MSI Press Blog

Adult Language Learning vs Child Language Learning (Part Twp) Grammatical Competence Grammatical competence—the ability to produce structurally accurate language—is often assumed to be innate in native speakers. But in reality, it develops slowly and unevenly. In one’s first language, full control over grammar doesn’t typically emerge until around age ten. Before that, children rely on patterns and approximations. They say things like “I goed” or “She don’t like it,” not because they lack intelligence, but because they’re still internalizing the rules. True grammatical accuracy is learned—often through formal education, correction, and exposure to written language. This has profound implications for adult second-language learners. Adults are expected to produce grammatically correct sentences from the outset, yet they lack the immersive, multi-year K–12 schooling that shaped their native grammaticality. They must learn grammar the hard way: through textbooks, drills, feedback, and cons...

  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 bee...