Best age to learn a second language

Nowadays, speaking only one language is not enough for a man to work and study, even if his mother tongue is English. In a fast-moving and integrative world, being multilingual or at least bilingual is of absolute importance due to communication demand.

At school foreign language is a compulsory subject and at workplace it is a useful tool. Learning foreign languages at young ages or at work ages is both OK, but a new study has suggested that to achieve the fluency level of a native speaker, children must learn a new language at the age of 10. “If you want to have native-like knowledge of English grammar you should start by about 10 years old. We don’t see very much difference between people who start at birth and people who start at 10, but we start seeing a decline after that,” says Joshua Hartshorne, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College, who conducted this study as a postdoc at MIT. Fortunately, the level of absorption is still high in teen years, particularly until 17 or 18.

The reasons of this phenomenon are not yet clear enough to explain why. “It’s possible that there’s a biological change. It’s also possible that it’s something social or cultural,” said Josh Tenenbaum, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences. “There’s roughly a period of being a minor that goes up to about that age 17 or 18 in many societies,” he continued. “After that, you leave your home, maybe you work full time, or you become a specialized university student. All of those might impact your learning rate for any language.”

However, being an adult learner is nothing to worry about. It is commonly known that an adult has a greater attitude towards learning something new than a child, as children can easily be distracted from more attractive objects while learning. He or she is able to motivate himself or herself, while children need incentives to continue. Therefore, anyone must keep in mind that ’Never think it is too late to learn something new’. But as a whole, children learning a second language still have more advantages than adults, as they require less time to master it.

Author: Nguyen Thanh Nam, High School for Gifted Students

Tham khảo: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-brain-window-language-adulthood.html