VCE Stuff > AN’s Language Analysis Club

2018 AA Club - Week 16

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clarke54321:

--- Quote ---Seeking to debunk the commonly held belief that the acquisition of a second language becomes increasingly difficult with older age, Monika Schmid published an opinion piece in The Age.
--- End quote ---

Ignore the headlines: you can learn a new language - at any age


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 10. 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.

Pretty much anyone can become fluent in pretty much any language at pretty much any age. It’s not even true that young children learn languages faster than older children or adults: if you expose different age groups to the same amount of instruction in a foreign language, the older ones invariably do better, both initially and in the long run. Learners of any age can achieve a brilliant, even native like, command of the vocabulary of another language, including such challenging structures as idioms or proverbs.

Linguists remain divided on what the reason is for the difficulty many older speakers have at fully mastering these most elusive pockets of grammar. Some – including the authors of the Cognition study – subscribe to what’s called the “critical window” hypothesis. They suggest we have a special mechanism in our brain which specifically enables us to learn a language, and that this mechanism is “switched off” around puberty – the age at which most speakers have mastered their native language.

Other researchers argue that there is nothing language-specific about the slightly worse performance of older learners. Rather, they suggest it is down to those changes of circumstances which tend to happen as people get older, such as having less time to learn, a decline in our general ability to learn and our memory skills, and a more stable sense of identity.

What is new about the Cognition study is that, by the usual standards of linguistic investigations, it uses a dataset of unprecedented size. Through an internet grammar quiz shared on social media, the authors collected almost 700,000 responses, two thirds of them from people for whom English was a second language. This allowed them to model the relationship between age of learning and proficiency in more detail than had previously been possible.
They found that the accuracy of the responses on the grammar quiz declined sharply for learners who began studying English after the age of 17, a long way off the age of ten, which is the age most of media reports focused on.

This study is a novel one, and I predict that we’ll see many researchers in future making use of such tools and collecting much more data than we have previously been able to. It will doubtlessly inform and shape the scholarly discussion about whether there is or isn’t a critical period for language learning. But the claim that its findings suggest that after age ten you are too old to learn a foreign language fluently is one of the worst misrepresentations of a scientific outcome that I have ever seen.

Questions of how and why micro-features of grammar are learned in a second language have important implications for linguistic theory, but they are of little consequence to the actual learner. You can become a perfectly fluent speaker of a foreign language at any age, and small imperfections of grammar or accent often just add to the charm.

Learn a new language. Learn a new instrument. Pick up a new sport. Or don’t do any of these. But whatever you decide to do or not do, don’t blame your age.


For some reason or another, I had issues uploading the visual. Please see the advised like, here , for access.

clarke54321:
Given the lack of responses, I've decided to extend this article to this week. Understandably, this is quite a large piece. However, you can simply pick out one paragraph (and link it to the visual, if you wish) and write yourself a small paragraph. Happy AA writing  :)

Anonymous:
Mine is handwritten, I've uploaded it here https://www.dropbox.com/s/03kaykalhk9y6vy/Practise%20-%20language%20learning-min%20%281%29.pdf?dl=0
Hopefull it's legible!

Thanks :)

MissSmiley:
Schmid contends to middle aged adults and organisations who conduct language tests amongst a varied age population, that age should not be a hindrance in trying to learn a new language.

Attempting to appear knowledgeable, Schmid suggests a new criteria to assess the definition of the word ‘fluent’ ; she suggests that it means to only be able to communicate with relative ease; people do not have to be proficient in a language. Using a highly colloquial style when Schmid repeats the adverb “pretty much” in “pretty much anyone” can become in “pretty much every language,” she attempts to reduce social distance with adults who may have lost hopes of learning a language after reading “depressing messages” from BBC. The informal conversational style is likely to make these adults feel comforted and their moral confidence is boosted when Schmid refutes “Cognition study findings.” She uses generalisations to transform a seemingly complex act of learning a new language into simplistic and energetically connoted language: “learners of any age can achieve a brilliant, even native like command…” In turn, adults are encouraged to pursue learning a new language, so that they will be benefited in a metaphorical “charm” – a magical ambiance in which imperfections in using a language will not be critiqued, but will rather be welcomed. The visual seeks to aggrandise Schmid’s stance. In the background, there are small shadows of the hands of children pointing to foreign language characters as they are learning it. However, in the foreground, a bigger shadow of perhaps an older teenager or adult is juxtaposed, implying that an older populous have an equal privilege to learn a foreign language just like young people; they can learn in the same manner as children can.

