Does age REALLY effect language learning? - Ask Ethan

It's interesting what he said about mid-30-ies... I don't feel that at all, I was really dumb in my twenties when I was learning calculus and algebra: I lacked the ability of imagining complex concepts and following chains of logical clauses. Now I'm doing it much more easily.

affect

I felt like my struggle to learn Japanese in my mid 30’s versus German, Spanish, French during college was due in part to age. Totally subjective of course. I didn’t achieve high levels in French or Spanish or even German (I self judged my German to be a B2) but it just didn’t feel as hard. And I never mixed them up. I thought the last part seemed significant. Especially French and Spanish are pretty similar languages. Now that I’m middle aged I mix up languages (Korean and Japanese mostly) if I try to output and it stinks.

When I was in Japan I had an American friend about the same age as me (40 at that time) and he had studied French to a high level and worked in France in IT. He was trying to learn Japanese now and really struggling. Comparing himself to the students in his class who were in their early 20’s and talking to them about how time they spent studying etc he definitely felt like it was harder for older people.

That said sometimes people get more disciplined as they get older too. Someone who can study for hours a day everyday will do better than someone who is inconsistent.

edit if the gap between older learners and younger learners were so big that an inconsistent young learner could beat a consistent older learner I think I might give up 😂😂 but it’s not that bad.

I met a high school kid in my advanced Japanese class in Fukuoka. They put us in our own class. He was from Ireland and got serious about studying Japanese at 14 and I think passed N1 two years later. He was now 3 years into studying and doing a home stay with this language school. You could look at him and think language genius but I don’t think his French was so great although he had taken more classes in it. But he got serious about Japanese at a younger age. This school (Genki JACS) taught all ages but most students are college age. Those other students were terrible though. My theory is that immersion is more effective the younger you are. Make of that what you will but I doubt you will find a 30 something year old who went from zero Japanese to N1 in two years.

Motivation to learn plays a bigger factor. Age is a significant factor only when there is age related disease, dementia and etc.

Chances are, your age is going to be the last thing you can blame for your failure to learn a language. Don't even go there. The biggest factor is going to be your own level of effort you put into it.

I’m not convinced it’s age so much as a differences in one’s approach to learning, hours spent immersed, motivation, social identity, study methods (or lack thereof), and usage of explicit vs. implicit learning.
Until I see a study that controls for all those factors (it’s amazing how poorly controlled the studies of age-related facets of SLA are!), I remain doubtful that there’s much of any age-related decline in language learning ability that can’t be mostly to wholly offset by an adult’s intelligence and experience. I truly believe that, given enough time and opportunity, an adult using extensive comprehensible input and infrequent pop-up grammar (and no reading or intensive grammar until after full fluency is achieved) can learn just as well as or better than a child.

If I could start over again, that’s how I’d do it.

Anyway, thanks for all your hard work for us language learners!

Young people have more compulsatory responsibilities, they have to attend school, do homework, and go to work while adults only need to do one thing, work.