Do children learn languages better than adults?
A lot of my adult students say to me, “Oh, I wish I had learnt a language as a child; they just pick it up so easily”. But is that really true?
MORE BLOG POSTS | HOME | LANGUAGE COURSES
I always used to simply agree with my students, saying, “Yes, they do.” It is such a consensus of opinion that children are like sponges and pick up languages easily, that I never used to think about it. But then one day, I started teaching a family. I was teaching the older children various subjects and helping them with their exams, but there was also a six month old girl in the house. Every week, I would notice how the baby was growing and learning to speak English.
I taught the family for about five years and so I got to see how the baby developed language skills at regular intervals. At first, I was amazed that each week, she had learnt a new word or phrase. At about the age of three, she was forming sentences and telling little stories. Then I started to actually think about it.
The baby was surrounded by English from the moment she was born. All day, every day, there were English people talking to her and, a lot of the time, they were talking very slowly to her. Yet, still, despite this complete…
