It has often been said that children are able to learn foreign languages more easily than adults. However, this belief may be wrong. At least that is what a recent study, carried out by the University of Haifa in Israel,  suggests. The  study showed that a person’s age does not influence the time required to learn a foreign language.

In brief, the experiment involved three groups of people of different ages: the first was comprised of eight year old children; the second group was represented by young people aged 12 years. The third group was made up of adults. A fictitious language rule was explained to all the groups, based on pronouncing verbs in a different ways when referring to animate or inanimate objects. After the class, each of the three groups received a list of verbs and was asked to pronounce them in accordance with another list of words. The 12 year old and adult groups scored 90% on the test, while children of eight years responded mostly in a random way.

Thus, it was proved that adults have an easier understanding of the rules implicit in a foreign language. According to the study, differences in learning have nothing to do with age or the brain, but are because children are more open than adults to error correction and criticism; it is also due to the method used to teach children a language, which is based on receiving feedback when mistakes are made. These important findings contrasted the widespread myth that we all have always believed about the children’s language learning abilities.

The results of the study have been presented at the International Congress for the Study of Child Language in Montreal (Canada), and have already been questioned by some researchers. There are actually numerous studies on the relative abilities or inabilities of language learners of different ages. Personally, I prefer to believe the results that say age is not a detriment to language learning, and that people of all ages can be accomplished language learners, particularly self-motivated adults.