Today we have a guest post by Jade Henriques, a young language learner who is planning to pursue a degree in linguistics. Here is her website languageninjas.com. You can also keep up with Facebook.

From the first time I started learning languages, I see this question pop up from time to time. I too considered if I was just too old to learn another language. The thing is that people believe that you have to be at a certain age to learn a language, once you pass this age learning a language is next to impossible.

On the contrary scientist may disagree; I’ve actually stumbled across many researches that say; not learning a language because of your age is a myth. When it comes to learning a language, adults actually have the capability of learning faster than little children. One perspective I have is that as adults we already learned the basics of communication and the meaning of objects around us. For example, a seven year old may learn that a tree is a plant, a tree has leaves, and a tree grows from the soil. As adults we know this already, in our second language all we need to know is what a tree is in that language, we don’t need to go into details of what it is or a description of it.

It’s still, however, an ongoing battle of whether children learn better or adults do.

Our Brains can actually do it
The human brain is still a mystery to many scholars and scientists out there. The complexity of it is baffling. Something I see so very often is that if we see a word 160 times over, it is permanently lodged into our permanent memory. That doesn’t mean you should sit and say a word 160 times over. It means that if over a period of time, on different occasions, if you see a word at least 160 times, it’s going to be hard to forget that word. This research was carried out by a group of Cambridge neuroscientists. This is why reading is so important when learning a language. The first time you see a word and you don’t understand it, don’t beat yourself up. If you were to see this word again, and again and again, our brains will begin to make sense of it and remember it for us.

It’s about inputting
There is no way on God’s earth you can speak a language with very little input. It is in the same essence if you see a word for the first time and you don’t understand it right of the back, then that simple means you hardly see this word or you’ve never seen this word before. So, before you open your mouth, start inputting data into your brain.

I’ve find that it is actually easier to remember words when we are not fighting ourselves to remember them. For instance, making vocabulary list and spending your day studying this list is not the way to go.

But naturally just reading and listening (to things you actually enjoy) will help you to remember words faster and pain free.

Long term, Medium term and short term memory
Long term memory is words that we will never forget. Long term memory is very hard to destroy and it would take a brain disorder such as Alzheimer’s to do so. This is what the above study suggests that if a word is seen 160 times, then it’s a part of your long term memory. With words in your medium term memory, it suggests that you have seen these words numerous times but not enough. If you neglect these words over a period of time, chances are you will forget them. Words in your short term memory are the easiest to forget, maybe you just seen these words a handful of times, overtime, try to make words in your short term memory apart of your long term memory.

In conclusion, you are not too old to learn a language; it’s just a matter of practice and a passion for the language.

According to an article I came across today, it is the process of learning a new language that encourages people to learn more languages, and becoming bilingual makes learning further languages easier.

The article talks about at study of native English speakers who were either monolingual, or bilingual in English and Spanish or English and Mandarin, and who were presented with words made up by the researchers. It found that the bilingual participants could learn the made up words much more easily than the monolingual ones, and the researchers think that the process of learning a foreign language improves your language learning skills.

Another study found that bilinguals are also better at learning words in their native language and generally have faster brain activity, especially older adults (60-68 years old) who have been bilingual from an early age. Apparently “these results suggest that lifelong bilingualism may exert its strongest benefits on the functioning of frontal brain regions in aging.”

I came across an interesting-looking site today called Linguisticator, via the Economist.

It says that it provides “an advanced online language training program designed to teach adults how to learn languages quickly and effectively. It is unique in providing a single course that can be used to learn any language on the planet. The program was designed with military and business professionals in mind, but is available to anyone serious about learning a language.”

Apparently, “With the training Linguisticator provides, it’s possible to learn languages faster and more accurately than children do, such that you can gain conversational competence in only a few weeks and fluency in a few months.”

It’s basically a video-based course that you subscribe to and watch online. It doesn’t teach a particular language, but teaches you how to learn languages systematically. You can also book individual language lessons via the website and work out a language learning plan.

There’s a free trial version that gives you a taster of the course.

Have any of you tried it?