andrewducker | Interesting Links for 26-08-2019

I would beg to differ. I learnt German at 45. I could not have learned it exactly as a child learend it, becasue I am not child, do not have a child's mind and I naturally do, and require to, express thoughts that are vastly more complex that a child does. I found that hellish frustrating at the basic levels. Plus I could use my many years of learning stategies to attack the (rather tricky) grammar ( which even German children have to be explicitly taught (at least some of it), you simply can't pick it ALL up by hearing + deduction (eg. cases / gender esp. because of the reuse of "den" and "der").

My BF's son was about 1 at the time - my effective learning rate of German was vastly greater than his over the next few years because I was deliberately applying my adult mind, and learning skills (including reading!!!) plus I had better motor control for speech. He is a clever boy of 8 now, I would say my vocabulary still outstrips his, he probably makes fewer habitual grammar mistakes than me.

Okay I'm sure your singular anecdotal experience overrides all the stuff I've been taught in my linguistics degree.

It is at least one counterexample :-) However...let's bypass both anecdote as data (bad, I agree) and argument from authority (which I hope you also agree is not so great) ...

Educate me then. Is it possible to explain to me, in summary maybe, where language acquisition as an adult DOES work the same as with children?

Do adults learn the language to a given level faster or slower than children? Is it different for reading, comprehension, speech? Based on what measures? How has this been tested? Do they use the same or different strategies?

I recall, there are also some development windows for accent and pronunciation that make it harder (but not impossible) to sound native when the language is learned as an adult.

If it is all hopelessly too much, point me at a few good books. Ideally with differing viewpoints, so I can get a feel for wher ethe controversies and differences of opinion are in the field.

Because it certainly FEELS different, and if I truly am mistaken in this, then I want to know why, and how it really does work - so I can be more effective at upgrading my German, for one selfish thing!

"express thoughts that are vastly more complex that a child does. I found that hellish frustrating at the basic levels."

Just wanted to note that, children who are able to express their feelings and reasoning actually experience frustration as well for the same reason (at their own levels, of course). It's hard for them to understand that it's part of learning a language and to learn how to use compensation strategies.

ah, that is fascinating. We think so much in words once we have them that we forget that there can be thoughts without words. Or maybe only some of us do - probably those that are good with words. Come to think of it, I have known a few people who I can tell don't think in words, or don't WANT to think in words. I feel that thinking in words could get in the way of, for example numerical calculations - I can recall feeling that as a child, that my mind could do the calcuations much faster, but I was stuck waiting for my voice in my head to "speak" the calculation serially to me until it got to the end and the answer...

Edited 2019-08-28 07:06 (UTC)

Interesting Links for 26-08-2019

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