Task 2: Your beliefs and assumptions about language learning and teaching

Children learn a second/foreing language easier than adults.

I agree with this statement according to my experiences and books that I have read. There are a lot of studies in which experts have proved that children are faster learners in every subject, but more especially in subjects that include a second or foreign language.

When kids are very little, they repeat everything the other people say, that is why a second language can be acquired so easily. As they are learning their first language, they can learn a second language at the same time.

As I read an article by Harvard University, the basic architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth and continues into adulthood. In the first years of life start the proliferation of neural connections in the brain, after this, the connections are reduced so that the brain's circuits become more efficient. This leads us to know that vision and hearing are the first to develop, followed by early language skills and higher cognitive functions. Consequently, learning a second/foreign language is easier in children than adults. Not only for what already said but also, in the same article by Harvard University it is said that the brain is most flexible early in life to accommodate a wide range of environments and interactions, but as the maturing brain becomes more specialized to assume more complex functions, it is less capable of reorganizing and adapting to new challenges. According to that, for example, by the first year, the parts of the brain that differentiate sounds are becoming specialized to the language the baby has been exposed to; at the same time, the brain is already starting to lose the ability to recognize different sounds found in other languages. Although the “windows” for language learning and other skills remain open, these brain circuits become increasingly difficult to alter over time. 

It is said that babies and young learners are like a sponge, who can acquire whatever you want to teach them, this is because the capacity that they have in their brains, but I watched an interesting TED talk by Patricia Khul and she explains how babies listen to the sounds around them and “take statistics” on the sounds they need to know. Before the age of 10 – 12 months, babies can differentiate between all sounds across all languages. Then, according to their exposure to languages, they start to only differentiate between the language sounds which are necessary to create meaning. I believe that all these ideas can support the theory of young children learning a second language fastly than adults, because when we are adults our brain already settles down and it is not prepared for new challenges or changes. Of course, even when we are older we can learn a new language, but it takes us more time and effort than a child.

References:

Center on the Developing Child (2007). The Science of Early Childhood Development (InBrief). Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu.

Khul, P. (2011). YouTube. Retrieved 15 January 2020, from https://youtu.be/G2XBIkHW954