Precerpt from My 20th Language: Adult vs Child Language Acquisition/Part One (Leaver)

 


Adult Language Learning vs Child Language Learning
(Part One)

All of my languages, except for English, were learned as adults. Although I was surrounded by French speakers in the small village in which I spent my first 14 years, our family was anglophone. I started studying French in high school, and by that time, the brain for language learning is essentially that of an adult. And though I studied Latin in fourth grade with my father’s help, he approached it as an adult and therefore so did I. The difference became quite personally visible when I took my daughter to the Soviet Union and enrolled her in the public schools while I was doing dissertation research; her Russian developed in similar ways to Russian children because she was like them, a child learning to communicate and develop literacy in Russian. Of course, she had a lot of catching up to do, but within a few months, she had indeed caught up. Adults do not catch up; they deliberately learn.

Time on Task

There has been much written and discussed about how children learn languages than adults. I would disagree. If one considers time-on-task, which has been shown to be the most critical factor in language acquisition, then consider that children generally have much more time on task than do adults. Adults learn language around conducting their daily business and hence the amount of time on language-learning tasks can be quite minimal. Children learn language through their daily business: schoolwork, playing with other children, getting ice cream cones from the local vendor, in other words, though daily life and hence the amount of time on language-learning tasks can be maximal (sometimes all their waking hours). If one looks at the relative time expended, adults can be much more efficient at language learning, something for which neither the literature nor the mythology give much credit.

Phonology: The Sound Barrier

One of the most striking differences between child and adult language acquisition lies in phonology—the system of sounds that make up a language. Children, especially those under the age of seven, have a remarkable ability to perceive and reproduce unfamiliar phonemes. Their auditory systems are still plastic, attuned to the full range of human speech sounds. Adults, by contrast, often struggle to hear distinctions not present in their native tongue. For example, the French nasal vowels or the Russian palatalized consonants may be difficult for an anglophone adult to distinguish, let alone reproduce.

This isn’t merely a matter of ear training; it’s neurological. The brain’s phonological mapping becomes increasingly fixed with age, and while adults can learn new sounds, they often do so through conscious effort—repetition, mimicry, and feedback. Children absorb phonology through immersion and play. Adults rehearse it. This difference explains why adult learners may speak fluently but retain an accent, while children often sound native within months.

Yet phonological rigidity is not destiny. Adults who sing, act, or engage in intensive pronunciation training can make remarkable gains. The key, again, is time on task—focused, deliberate time spent listening, repeating, and adjusting.

Acquisition vs. Learning: Two Paths to Fluency

My daughter’s experience in the Soviet Union beautifully illustrates the distinction between acquisition and learning, a concept popularized by Stephen Krashen. Acquisition is subconscious, immersive, and largely effortless. It’s how children pick up language—through exposure, interaction, and necessity. Learning, on the other hand, is conscious and deliberate. It involves grammar rules, vocabulary lists, and structured practice.

Adults are typically learners. They study language. Children are acquirers. They live it.

But this binary can be misleading. Adults can acquire language too—especially when immersed in environments where communication is essential. The difference is that adults often need to choose immersion, whereas children are simply in it. Adults must create conditions for acquisition: living abroad, working in multilingual settings, or forming relationships where the target language is primary.

Moreover, adults bring cognitive advantages: metalinguistic awareness, memory strategies, and the ability to transfer knowledge across languages. These tools can accelerate learning, even if acquisition remains elusive.

In short, while children may have the edge in phonology and immersion, adults possess the power of intention. And when intention meets time, fluency is not only possible—it’s inevitable.

Performance Anxiety: The Courage to Speak

One of the most overlooked barriers to adult language acquisition is not cognitive—it’s emotional. Children, by nature, are fearless communicators. They speak with abandon, invent words, misapply grammar, and still manage to be understood. Adults, however, often hesitate. They weigh every word, worry about pronunciation, and fear being judged for sounding “foreign” or “wrong.”

This hesitation is not trivial. It reflects a deeper truth: adult learners are often evaluated not just on their fluency, but on their performance. Accent, grammar, vocabulary—these become proxies for intelligence, competence, even social worth. A child who says “goed” instead of “went” is charming. An adult who makes the same mistake may be dismissed.

And yet, the most successful adult learners are those who speak anyway. Who order coffee in halting Spanish, ask directions in fractured Russian, or join a conversation in French despite knowing they’ll stumble. They understand that communication is not a recital—it’s a human act. Mistakes are not failures; they’re bridges.

This willingness to speak “at the drop of a hat” is a kind of linguistic bravery. It defies the perfectionism that so often paralyzes adult learners. It says: I may not sound native, but I am here, I am trying, and I am participating. In truth, this is how fluency is built—not in silence, but in sound. Not in correctness, but in connection.


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