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You’re never too old to become fluent in a foreign language

The Conversation, 10 May 2018

by , Professor of Linguistics, University of Essex

A new study on second language learning has recently taken the media by storm. A range of headlines – from the BBC to the Daily Mail and The Guardian – all trumpeted the depressing message that it’s impossible to become fluent in a foreign language after around age ten. All of these reports dramatically misrepresented the findings from the study, and the message they sent is flat-out wrong.

For one thing, the words “fluency” or “fluent” never even appear in the original study, published in the journal Cognition. There’s a good reason for this: fluency is not what the study’s authors, or any other scientists studying the effect of age in foreign language learning, are interested in. Read more... >>>>