Why is it harder to learn a new language when you are older?

Question

I am learning two foreign languages at school, and my dad is trying to learn two in his spare time, but while I am participating in an exchange after two years, he is struggling. It isn't that my dad is stupid - he has an IQ of 160 (he says)! He is just slower to pick things up and remember them.

Answer 1

When you're younger, you're a sponge to anything and everything. That's how everyone learns to speak and communicate. When you get older, that "sponge" is weaker.

I'm not exactly sure why.

I'm currently working on German. Where are you going?

Answer 2

There is something in the brain that makes it more difficult as we get older to learn foreign languages or other things for that matter, i believe. I'm french and have been speaking english for the past 20 years (first being an au pair in the USA and secondly marrying an american man). When my hubby and I had children, we opted for the french school system while living abroad. As a concerned mum who wanted my kids to be totally bilingual, i remember asking a french teacher for some advise. His reply was: 'if you make sure the children hear the language/learn it, up to the age of 6, they will be fluent and will NOT have a foreign accent when speaking the language'. He was right and now my children are still in the french system, ages 11 and 13, they speak like normal french kids with NO accent whatsoever. They also speak english with no strong accent, just very flat.
I, on the other hand, will never be able to get rid of my french accent while speaking english. I try hard to perfect it and nail the british accent specifically........... but it never fails and people automatically ask me where i'm from originally.

Answer 3

This has to do with a concept known as brain plasticity. Basically the brains of younger people are still in the development phase. They are like plastic, in that they can be moulded into several different shapes. When children learn languages the connections are still in the process of being developed, and laid down as the foundations for adult life. This makes the learning process easier, not just for languages but other tasks as well. Adults, however, (from about the age of 18 onwards) have a fully "hardwired" brain. This means that the functions of each part of the brain are already defined and redefinition is very difficult.

In your fathers case, when he is learning the language his brain has to assimilate the information into an already existing (English I assume) language model rather than simply rebuilding neural connections. For you, your brain is still developing and thus new connections are made and strengthened as you learn.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

Linguist Eric Lenneberg (1964) stated that the crucial period of language acquisition ends around the age of 12 years. He claimed that if no language is learned before then, it could never be learned in a normal and fully functional sense. This was called the "Critical period hypothesis."

An interesting example of this is the case of Genie, also known as "The Wild Child". A thirteen-year-old victim of lifelong child abuse, Genie was discovered in her home on November 4th, 1970, strapped to a potty chair and wearing diapers. She appeared to be entirely without language. Her father had judged her retarded at birth and had chosen to isolate her, and so she had remained until her discovery.

It was an ideal (albeit horrifying) opportunity to test the theory that a nurturing environment could somehow make up for a total lack of language past the age of 12. She was unable to acquire language completely, although the degree to which she acquired language is disputed.[4]

Detractors of the "Critical Period Hypothesis" point out that in this example and others like it the child is hardly growing up in a nurturing environment, and that the lack of language acquisition in later life may be due to the results of a generally abusive environment rather than being specifically due to a lack of exposure to language.

A more up-to-date view of the Critical Period Hypothesis is represented by the University of Maryland, College Park instructor Robert DeKeyser. DeKeyser argues that although it is true that there is a critical period, this does not mean that adults cannot learn a second language perfectly, at least on the syntactic level. DeKeyser talks about the role of language aptitude as opposed to the critical period.

Answer 5

Personally, I don't believe older people are any worse at learning new things than younger people. I think the key thing here is that you're learning the languages in school, so you're taught by a teacher, you have lessons organised for you and there are targets you're supposed to achieve by a given time (e.g. you should have reached a certain level by your end-of-year exams, your GCSEs etc.). I can only guess how your dad is learning, but I would imagine he's learning from home, possibly trying to teach himself using books/cds/websites etc, and he works at his own pace. Teaching yourself is hard, partly because you only have books to explain difficult points (you can't ask a book to explain something in a different way) and partly because it can be hard to find the time/motivate yourself.
Also, I would imagine that your exchange is being organised by your school, and so, regardless of his level, your dad wouldn't be able to take part in it anyway.
In a nutshell, I would imagine that you're learning in different ways, and that having organised, structured lessons gives you an advantage over your dad.The answer is how you're learning, not how old you are.

Answer 6

Basically you are born knowing zero languages, as an adult you will know at least one. A baby has to be good at learning languages if it is ever going to speak at all and this ability fades with time because an adult is not designed to need to learn in the same way a child is. A five year old would be better at learning a new language then you are and you will be better then your dad.

