Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as children: study

Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by MaxBarraclough on Saturday May 11, 2019 @03:27PM (#19887954)

> I witnessed a few people from Poland end up with almost no Polish accent, even though they came to the USA in middle age.

I presume you mean they spoke no English before they moved to the USA. I recently read Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct, which left me with the impression that what you describe is impossible, and that adults are never able to learn a language to 'native' proficiency. This article seems to refute that.

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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by betaby on Saturday May 11, 2019 @03:48PM (#19888033)

The Language Instinct is a 'weak' book. There is a plenty of criticism for arguments against universal grammar (the idea behind the book).

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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by garmaine on Saturday May 11, 2019 @03:51PM (#19888046)

The language instinct is bogus, refuted by multiple recent articles. Sorry you’ll have to undo learning a bunch of false info from it :(

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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by mjollnir on Saturday May 11, 2019 @04:09PM (#19888122)

I'm not sure it's that cut and dry, nor that any learning needs to be "undone". The study itself (referenced in this article) is co-authored by Pinker, and these ideas take time and research to develop.

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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by garmaine on Saturday May 11, 2019 @04:54PM (#19888340)

There was never any evidence to support the critical period theory. It was poor statistics from the very beginning.

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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by sjy on Saturday May 11, 2019 @10:44PM (#19889800)

The authors of the study under discussion explicitly claim (in the abstract even) that "the results support the existence of a sharply-defined critical period for language acquisition." You should address that argument (or cite the other "recent articles" that refute it), rather than simply dismissing it as poor statistics.

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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by garmaine on Sunday May 12, 2019 @12:37AM (#19890181)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3723803/

http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/March_2002_EBook_editions.p...

^ Basically the above study, sponsored by the NIH, found that when you correct for all relevant factors the critical period signal not only disappears but becomes anti-correlated: kids have a HARDER time in all aspects of language learning than adults, when the same level of interest and effort is applied.

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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by dragonwriter on Sunday May 12, 2019 @12:46AM (#19890203)

So we've not only confirmed that children have an advantage, but we've identified the nature of the advantage: it's easier for them to muster both interest and effort, to the extent that this outweighs the disadvantages they have outside of those areas.

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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by garmaine on Sunday May 12, 2019 @07:30PM (#19895293)

Yeah but there’s nothing physiological or neurological there, which is what the critical period hypothesis is predicting. It’s just the reality of childhood in an immersion environment.

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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by dragonwriter on Sunday May 12, 2019 @08:21PM (#19895521)

> Yeah but there’s nothing physiological or neurological there

That's, IMO, an unwarranted (and, taken strictly, almost implausible) assumption. (Especially on the interest side.)

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Re:Adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as childr... by TomMarius on Sunday May 12, 2019 @02:33AM (#19890516)

I personally saw a person in their 50's to learn English to fluency with no accent. It is possible.

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