This article discusses the often assumed theory that children who learn a foreign language before they are 10 are more likely to master it than those who learn the new language as adults. MIT scientists have found through a study that although it is indeed beneficial to start learning a foreign language earlier, there is a large number of adults who outperformed native speakers. When given the same amount of time, the top 25% of people who learned the language when they were over 20 do just as well as the average person who started before they were 10.
While the findings of this Hartshorne, et al. (2018) study are encouraging, in that researchers found that the cut-off age for learning second language (L2) grammar at native-like levels seemed to be older than previously thought (17.4 years of age vs. puberty), the researchers only examined grammar acquisition, but not phonology/pronunciation, an aspect of language learning thatʻs crucial to full fluency.
https://medium.com/@chacon/mit-scientists-prove-adults-learn-language-to-fluency-nearly-as-well-as-children-1de888d1d45f
While the findings of this Hartshorne, et al. (2018) study are encouraging, in that researchers found that the cut-off age for learning second language (L2) grammar at native-like levels seemed to be older than previously thought (17.4 years of age vs. puberty), the researchers only examined grammar acquisition, but not phonology/pronunciation, an aspect of language learning thatʻs crucial to full fluency.
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