Does Learning A Second Language Affect Your First 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 get the more than hard it is to learn to speak French like a Parisian. But no one knows exactly what the cutoff point is—at what historic period it becomes harder, for instance, to pick up substantive-verb agreements in a new language. In one of the largest linguistics studies ever conducted—a viral net survey that drew two thirds of a million respondents—researchers from three Boston-based universities showed children are adept at learning a second language up until the age of xviii, roughly x years later than earlier estimates. But the study besides showed that information technology is best to showtime by age 10 if you want to achieve the grammatical fluency of a native speaker.

To parse this problem, the research team, which included psychologist Steven Pinker of Harvard Academy, nerveless data on a person's electric current age, language proficiency and time studying English. The investigators calculated they needed more than than one-half a one thousand thousand people to make a fair guess of when the "critical menses" for achieving the highest levels of grammatical fluency ends. So they turned to the world's greatest experimental bailiwick puddle: the net.

They created a short online grammar quiz called Which English? that tested noun–verb agreement, pronouns, prepositions and relative clauses, amidst other linguistic elements. From the responses, an algorithm predicted the tester's native linguistic communication 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 recollect is perfectly adequate English language.

The researchers got a huge response past providing respondents with "something that is intrinsically rewarding," says Joshua Hartshorne, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston Higher, who led the study while he was a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The small gift to the respondents was a judge well-nigh their background. According to Hartshorne: "If it correctly figures out that y'all are in fact a German-American, people are like, 'Oh my god, science is crawly!' And when it's wrong, they're like, 'Ha ha, stupid robot.' Either way, information technology's entertaining and interesting and something that they can think about and talk about with their friends."

Hartshorne's tactic worked. At its peak, the quiz attracted 100,000 hits a twenty-four hour period. It was shared 300,000 times on Facebook, made the forepart page of Reddit and became a trending topic on 4chan, where a thoughtful discussion ensued about how the algorithm could determine dialect from the grammar questions. The report brought in native speakers of 38 dissimilar languages, including 1 percentage of Finland's population.

Based on people's grammar scores and information about 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 kickoff learning. They concluded that the power to learn a new language, at least grammatically, is strongest until the age of 18 after which there is a precipitous decline. To become completely fluent, nonetheless, learning should start before the historic period of x.

At that place are three principal ideas as to why language-learning power declines at 18: social changes, interference from one's primary language and continuing encephalon development. At xviii, kids typically graduate high school and go along to start higher or enter the work strength full-time. One time they do, they may no longer have the fourth dimension, opportunity or learning environment to study a second language similar they did when they were younger. Alternatively, it is possible that afterward 1 masters a first linguistic communication, its rules interfere with the ability to learn a second. Finally, changes in the encephalon that continue during the late teens and early on 20s may somehow make learning harder.

This is not to say that nosotros cannot learn a new language if we are over 20. There are numerous examples of people who pick up a language later in life, and our ability to acquire new vocabulary appears to remain constant, simply well-nigh of u.s. will not exist able to master grammar similar a native speaker—or probably sound like one either. Beingness a written quiz, the study could not exam for emphasis, only prior research places the critical period for speech sounds even earlier.

Although the report was conducted only in English, the researchers believe the findings will transfer to other languages, and they are currently developing similar tests for Spanish and Mandarin.

Mayhap even more than of import than when one learns a linguistic communication is how. People who learned via immersion—living in an English language-speaking country more than 90 percent of the fourth dimension—were significantly more than fluent than those who learned in a class. Hartshorne says that if you have the choice between starting linguistic communication lessons earlier or learning through immersion later, "I'd learn in an immersion environment. Immersion has an enormous effect in our data—large even relative to adequately big differences in historic period."

The enthusiasm for the study is not shared by anybody in the field. Elissa Newport, a professor of neurology at Georgetown Academy who specializes in linguistic communication acquisition, remains a skeptic. "Nigh of the literature finds that learning the syntax and morphology of a language is done in about five years, not 30," she says. "The claim that it takes 30 years to learn a language merely doesn't fit with any other findings."

Newport says that although the premise of the study—seeking critical periods for learning a language—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 outcome" if you're not asking the right questions, she says. Instead of creating a new test, Newport says she would have preferred the researchers employ an existing cess of language proficiency to ensure they are really 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 y'all find out, 'I'1000 in the 99th percentile of vocabulary,' you're like, 'Okay, click, share.' Merely y'all know l percent of people are below average. And they're going to be less likely to want to share that."

ABOUT THE Author(S)

Dana Smith is a freelance science author 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.