I’m from Vietnam. I’ve been in the UK for 10 years now. When I met my English husband 13 years ago at 19 I knew 0 English. We communicated using machine translation. So that’s when I started learning English. Fast forward to present day after immersion, living in an English speaking country, formal study, etc. and I’d say my writing and listening (understanding) are good, but my speaking and reading are still bad. I kind of gave up on trying to become fluent at this point.
“Dump 100 average 10-year-olds in Spain and most will be able to reach near-native fluency without much effort. Dump 100 average 35-year-olds in Spain and most won’t reach near-native fluency without struggling a great deal.”
is NOT saying
“Having an accent is bad; only perfect pronunciation is good enough.”
“You need flawless grammar to be able to communicate.”
“Hard = impossible”
“There is no point in learning a language if you struggle.”
“35-year-olds shouldn’t even try.”
I got a bunch of downvotes for my comment. I guess you’re not the only one reading “it’s much harder” = “there is no point”. I did not say that. The article I linked did not say that. On the contrary, the article talks about hos the critical period seems to be longer than they previously thought.
I get that … It’s just my impression that the “can’t teach an old dog new tricks” mentality is pretty prevalent in general and people might read an article and use it to confirm that mentality, see a phrase like “critical learning period is closed” and say “see, why even try”. Not you personally, just to be clear.
So I didn’t want to leave that uncommented because I think despite that we should foster a culture of learning at any age.
I agree. Although I think it’s important to shift what’s good enough and to have empathy for those who struggle. A lot of racism in Europe is focused around immigrants “not trying hard enough”, like refusing to speak to people that have an accent. “Why can’t they just learn? It’s not that hard.” It actually is that hard, Cathrine. Try navigating Swedish bureaucracy with your Duolingo food-ordering skills and you’ll see. Some people won’t ever learn proper grammar and tiny nuances and that’s okay, you can have a full conversation anyway.