Can People Learn a Second Language the Way They Learned Their First?
Posted by Aaron Lovelace
This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. The reason I am curious is because certain language training programs (like Rosetta Stone) claim to teach you a new language the same way you learned your first. It seems like a nice concept, and a highly marketable one at that, but I wonder whether these methods have their roots based more in science or in marketing.
In thinking about this question I have reflected on my experience studying Spanish, French and most recently, Japanese. Since I don’t remember how I learned English, my first language, I can only base my reasoning on what information the people who make these claims provide me with. Since I already mentioned Rosetta Stone, have a look at this page to read about their method: http://www.rosettastone.com/personal/howitworks . For a far more in-depth look at the topic, you can read the Wikipedia article on language acquisition here.
After talking with a friend who has been a language educators and researcher for more than 20 years, along with my own small amount of research, I have come to a conclusion that adults acquire new languages far differently from children because our brains are developmentally at different points. This isn’t to say that people acquiring a second language are not benefited from being immersed in it to some degree as children are, nor that we are not aided by situational learning experiences.
What I am suggesting is that adults have different ways of learning, memorizing and remembering from children. Focusing too much energy on crafting a method which attempts to teach adults as if their brains were the same as those of children is probably a waste of time from the standpoint of educational effectiveness (especially since humans do not completely understand the science of language acquisition yet). If science can prove me wrong, I will change my mind.
