Diane Ackerman's essay “We Are Our Words,” opens an enlightening window on the processes of human Language Acquisition (LA), particularly in the very young. In these words she is following the findings of many linguists and researchers in recent decades. She rightfully said, “babies have brains flexible enough to learn any language they are brought up in,” which is true as anyone can see that by a very early age babies can mimic what they hear from their parents or care-givers. By the end of this paragraph she also says, “but by puberty this process becomes "heavy lifting".” Once again one cannot argue with her assertions because most people who have attempted to learn a language as an adult will attest to the difficulties that this entails.
Having been raised as a bilingual speaker, acquiring Italian as an infant and then through immigration to Australia, I acquired English by age 5 so that I now speak both these languages like a native speaker. Once again this is exactly what Ackerman was talking about in her essay and again, I agree wholeheartedly. I remember as a child silently experimenting with different syntax and grammatical structures in both languages and having no difficulty differentiating between the two (Chomsky, 2005, 3). Some parents, to their children's detriment unfortunately, deny their children born into a bilingual household the opportunity of growing up hearing both languages through some misguided notion that they are "protecting" their child from being confused by multiple languages. In fact, research has shown that a child exposed to multiple languages will not only learn all of them but will excel at other subjects as well.
I wish however to question Ackerman's statements that once puberty is reached that language learning becomes increasingly difficult due to a biological influence. (Paragraph 6) If we firstly observe how a baby acquires language we can see that for the first year roughly the baby does nothing but listen to the sounds of the parents. Then when the infant is ready speech happens according to what they have heard. Why then at the age of 14 and above is it so difficult to acquire a new language schema. Surely the brain is more developed at an older age. The speech centers are more complicated and the learner can understand the grammar and fit new knowledge into an already formed language schema (Piaget). Should this not enable an adult to acquire a language more easily? To find the answer I believe it is necessary to go back to the beginning and examine how a baby learns, and how this differs from adult learning.
An infant comes into the world unable to speak but with faculties in place which enable it to generate grammar (Chomsky 2005, 1). As the child listens he/she experiments with diverse structures until rules are established and structures are acquired. At this time in the infant's life this is the closest they will be to the concept of Tabula Rasa. Consequently all the child can do at this time is to listen, to touch, to adjust spatial vision, and to learn to communicate. The child is essentially without cares and worries when it comes to the living necessities of life, when hungry, cry, and food comes, when wet, cry, and dry diaper comes. It is no wonder then that a child can devote almost 100% of time and learning ability to assimilating new language structures, and consequently language is acquired seemingly with no trouble at all.
Consider now, the adult or teenage learner of a second language. One must look at the external issues impacting the learning as well as internal ones.
John Doe, citizen, father, husband, responsible bread winner, bill payer and protector of family has enough considerations impacting his life and when he takes on another language, he may devote one, two, or maybe three hours per week to this task. Jane Doe, citizen, wife, mother, care-giver, bill payer, bread-winner, and protector. John Doe Jnr., teenager, high school student, peers, athlete, friendships, teen life, proms, school grades, girlfriend. The previous lists may be somewhat tedious but they serve to illustrate that whereas the baby devoted all waking hours, to acquiring language, social minded humans must divide their attention between many intellectual pursuits. An adult or teenager has an infinite number of distractions or extraneous issues that will divide his/her attention, thereby reducing the amount of memory allocated to LA.
In addition to having all their attention devoted to LA, an infant gets instant feedback from the care giver. For example, if a baby says “boll” the care giver will recognize the word “bottle” and provide it and repeat the word properly so that baby learns it properly (Krashen). Older learners, especially in Second language Acquisition (SLA) only have a limited time to practice scenarios and then mostly these scenarios are contrived, thus the learners have no need to remember. Another drawback to learning is that the majority of adult learners will gather in their first language social groups and revert to Native Language speaking. In US high schools the Hispanic students who are learning ESL rarely socialize with native English speakers. As a matter of course they would sit together during lunch, on the bus, at social gatherings, so that any English that was learned in school has no chance of reinforcement because they have reverted to their native language. It is a vicious cycle in that ESL students don't socialize with native speakers and native speakers don't seek out ESL learners. Conversely, it has been observed that in those few cases where there is substantial socialization with native speakers, where the learner has little option but to use the target language, that the SLA is more efficiently acquired.
