How Difficult Is It To Learn A New Language

At What Age Does Our Ability to Learn a New Language Like a Native Speaker Disappear? — Credit: Laurence Mouton *Getty Images*

The older you lot get the more than difficult it is to larn to speak French like a Parisian. Simply no ane knows exactly what the cutoff point is—at what age information technology becomes harder, for instance, to pick upwardly noun-verb agreements in a new language. In one of the largest linguistics studies always conducted—a viral net survey that drew ii thirds of a million respondents—researchers from iii Boston-based universities showed children are proficient at learning a second language up until the age of 18, roughly ten years later than earlier estimates. But the report also showed that it is best to start by age 10 if you want to achieve the grammatical fluency of a native speaker.

To parse this problem, the research squad, which included psychologist Steven Pinker of Harvard University, collected data on a person'southward current age, language proficiency and time studying English. The investigators calculated they needed more than half a million people to make a fair gauge of when the "critical period" for achieving the highest levels of grammatical fluency ends. And so they turned to the world'due south greatest experimental bailiwick puddle: the internet.

They created a short online grammar quiz called Which English? that tested substantive–verb agreement, pronouns, prepositions and relative clauses, among other linguistic elements. From the responses, an algorithm predicted the tester'southward native language and which dialect of English (that is, Canadian, Irish, Australian) they spoke. For example, some of the questions included phrases a Chicagoan would deem grammatically incorrect but a Manitoban would recall is perfectly acceptable English.

The researchers got a huge response by providing respondents with "something that is intrinsically rewarding," says Joshua Hartshorne, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College, who led the report while he was a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The small gift to the respondents was a guess near their groundwork. According to Hartshorne: "If it correctly figures out that you are in fact a German-American, people are similar, 'Oh my god, science is awesome!' And when it'southward wrong, they're like, 'Ha ha, stupid robot.' Either style, information technology'south entertaining and interesting and something that they can recall virtually and talk about with their friends."

Hartshorne's tactic worked. At its peak, the quiz attracted 100,000 hits a twenty-four hours. It was shared 300,000 times on Facebook, made the forepart folio of Reddit and became a trending topic on 4chan, where a thoughtful discussion ensued most how the algorithm could make up one's mind dialect from the grammer questions. The study brought in native speakers of 38 different languages, including 1 percent of Finland's population.

Based on people's grammar scores and information almost their learning of English, the researchers developed models that predicted how long it takes to become fluent in a language and the best age to get-go learning. They concluded that the ability to learn a new linguistic communication, at least grammatically, is strongest until the age of eighteen after which there is a precipitous decline. To become completely fluent, however, learning should start before the age of x.

In that location are iii principal ideas every bit to why linguistic communication-learning power declines at 18: social changes, interference from i's primary language and continuing brain evolution. At 18, kids typically graduate high school and proceed to commencement higher or enter the work force full-time. One time they do, they may no longer have the time, opportunity or learning environs to written report a second language like they did when they were younger. Alternatively, it is possible that after i masters a first linguistic communication, its rules interfere with the ability to acquire a second. Finally, changes in the brain that go on during the tardily teens and early 20s may somehow make learning harder.

This is non to say that we cannot learn a new linguistic communication if we are over 20. There are numerous examples of people who pick upward a linguistic communication after in life, and our ability to learn new vocabulary appears to remain constant, only most of us will non be able to primary grammar like a native speaker—or probably audio like ane either. Existence a written quiz, the written report could non test for accent, but prior research places the disquisitional period for speech sounds fifty-fifty earlier.

Although the study was conducted merely in English language, the researchers believe the findings will transfer to other languages, and they are currently developing similar tests for Castilian and Standard mandarin.

Mayhap even more important than when one learns a linguistic communication is how. People who learned via immersion—living in an English language-speaking land more than than 90 percent of the time—were significantly more than fluent than those who learned in a class. Hartshorne says that if you take the choice between starting linguistic communication lessons before or learning through immersion afterward, "I'd learn in an immersion surround. Immersion has an enormous effect in our information—large fifty-fifty relative to fairly large differences in age."

The enthusiasm for the study is non shared by everyone in the field. Elissa Newport, a professor of neurology at Georgetown University who specializes in language conquering, remains a skeptic. "About of the literature finds that learning the syntax and morphology of a language is done in about five years, not thirty," she says. "The merits that information technology takes thirty years to acquire a linguistic communication only doesn't fit with whatever other findings."

Newport says that although the premise of the study—seeking critical periods for learning a linguistic communication—is warranted, she thinks the surprising results emerged because the measure out the researchers used is flawed. "Testing 600,000 people doesn't give you a dependable, reliable event" if yous're non asking the right questions, she says. Instead of creating a new examination, Newport says she would have preferred the researchers utilise an existing assessment of language proficiency to ensure they are actually gauging how well people know English.

Hartshorne is hoping to re-create the success of Which English? in a new online vocabulary test, but says he has struggled to create the same level of viral response because people are less willing to share their results if they perform poorly. "When you discover out, 'I'm in the 99th percentile of vocabulary,' you lot're similar, 'Okay, click, share.' But you know 50 percent of people are below average. And they're going to exist less probable to want to share that."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(Due south)

Dana Smith is a freelance science writer specializing in brains and bodies. She has written for Scientific American, the Atlantic, the Guardian, NPR, Find, and Fast Company, among other outlets. In a previous life, she earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Cambridge.