Why Kids Learn Better than Adults

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann.

Today I want to talk about why kids learn languages better than adults. Now, I know I have said in the past that adults can learn better than kids. This is true to the extent that adults have more life experience, have a larger vocabulary in their own language which can help them to acquire more vocabulary in a new language so that in less than a year in Czech I can read serious books on history in Czech that a child of seven wouldn't read. However, when it comes to producing the language, understanding the language based on sort of the content, based on what they're hearing around them, the children do better. They speak better. They speak with less of an accent. They understand better. They speak more naturally. By enlarge they are better, in most cases. Now, this assumes that the child is interested.

We all know of school children, for example here in Canada, who take French for 10 or 12 years and at the end of it they can't speak French because they're not interested.

Putting kids who aren't very interested in a formal classroom is not going to enable them to learn. However, if you sent that same child who couldn't learn in a classroom off to a French-speaking environment, within six months they'd be speaking fairly fluently whereas their parents would not be and why is that.

Well, the reason I'm sort of making this little video is because I was reminded of how well kids learn with the example of my grandson.

Now, my grandson is very interested in playing hockey, not surprising because his father played hockey and, of course, I play, not very well, and he's not very interested in golf. But a friend of his two years ago decided to join the junior program at our golf club, so now after two years this friend of my grandson is a good golfer, shoots in the 80s, has a natural swing and looks really good.

My grandson hasn't really progressed in the two years, but I thought about the fact that at the golf club all the kids in the junior program have these natural swings.

They look good. They seem to play golf well. Within a couple of years they're able to play. Then I think of the adults, like myself and others, who over the last 10 years, despite working out on the driving range and taking lessons, essentially don't improve very much and many of them actually go downhill. Why is that? Why can the kids within a year or two just get up there and naturally they're swinging the ball?

Mostly, they're fooling around and having fun while they're learning, yet they seem to improve.

And the adults who are so intent, they read the golf magazines and what to do with their elbow, their knee, their shoulder, this and that, they don't seem to improve very much and it dawned on me that the kids have fun with it. They're natural. They just watch and imitate. They don't doubt themselves, they just go for it. They're not resisting it, yet the adults are. The adults doubt themselves. They resist it. They try to fit it in with what they were doing before. They don't really accept the way they're being taught to do things. They just don't let themselves go the way the kids do and I think that's largely why kids learn languages better than most adults; again, assuming they want to, that they're interested. I mean no one is going to learn if they're not interested, adult or child.

Very often there is this discussion amongst teachers.

Adults learn differently from children, the second or third language acquisition is not the same as the first language. Well, to some extent, of course this is true if we're learning a second language. We already have a first language in our system which (A) provides sort of a filter or creates resistance to the second language because we're kind of first language and so we have to overcome that resistance and second of all, on the plus side, we have a lot of vocabulary in that first language which can help us in the second language, as I said.

So the circumstances are not the same, but I think the basic learning process insofar as the brain is concerned is the same and I highly recommend that you read this book by Manfred Spitzer that I have referred to before which is called Learning and the Brain .

I'll put a link here on my YouTube comment section. The brain needs the stimulus, it needs some models, it needs a lot of input and the brain will gradually start to put labels on things and create little patterns so that it can deal with all of this and that's, basically, the same.

So kids have an easier time with language because they're not as hung up about hanging on to that first language.

They're more prepared to just let themselves go. They hear something, they want to communicate with their peers and they just pick up on it. They allow the brain to just pick up on it, whereas adults want to formalize the process. They want some rules. Some people are into passing tests. They get frustrated when they don't remember the rules or if they get a low mark on the tests. Kids are not into that. The kids are into just oh, okay, that's how they said and then gradually imitating it.

I think, as an adult language learner, the best thing we can do is to simplify the process and try to learn like kids, without doubting ourselves, without feeling frustrated, just enjoying the fact that we're able to communicate or that we're able to understand and exposing ourselves to more and more of the language, more and more content that we're interested in.

Essentially, that's what I'm doing with Czech. I'm reading stuff that I'm interested in. I'm listening to stuff that I'm interested in. I can't speak very well, it doesn't bother me. I'm not going to write a test. I'm not going to write the European framework. I couldn't care less whether I'm at an A-1, A-2, B-1, B-2. To me, that's all meaningless.

As I've said, we had a discussion at our forum at LingQ on language testing and so forth and so on and I said, aside from Chinese where I had to write a test for the government, I've never taken a test in any of these languages and I have no interest in doing so.

I do what I enjoy doing with the language. If it's reading, it's reading. If it's speaking, it's speaking. To the extent that I can speak, I'm happy. I'm just enjoying it.

Just like these kids playing golf, they're just enjoying the golf.

I mean they would like to do well, but because they're enjoying it they end up doing well. Whereas if you're doubting yourself, not happy, frustrated and worried about your test marks and so forth, you won't do as well, in my view. So I think the best advice for a language learner is to try to learn like kids. Enjoy it. Just let it all hang out. Let it go in and let it come out and don't worry about it, just like the kids.

Thank you for listening, bye for now.