Answer 7

It is easiest to learn a new language prior to age 7. Around age 7 the brain prunes itself, so to speak, and certain capabilities of learning in very young children are never seen again in one's lifetime.
Through one's life, the brain loses cells. It used to be thought that lost brain cells are never replaced; we now know that this is not true, brain cells can replace themselves but it happens very slowly, on a cycle of about 7 years. (Compare to mucus membrane cells such as in the mouth, which replace themselves every few days.) Even so, the aging brain economises to make best use of the remaining cells, to maintain facilities that are already present, so learning new things is more difficult as one ages.
Since brain cells do replace themselves, although very slowly, recent findings are that one can stave off senility by learning new material in the fields of one's interest. So if you never were good at languages, for example, it will just be an exercise in frustration to learn a new language later on in life. However, if you always loved puzzles, or painting, or music, languages, it is good to take up a new form of these things later on in life.
It is possible to have a high IQ and not be good at languages. People with high IQ's tend to specialize in certain areas, sometimes at the expense of other areas. It is said that Einstein didn't like to learn other languages and wasn't very good at it. I have a high IQ and I didn't do so well in HS Spanish. (I got much better at it in an immersion situation, but lost it after leaving that situation.) On the other hand, I tutor math, and one of my clients has a gift for langauges. She knows about 10 languages, and is learning 2 more. But she is one of my most difficult clients in math, she just can't seem to get it. The brain is an amazing thing, we don't even know the exact mechanics of how we can speak at all, let alone how we can learn different languages and how some of us find it a lot easier than others.

Answer 8

I have heard it said that the older you get, the more fixed your thought patterns and neural pathways become. So when you are younger, your mind and brain has more flexibility to accept thinking in a new language.

But I think that the differences between individuals in language acquisition ability is much greater than the difference in the same person at different ages. I'm inclined to believe that your father just doesn't have the knack. Besides, two new languages at once is just too much.

Answer 9

you nevertheless have not mastered English curiously...."your older" might want to be "you're older"!! A second language doesn't draw one in course of God. The area of the guidelines that bargains with language skills is an same area of the guidelines which will change into impacted by potential of Alzheimer's ailment, therefore no longer in uncomplicated words has it been proved that artwork out that area of the mind can easily preserve from contracting the ailment, it logically stands to reason that it would want to be more durable to positioned it to apply as one a lengthy time period to %. up a clean language.

Answer 10

Believe me, this is a very large question!

The question of why people don't seem to be able to learn languages as well when they are older, or even if this is true, is a very, very open question in the field of Second Language Acquisition today. I was just writing something that quoted a study only about a year old that attempts to answer that very question.

So the answer to your question is:
1. You're going to find very few people here on Yahoo! Answers who have any kind of professional expertise sufficient to answer this question. I could name them, probably. No offense to all of the answerers above me, but often people have opinions on the topic of language learning that don't seem to be borne out in scientific research. She-Nerd's response, for example, represents the opinion of only some researchers in the area.
2. There is no answer to the question because researchers disagree so much about it. The field of second language acquisition as a whole will just have to continue doing more research until people are satisfied that we have come up with an answer.

As for practical suggestions for your dad, I would make the following suggestions:
1. Make sure that you are getting enough exposure to the language. Your daughter (hopefully) hears the languages that she is learning every day in school. You can give yourself more exposure by listening to news broadcasts, movies, radio, music, etc. in the language and by reading in the language as much as possible. Any exposure that you get, even if you understand very little, will contribute to your knowledge of that language. The more you understand, the better, though. You could watch a movie with subtitles to learn the story first, for example, and then watch the same movie without subtitles to see how much of the meaning you can gather from the movie by itself. It appears that language learning is very much a function of the sheer amount of exposure that you have to the language you are trying to learn.

2. Don't do any activities that involve translating back and forth between the language you are trying to learn and your native language. They are ineffective because your brain doesn't need any of the new language to understand the meaning. Likewise, memorizing dialogues or other things to recite in the new language are generally unhelpful because, as one linguist has said, "It's very difficult to find someone who knows the other half of the dialogue." Focus instead always on doing something meaningful with the new language you are trying to learn. Read in that language about a subject that you think is interesting. Have a conversation with a new friend who is a speaker of that language. And so forth. You don't need to understand every word, just gather as much as you can.

3. Until you get up to a certain proficiency level with a language, you are likely to lose your abilities with that language if you go for a relatively long period of time without using it. Even for those who are very highly proficient in a second language, it seems that going without using the language for a period of time sets you back. I feel that my Spanish gets rusty after about a week of not using it, for example. So I recommend that, for best results, you should build on your language knowledge by exposing yourself to the language you are trying to learn frequently, ideally about every day.


And, by the way, while I've addressed these suggestions to your dad, they would work for you, too. You can learn a lot outside of your classwork if you want to. E-mail me if you have any more questions!

Answer 11

Well i ski and started learning two years ago and am already very advanced whilst my parents started learning 5 years ago and arent that good. I think the younger the brain the easier to learn a kids brain is like a sponge i guess.