Shifting from a forthright to a mocking tone in what is in fact the pre-buttal in Schmid’s article, she desires to highlight the flaws in study theories which suggest comprehensive reasons as to why adults and English as a secondary language learners find it merely harder to learn a new language compared to their younger counterparts. In the pre-buttal, Schmid admits that language surveys and studies are indeed “novel” and that they will “doubtlessly inform and shape scholarly discussion.” But Schmid’s placement of his mocking undertones before he admits the benefits of these researches, means that his stance is dominating. His mocking of the various grammar tests is seen with his deliberate use of quotation marks around “critical window” and “switched off.” The scientific “hypothesis” of the special mechanism in our brain being “switched off” in an older age is ridiculed and undermined, thereby seeking to incite doubt in the readership’s mind about the validity and predictability of such findings. 

Anonymous:
First time doing this. Feel free to ask any questions you may, although, this has been based off of my own understanding; it might be wrong.


--- Quote from: MissSmiley on June 02, 2018, 12:16:25 am ---Schmid contends to middle aged adults and organisations who conduct language tests amongst a varied age population, that age should not be a hindrance in trying to learn a new language.

Attempting to appear knowledgeable, Schmid suggests a new criteria to assess the definition of the word ‘fluent’ ; she suggests that it means to only be able to communicate with relative ease; bit weird to have 2 colonspeople do not have to be proficient in a language. Using a highly colloquial style languagewhen Schmid repeats the adverb “pretty much” in “pretty much anyone” can become in “pretty much every language,” she attempts to reduce social distance with adults who may have lost hopes of learning a language after reading “depressing messages” from BBC. The analysis is seems good here. It shows who the language targets. But it doesn't really make sense. Consider removing the 'pretty much anyone' phrase twice. Perhaps write it like this: ...repeats the adverb 'pretty much' in the phrase 'pretty much anyone' to reduce social distance... The informal conversational style is likely to make these adults feel comforted and their moral confidence is boosted when Schmid refutes “Cognition study findings.” Link a little bit betterShe uses generalisations to transform a seemingly complex act of learning a new language into simplistic and energetically don't know whether 'energetically' is the right word connoted language: “learners of any age can achieve a brilliant, even native like command…” Good link here to go from the evidence to the reader In turn, adults are encouraged to pursue learning a new language, so that they will be benefited in a metaphorical “charm” – a magical ambiance in which imperfections in using a language will not be critiqued, but will rather be welcomed. Good, but try to integrate the visual into the paragraph more smoothly into the paragraph. Nonetheless, I think that this short sentence is really good! Excellent use of sentence typesThe visual seeks to aggrandise Schmid’s stance. In the background, there are small shadows of the hands of children pointing to foreign language characters as they are learning it. However, in the foreground, a bigger shadow of perhaps an older teenager or adult is juxtaposed, implying that an older populous have an equal privilege to learn a foreign language just like young people; they can learn in the same manner as children can. I think that a link is required here to tie it all back together. Just a question though; do you think that the image would rather enforce something else? Because by putting the adults to the foreground, the author emphasizes the adults? Just my interpretation, nothing wrong with yours!

Shifting from a forthright to a mocking tone in what is in fact the pre-buttal in Schmid’s thearticle, she desires to highlight the flaws in study theories which suggest comprehensive reasons as to why adults and English as a secondary language learners find it merely harder to learn a new language compared to their younger counterparts. This sentence is quite long. I think you should probably shorten it In the pre-buttal, Schmid admits admit implies he has hidden something- isn't he revealing something here? that language surveys and studies are indeed “novel” and that they will “doubtlessly inform and shape scholarly discussion.” But Schmid’s placement of his mocking undertones before he admits the benefits of these researches, means that his stance is dominating. His mocking of the various grammar tests is seen with his deliberate use of quotation marks around “critical window” and “switched off.” The scientific “hypothesis” of the special mechanism in our brain being “switched off” in an older age is ridiculed and undermined, thereby seeking to incite doubt in the readership’s mind about the validity and predictability of such findings. 

--- End quote ---


Quite good overall. I urge you to remember that this is my understanding only. I think that your analysis of what the language does, and how it works is good, but perhaps you could work on describing why the language used is persuasive (assuming it persuasive) and what actually makes it more persuasive.

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