Adults are better at learning languages than kids
A study at the University of Haifa found that adults are in fact better at grasping and using new grammar structures in English than
children. Adults are in fact better at learning languages than kids!
This is the opposite of what most adults believe.
And it should be encouraging to remember this. What really makes the difference is that very often kids have to learn languages. They
are simply forced to so that they can communicate. They have real motivation.
Also, children enjoy the process of learning. They have not yet been taught by bad schooling that it’s wrong to make mistakes. So kids
don’t feel bad if they make mistakes, they know the truth that it’s normal and not a big deal to make lots of mistakes. In fact, it’s fun to
make mistakes and then to progress past them. It’s all part of the learning process, and kinds know it instinctively.
On top of this, children learn to speak languages in the real world. They want to express something to their mother or father or friend.
They want to make a sentence right there so that someone can understand them! They don’t sit in a strange classroom in rows, repeating
lists of vocabulary or grammatical terms. English is living and breathing for them.
They learn the language purely because they want to communicate. Every new thing they learn they use in a sentence and in a real
conversation immediately. And this is exactly how you should learn English from now on.
And one last thing to consider. Children actually take a huge amount of time to learn any language. Think about it, they practice pretty
much full time from when they are about one-and-a-half years old until they are seven years old, and older. They practice and learn
several hours every day, for years. Adults, on the other hand, often spend a few hours a week practicing a language. We tend to have
less time to dedicate to the task.
So, hour for hour, adults put less time in, but can progress faster because as adults we can study the language with more intelligent
strategy. The techniques and strategy in this book aim to help you turn into a refined English-learning machine.
Think carefully about these mindsets around learning English. How do you see yourself when you learn? One huge key to adopting these
ways of thinking is in the next chapter.
Key Tips
1.
Focus on making English learning fun
2.
Treat English like a game – fully focus when you sit down to play, and relax at the same time
3.
Use the learning strategies here to freshen up your English-learning experience and make it more fun
4.
Don't avoid mistakes, try to make more mistakes – fail your way to fluency
5.
Remember, adults learn languages faster than children
6.
Start by controlling the way you think and feel about English – the roots of your learning journey
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