Want to Learn a New Language? Maybe Withhold the Written Word, Cambridge Study Suggests

• Learning a new language improves our well-being, offers new experiences, deepens our understanding of the world, and is enjoyable.
• However, learning a new language is not an easy endeavor.
• Beyond its inherent difficulty, language learning often suffers from perceived difficulty.
• This perceived difficulty may stem from the common belief that we lose our innate language-learning ability after infancy.
• Stressing about text may be part of the reason we don’t learn languages as efficiently as infants.

A Lost Superpower?

• Such a notion of a lost “superpower” can be discouraging.
• While children may learn languages more effectively than adults, the reasons could be more complex than a simple binary and deterministic explanation.
• Reasons may lie not only in learning abilities but also in learning conditions.
• Firstly, although age may impact language learning abilities, research indicates that our brains remain highly adaptable throughout our lives¹²³.

Today it is generally accepted that the adult brain is far from being fixed.

Adult Neuroplasticity: More Than 40 Years of Research – PMC

• Secondly, we can replicate certain learning conditions that aid children’s language acquisition.
• One such condition is being stress-free.
• Stress makes our minds less flexible⁴—especially if we perceive a situation as beyond our control⁵—and hinders our learning abilities.
• Infants don’t stress about language learning. They are unaware of doing something great. They don’t worry about adhering to rules. They also aren’t concerned with reading and writing.
• The last aspect was the subject of a recent study by Cambridge University.
• The researchers ask if our difficulties learning languages as adults are “because of an age-related decline in the language-learning ability or because of unfavorable learning conditions?”.
• They conclude that “Adults can thus attune to novel-language prosody, but orthography hampers this ability.” Prosody means “the rhythm and intonation of language” and orthography means “the accepted way of spelling and writing words”.
• In simpler words, dealing with written text, rather than just sound, can hold up our ability to adapt to a new language.
• The researchers suggest that “Language-learning theories and applications may need to reconsider the consequences of providing orthographic input to beginning second-language learners.”
• We can focus on sound when learning a language through movies, music, and podcasts.

Nothing fits everyone, always

• Learning a language is a complex task with many dynamic aspects that change over time. Additionally, we are unique from one another and also different within ourselves as time progresses.
• That means there isn’t a single method or set of instructions that is always optimal for everyone.
• Moreover, under different circumstances, opposite conclusions, and recommendations, can be made⁶.
• Rather than solving language learning, the Cambridge study reminds us that processes are more complex than we may have previously believed.
• This complexity is encouraging because it allows us to explore various approaches and methods, make small adjustments, revisit old ideas, and remain optimistic even if something doesn’t seem effective.
• This realization gives us a sense of control, which in turn reduces stress and diminishes its effect.

[…] self-efficacy [a person’s belief that they can be successful when carrying out a particular task] is a strong predictor of performance in different language skills and tasks

Self-efficacy in Second/Foreign Language Learning Contexts | CCSE

• It’s all about keeping our minds free, flexible, and dynamic—that’s when they do their best work.
• At the bottom line, it’s good to keep in mind that, despite the perceived difficulty and notion of lost superpowers, adults can and do successfully learn new languages.

Rigid Perfectionism

• Perfectionism is another concept that can make our minds rigid and hinder language learning. We’ve got used to believing that we must excel in everything we do.
• That’s another likely advantage infants have over us when learning a language—they are unaware and don’t care about mistakes they make or might make.
• In language learning, perfectionism can particularly hinder our speaking ability because we are afraid of sounding stupid or foolish.
• Fortunately, when it comes to hobbies, there is no need to excel. The end goal of hobbies is our well-being. As long as we enjoy ourselves, it really doesn’t matter if we suck at our hobby.

Footnotes

1. Grow your brain | Oxford University Department for Continuing Education ↩︎
2. Adult Neuroplasticity: More Than 40 Years of Research – PMC ↩︎
3. View of Neuroplasticity And Adult Learning: Can An Old Dog Learn New Tricks? ↩︎
4. Stress and Cognitive Flexibility: Cortisol Increases Are Associated with Enhanced Updating but Impaired Switching – PubMed ↩︎
5. Acute stressor effects on cognitive flexibility: mediating role of stressor appraisals and cortisol – PubMed ↩︎
6. Orthography and second language word learning: Moving beyond “friend or foe?” | The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America | AIP Publishing ↩︎