Foreign Language Training & Use

[Stan]

I think one obstacle is that many Americans go through much of their youth, often their entire youth, without any serious exposure to a second language. In much of the world that's quite unusual... my 16 year old daughter speaks 4 languages fluently and sees nothing at all unusual or remarkable about that.

If someone with actual expertise in the matter comes along and tells me I'm full of it I'll gladly concede the point... just how it looks to a rank amateur, albeit a multilingual one.

Steve,
This article in the Foreign Policy Journal is right up your alley.

The author painstakingly describes and supports his experience and theories, which generally busts the myth about children learning faster. But he has a point similar to yours... exposure. A good read with some real funny bits !

A survey of people working as professional interpreters would show that 80% of them graduated from less than five universities in the world.

None of them were children.

In conclusion, my theory is if an adult and a child attend the same number of hours of classes, the adult will learn faster. In practice, however, adults have lives. They are busy people, and studying is a kind of luxury, which generally takes second place to work and earning money and taking care of their family.

However, given the same number of hours of classes, an adult would learn a language faster than a child. The proof is Monterey Institute, Defense Language Institute, and Middlebury Language Program, all of which can take an adult student from zero to passing a college entrance exam in a foreign language in just one to two years.