is pronunciation). The adult brain, unlike the child’s, has already done a lot and can, for example, understand a new language system much better because it applies it to the one it already knows from its mother tongue. Adult learners can also learn much more and in less time because they are able to concentrate, be patient and use analytical skills effectively.
There are many reasons why children may seem to learn faster. Studies often mention the time children spend learning. Let’s look at the example of a bilingual family that moves to a foreign country. Their child starts going to a local school to have about six hours of contact with the foreign language every day in a natural environment, whereas the parent, attending a one-hour course once a week, struggles to catch up. But it does not mean that under the same conditions he would learn the language more slowly.
The fact that you can learn a language (or any other skill) even at a very old age has been repeatedly confirmed by research into the neuroplasticity of the brain.
Mgr. Tereza Najberková, Language School Methodologist