The Older Language Learner

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.

Today I want to talk about older language learners and the reason for that is I'm connected to these various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and now Google Plus and every so often you see these things from people that you are following or that are following you. So there was a message there from someone saying, I want to do some research on the problems of older language learners and see what I can do to help them. So I posted a little comment there and said, what do you consider to be an older language learner and he answered over 40. So I said, what makes you think that people over 40 have particular problems in language learning. What do you think these problems might be? The answer was well, you know, they might develop hearing loss or something of that nature. I must say, I was completely taken aback by this comment.

I don't know that over 40 qualifies as old, but I assume that over 60 does. That's me. I think I'm a better language learner now than I was when I was 16. All the evidence I've seen in the reading I've done is that our cognitive abilities don't really start to decline until well past the mid 70s. If we work hard at maintaining these cognitive abilities by keeping our minds active, I'm sure that our cognitive abilities and our ability to create new neurons and neuro networks remain quite strong. Now, I can't compare the ability of the average 60-year-old with the average 15-year-old, but everything I've seen suggests to me that obviously a child before the age of say 10 seems to have a major advantage in language learning and there are probably a number of reasons.

I think as a very young child, of course, the brain is still flexible enough. The brain hasn't sort of formed around one language so it's much more open to new languages because, necessarily, the brain has to form patterns. It has to form rules for itself so it can deal with all the experiences and the phenomena that it's confronted with. The positive side of this is that as we grow older we have more patterns in place.

We have more experience to draw on. We have more wisdom, in a sense. We've experienced more things, but we perhaps become less open to new things. I think that's what happens in language learning, we're open to any language. When we're born, we could learn any language as a native language and as we develop therefore these sets of patterns to deal with our native language we perhaps become less open to new languages. I think there young people who study two or three languages have the big advantage, but once you pass the age of 10 or so I think the brain is more or less formed, from what I've read. By the way, the majority of teens are not interested in language learning and don't do well, the majority that I've seen at least in Canada.

On the other hand, for example at LingQ and on the recent hangouts that I've been conducting in Google Plus, we've had some young people show up who are extremely good. I think some of the more enthusiastic so-called polyglots (people learning different languages) probably are younger, but it's their enthusiasm and their willingness to put in the time and the effort and the fact that they aren't resisting the language. These are the sort of attitudinal factors that enable them to be successful and there's no reason why an older person can't have the same attitude.

I like to feel that when I study a language I am totally enthusiastic about the language. I put in the time necessary. I don't resist the language. I don't question why do they say it this way and wouldn't it be better if they said it the way we said it in our language, none of these things. I think, to some extent, it may be true that some people do this, but I think young people do this, as well. As for hearing loss, amongst my friends I don't know many of them.

Yeah, you do lose the sort of high-frequency range of hearing, but not to the point where it would affect your ability to hear the language. Now, there are people with hearing aides who have develop significant hearing loss. I have a very good friend who's 83 and has a hearing aide. He doesn't hear very well, but he's very enthusiastic learning Spanish and having a great time. Old people aren't in any way disadvantaged.

Older people, whether over 40 as this person had it or over 60, are not handicapped people. In terms of their cognitive abilities, they're just as good as younger people if they have the same attitude. If they have the attitude of not resisting the language, being caught up in the excitement of learning a new language, not resisting the language, if they can visualize themselves speaking that other language, if they have these attitudes they can be just as good as anyone else. Again, I was at a meetup the other evening here in Vancouver.

It was styled as a meetup of language enthusiasts and linguists and someone sort of made the statement well, we all know that our ability to learn a language declines with age. The older we get, the harder it is to learn. I said no. I'm sorry, that's not been my experience. Well, I mean you can't say that. Everybody knows the older you get, the harder it is to learn a language. There are a lot of people who glibly toss these ideas around and, unfortunately, I think it influences some people who are sort of past their 30s. They think they can't learn a language anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's not just learning languages.

If I look at my wife, for example, who's so enthusiastic about her piano she plays two-three hours a day. She doesn't have a teacher, but she's improving by leaps and bounds. I mean we can learn anything we want at any age, as long as we have the attitude of a learner. The attitude of a learner is someone who is independent, who doesn't expect someone else to teach them or to give it to them, who's enthusiastic, who's confident and who is determined to get there and, also, someone who isn't too concerned about comparing themselves to other people. Now, my wife plays the piano, she doesn't care whether she's better than someone else.

I know very well that there are all kinds of polyglots on the Internet that are better than I am in a number of languages, if not all. That doesn't diminish my enjoyment one little bit. Every one of us as we learn a language, whatever our age and whatever our opportunities to speak and so forth, can all enjoy the progress we're making. That's all we need to achieve is to achieve that little bit of progress that gives us a sense of satisfaction. We don't have to compare ourselves to anyone else. Just to say, I think there's a bit of a prejudice and one that works to the advantage of some people who give up on the possibility that they could learn one, two or more languages past their teens.

I can assure you, I learned Czech from basically a standing start, except that I had done Russian within a year. I would never have considered that possible when I was in my 20s; you know, putting in an hour or an hour and a half or so, eventually two hours a day. The reason is, again, as we're older and as we've done these things, we get better at doing them. We know how to do them. Again, the brain develops these patterns, these routines that it's no longer a new phenomenon. Now, someone who has never learned a second language or has only had say school exposure to French or grew up in China who learned English for 10 years and can't speak English, I mean they have no sense of what it's like to transform themselves into a speaker of a second language.

They have an attitude. They're defeated before they start. But that's the attitude, that's not the age. If they accept the fact that they can learn, that it's a gradual process and you have to do it with enthusiasm and determination, I don't see any difference between a 16-year-old and a 66-year-old. So there's my take on language learning and older people.

Thank you for listening, bye for now.