Sure, learning a language at 70 for the first time is not like learning one at 3.īut the mechanisms of language acquisition remain the same. The bottom line of this is that, yes, we can learn anything we want to, at any age. In recent years, advances in science and technology have greatly helped prove that the human brain is not only extremely plastic, but that it remains so until we die. Specifically, let’s examine the idea that young brains are much more plastic than adult brains. We just take them for granted because, well, people say it.īut wait a moment. We never give a second thought to these thoughts or claims. “Kids absorb everything like sponges, their brains are much more plastic than adult brains”. If you have children, I am sure you have witnessed how they can absorb languages effortlessly with time. The 7-year old not only spoke two languages perfectly, but what struck me was that he put together perfectly-grammatical sentences, switching effortlessly from Russian to Italian. At that point, the entire family had been living in Italy for a year. I was with some friends of mine, a Russian-speaking couple with two children. Learn grammar from language, not language from grammarĪ few years ago I spent a lovely and really interesting summer day walking around at Bracciano Lake, near my home city of Rome. Now, if I told you that there is method to absorb the grammar of a language without even opening a grammar book, would you follow it, no questions asked?Īnd, the best part is, there certainly is a way to do it. “Really?” you might ask, “How can I speak well if I don’t know the grammar of the language?” You don’t need to do ANY of that to speak a language fluently. Because let’s face it, most people associate grammar with having to hit the books, and cram grammar rules that often are hard to understand, and even harder to remember.
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